Page:Some soldier poets.djvu/83

Rh But at the inn the Gipsy dame began:

'Now he was what I call a gentleman.

He went along with Carrie, and when she

Had a baby he paid up so readily

His half-a-crown. Just like him. A crown'd have been

More like him. For I never knew him mean.

Oh! but he was such a nice gentleman. Oh!

Last time we met he said if me and Joe

Was anywhere near we must be sure to call.

He put his arms around our Amos all

As if he were his own son. I pray God

Save him from justice! Nicer man never trod.'"

This is the spirit of Borrow rather than that of Wordsworth. Yet I divine a hankering for spiritual intensity akin to that of the more central master. These poems drift across a profound hunger for ideal human relations; like those floating gardens of Kashmir, they traverse an incommunicable want, as one of them says—

—an acceptance of the encountered actuality far less cavalier than that of the Tinman's antagonist. Though Thomas had waved a flag like those who throw their energies into a movement, the comrades tramping by his side and following were heard like echoes making his foot's thud sound all the more lonely. That heraldic picture of Simple Life Returning blazoned on the banner seemed no truer to his vision than those unsubstantial reverberations multiplying the plod-plod of his two feet; till he felt most solitary when agreement with him was most general. To adore remote places with quaint names became a fashion, but he retreated from prose to poetry in shy alarm.

The country and simple lives have their beauty, but Rh