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“ I WILL discover new worlds or drown in the attempt,” wrote Gabriele I. Chiabrera towards the close of the seventeenth century. His cry is characteristic of that age; we may apply it also to ours. This breathless search after the new and original, this dissatisfaction with present conditions, this desire for deeper spiritual meaning in life, is most significant. The leaven of discontent is essential to artistic production. Yet it is impossible to overlook its pernicious tendency in modern literature, art and life. Extremists are dangerous.
 
Every period has its own characteristics which cannot be judged by pre-existent standards. It is necessary to establish a system of values for each age. Until this be done and the scope and justification of novelty be clearly defined, criticism will be necessarily incomplete and inadequate.
 
Mr John Masefield is a revolutionary. His latest work is a direct assault upon cherished principles and venerable conventions. His aim is not to be merely original or notorious. The Everlasting Mercy possesses, underlying certain exaggerations of form and crudities of expression, a clear vein of new, tense, vital thought. Its value lies not so much in sheer audacity - though this indeed has peculiar interest - as in the influence it may have on contemporary poetry.
 
The Everlasting Mercy is apparently the outcome of Mr Masefield’s theory on the functions of poetry. We are always held by his deep earnestness and sincerity of expression. Mr Masefield has obviously experienced the sordid cruelty of Life; he has touched its many angles, sounded its depths, and his knowledge is burned into every word of the poem. It does repel; to many it will seem a vulgarization, even a debasement of poetry, but yet it bears the unmistakable imprint of all real art - Truth. Not mere realism or sensationalism, but a simple, direct, terrible fidelity to Life. Whether the poem be justifiable is a matter for individual judgment. The author, at all events has been true to himself and to his beliefs, and only on this basis can we fairly judge him. He is a poet of Life. He realizes the true spirit of beauty underlying all its aspects. Lewdness and brutality are incidental and inherent in the particular phase he depicts, no merely morbid exaggerations inserted for effect. His contrasts are violent, yet never artificial or forced. They arise spontaneously from his subject, and are transfused by the fire of genuine inspiration.
 
The Everlasting Mercy is a study in the evolution of a soul. The story is neither new nor original. Saul Kane is not set up as a moral example, but as the type of ordinary living and suffering man; product of his environment, handicapped and chained down by a corrupt social system. With a fair chance he would have been a decent man. He needs but the kindling of the spark of shame to awaken his reasoning faculties, and little by little through the subtle interplay of inward and outward influences, he gains a perception of his abasement. Then comes natural fierce rebellion against the smug philistines,

                “little minds of bread and cheese”

a “sanctimonious crowd of male and female human blots,” against hypocritical customs and the legalized injustice which teaches the “ground down starving man,”

“That Squire’s greed’s Jehovah’s plan..
You get his learning circumyented
 Lest it should make him discontented
(Better a brutal, starving nation
Than men with thoughts above their station).
You let him neither read nor think,
You goad his wretched soul to drink
And then to jail, the drunken boor,
O sad intemperance of the poor.

It is only, however, through the eyes of the mother of one of his victims that he gains the complete realization of the harm of his own bad example. His awakened soul is galled with the knowledge, all his “body’s nerves were snappin’,” as, in one passionate crescendo of emotion he calls out:

“The water’s going out to sea
And there’s a great moon calling me;
But there’s a great sun calls the moon,
And all God’s bells will .carol soon
For joy and glory and delight
Of some one coming home to-night.”

And feels “the bolted door broken in,” and in his heart “the burning cataracts of Christ.”

Certain poems cannot be classified. Among these is The Everlasting Mercy. Mr Masefield is neither wholly realistic nor wholly idealistic. Curiously, however, this heightens rather than diminishes our appreciation of the poem. It is so tense and vital that it silences criticism. It captivates even those who have no outward sympathy for the sub jed or its treatment.
 
Saul Kane’s last soliloquy is a magnificent outburst of religious and lyrical poetry. Certain passages attain the spiritual rapture of the” Lauda Omnium Creaturarum” of St Francis of Assisi.

O Christ who holds the open gate,
O Christ who drives the furrow straight,
O Christ, the plough, 0 Christ, the laughter
Of holy white birds flying after,
Lo, all my heart’s field red and torn,
And Thou wilt bring the young green corn,
The young green corn divinely springing,
The young green corn forever singing;
And when the field is fresh and fair
Thy blessed feet shall glitter there,
And we will walk the weeded field,
And tell the golden harvest’s yield,
The corn that makes the holy bread
By which the soul of man is fed,
The holy bread, the food unpriced,
Thy everlasting mercy, Christ.