Critics From The United Kingdom

"Back o'er the deep I turn my longing eyes, And chide the wayward passions that rebel: Yet boots it not to think, or to complain, Musing sad ditties to the reckless main. To dreams like these, adieu! the pealing bell Speaks of the hour that stays not—and the day To life's sad turmoil calls my heart away."

"Poetic trifles from solitary rambles whilst chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy..now written from memory, confined to fourteen lines, this seemed best adapted to the unity of sentiment, the verse flowed in unpremeditated harmony as my ear directed but are far from being mere elegiac couplets."

"An extended pastoral elegy in prose is what Blunden's Undertones of War (1928) may be called. Whatever it is (G. S. Fraser once called it "the best war poem" and printed some of it as free verse in the London Magazine), no one disagrees that together with Sassoon's and Graves's "memoirs" it is one of the permanent works engendered by memoirs of the war. Its distinction derives in large part from the delicacy with which it deploys the properties of traditional English literary pastoral in the service of the gentlest (though not always the gentlest) kind of irony. If Spenser or Milton or Gray or Collins or Clare or the author of Thyrsis had fought in the Great War, any one of them could have used Blunden's final image to end a memoir of it. With a due sense of theatrical costume and an awareness of a young subaltern's loving responsibility for the flock under his care, Blunden brings Undertones of War to a close by calling himself "a harmless young shepherd in a soldier's coat" (314). That characterization is English to a fault, and beautiful."

"It [Undertones of War] is beautifully written and rich in literary references. More significantly, it is a lament for the destruction of the French and Belgian countryside, and by implication, the threat to natural peace and beauty everywhere by the savage, impersonal menace of war. As Paul Fussell has perceptively written, for Blunden the countryside was not merely beautiful; it was as magical and as precious to him as English literature: "For it to be brutally torn up by shells is a scandal close to murder". It is essentially in this poignant sense of natural destruction and needless waste (including the loss of animals and old buildings as well as people) that Blunden could be construed as "anti-war". He had little sense of political causation or strategic factors, seeing the conflict rather in terms of a natural disaster such as an earthquake or the effects of a drastic climate change."

"Australia once produced poets who were English poets a little out of touch; now she has her own; and O'Reilly with ball in hand is quite the parallel of an Australian poet, territorially distinct in rhythm, passion, scheme and transition."

"I am for the woods against the world, But are the woods for me?"

"To-day's house makes to-morrow’s road; I knew these heaps of stone When they were walls of grace and might, The country’s honour, art’s delight That over fountain'd silence show'd Fame's final bastion."

"I have been young, and now am not too old; And I have seen the righteous forsaken, His health, his honour and his quality taken. This is not what we were formerly told."

"I saw the sunlit vale, and the pastoral fairy-tale; The sweet and bitter scent of the may drifted by; And never have I seen such a bright bewildering green. But it looked like a lie, Like a kindly meant lie."

"The field and wood, all bone-fed loam, Set up a roaring harvest-home."

"This was my country, and it may be yet, But something flew between me and the sun."

"Cricket to us, like you, was more than play, It was a worship in the summer sun."

"Dance on this ball-floor thin and wan, Use him as though you love him; Court him, elude him, reel and pass, And let him hate you through the glass."

"Then is not Death at watch Within those secret waters? What wants he but to catch Earth’s heedless sons and daughters? With but a crystal parapet Between, he has his engines set."

"The hop-poles stand in cones, The icy pond lurks under, The pole-tops steeple to the thrones Of stars, sound gulfs of wonder; But not the tallest there, ’tis said, Could fathom to this pond’s black bed."

"Tired with dull grief, grown old before my day, I sit in solitude and only hear Long silent laughters, murmurings of dismay, The lost intensities of hope and fear; In those old marshes yet the rifles lie, On the thin breastwork flutter the grey rags, The very books I read are there—and I Dead as the men I loved, wait while life drags Its wounded length from those sad streets of war Into green places here, that were my own; But now what once was mine is mine no more, I seek such neighbours here and I find none. With such strong gentleness and tireless will Those ruined houses seared themselves in me, Passionate I look for their dumb story still, And the charred stub outspeaks the living tree."

