Page:Poetry, a magazine of verse, Volume 7 (October 1915-March 1916).djvu/128

POETRY: A Magazine of Verse

John Synge was, and is, one of those ideal and romantic figures about whom controversy dots not flourish but on whom the imagination loves to linger. There was no paradox in Synge, no inconsistency to puzzle or illuminate. He was an artist—an artist with none of that admixture of the man of the world which is not uncommon among artists who are also men of letters, and none of the priest or the prophet or the pedagogue—a character too simple to explain. Mr. Masefield, who was perhaps as close an intimate as Synge had in his later years, is one to sympathize with Synge's pleasure in all that is "wild" in life, and shares with his subject that love of phrases which is so like the artist's love of line and so opposite to the mob's satisfaction in catchwords. It is a rare thing in our day, if not in any day, to find a voluntary vagabond and a genuine craftsman in the same person. Mr. Masefield feels it is a fine thing; especially when the man is not interested in politics or religion, or, indeed, in ideas of any sort but only in life. He records that Synge's talk was "all about men and women, and what they did and what they said when life excited them," and on the same page calls him "the perfect companion." He emphasizes the fact that Synge was a spectator and a listener, seldom a par-