Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/285

KIPLING'S BALLADS OF "THE SEVEN SEAS" strong work that appeals to all. The realism of a lyric, moreover, be it cockney slang or other detail, must interest the future no less than the present, the ultimate test being endurance. These reflections would not be worth while in the case of a lesser man. Mr. Kipling now can afford to be silent for long intervals, rather than to give out a single stanza that is not in his happier vein.

But while dainty rhymesters hoard and pare, the public will never contemn so resourceful and generous a lyrical spendthrift. When we turn to the larger portion of The Seven Seas, how imaginative it is, how impassioned, how superbly rhythmic and sonorous! Kipling now betakes himself to the main which English keels have ploughed for ages, and, like them, makes it his own from the tropics to the pole. "A Song of the English," with its ballads and interludes, is the cantata of a master. "The Rhyme of the Three Sealers" is grimly intrepid—his ruthless Yankee skippers are transformed to Vikings in the arctic fog. "The Mary Gloster" and "McAndrew's Hymn" are, each in its way, thoroughly realistic—the latter monologue being as true a comprehension of the ingrained Scottish temper as can be drawn—stronger, in fact, than most of Browning's dramatic monologues when he left the middle ages for a contemporary study of that kind. "The Song of the Banjo," with its masterly refrains, is resonant of pathos, humor, and the world-around music of vagrants that, when all is said, are the world's pioneers. And of these ballads the most remarkable is that [271]