"Can she who shines so calm be fear? What poison pours she in slumber's ear?"

"Old farm-houses with their white faces Fly, and their ghosts have taken their places; Even the signposts like grim liars Point to losing brakes and briars."

"Like the bee that now is blown Honey-heavy on my hand, From the toppling tansy-throne In the green tempestuous land,— I’m in clover now, nor know Who made honey long ago."

"Here they went with smock and crook, Toiled in the sun, lolled in the shade, Here they mudded out the brook And here their hatchet cleared the glade: Harvest-supper woke their wit, Huntsmen’s moon their wooings lit."

"And nigh this toppling reed, still as the dead The great pike lies, the murderous patriarch, Watching the waterpit shelving and dark Where through the plash his lithe bright vassals thread.... He on the sandbank lies, Sunning himself long hours With stony gorgon eyes: Westward the hot sun lowers."

"At Quincy's moat the squandering village ends, And there in the almshouse dwell the dearest friends Of all the village, two old dames that cling As close as any trueloves in the spring."

"No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt."

"If you knew how I had pored over many essays – how they fill me with marvel – how I can't conceive what it would be like to write as you do! – This is sober truth: – but I shan't attempt to say how much pleasure your letter gave me."

"But what did Mr. Beerbohm give to the essay and what did he take from it? That is a much more complicated question, for here we have an essayist who has concentrated on the work and is without doubt the prince of his profession."

"I felt, when I was listening to them, that I was listening to the voice of the last civilized man on earth. Max's broadcasts justify the entire invention of broadcasting."

"After his very early days, when he gambolled with an ornate and consciously absurd vocabulary, he wrote supremely well. His essay on Venice, originally an article in the Daily Mail, is a model not only of imaginative observation but of variety of structure. It is, I believe, the best travel sketch ever written."

"How might one describe Max Beerbohm to someone who knows nothing about him? Well, for a start, one might imagine D.H. Lawrence. Picture the shagginess of Lawrence, his thick beard, his rough-cut clothes, his disdain for all the social and physical niceties. Recall his passionateness—his passion, so to say, for passion itself—his darkness, his gloom. Think back to his appeal to the primary instincts, his personal messianism, his refusal to deal with anything smaller than capital “D” Destiny. Do not neglect his humorlessness, his distaste for all that otherwise passed for being civilized, his blood theories and manifold roiling hatreds. Have you, then, D.H. Lawrence firmly in mind? Splendid. Now reverse all of Lawrence’s qualities and you will have a fair beginning notion of Max Beerbohm, who, after allowing that Lawrence was a man of “unquestionable genius,” felt it necessary to add, “he never realized, don’t you know—he never suspected that to be stark, staring mad is somewhat of a handicap to a writer.”"

"Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up."

"To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself."

"It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait."

"Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter."

"I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased — short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed."

"In every human being one or the other of these two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the negative or passive instinct to accept it. And either of these instincts is so significant of character that one might as well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests."

"There is much virtue in a window. It is to a human being as a frame is to a painting, as a proscenium to a play, as 'form' to literature. It strongly defines its content."

"Only the insane take themselves quite seriously."

"Lift latch, step in, be welcome, Sir, Albeit to see you I’m unglad."

"The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends."

"As a teacher, as a propagandist, Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal."

"The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner."

"I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable."

"To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine."

"Most women are not so young as they are painted."

"The Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards of us all."

"I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him."

"All fantasy should have a solid base in reality."

"Everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example."

"The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play."

"Just as "pluck" comes of breeding, so is endurance especially an attribute of the artist. Because he can stand outside himself, and (if there be nothing ignoble in them) take pleasure in his own sufferings, the artist has a huge advantage over you and me."

"Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful."