Yeats, Robert Bridges, Lord Alfred Douglas, W.H.
Davies. And yet I see no reason why a Coronation, even in this day of
figure-heads and revolting snobbery, should not be the subject of a good
poem--a poem which would not be afflicting to read, either for the
lettered public or for the chief actor in the scene. However, the time for
such poems has apparently not yet arrived. And meanwhile the
sea-and-slaughter school have been doing an excellent work these last few
weeks in demonstrating how entirely absurd the sea-and-slaughter school
is. Mr. Alfred Noyes has been very prominent, not only in his native page,
_Blackwood's_, but also in the _Fortnightly Review_. Mr. Noyes is, I
believe, the only living versifier whose books are, in the words of an
American editor, "a commercial proposition." He is by many thought to be a
poet. Personally, I have always classed him with Alfred Austin, not yet
having come across one single stanza of his which would fall within my
definition of poetry. Here is an extract from his "A Salute from the
Fleet":
_Mother, O grey sea-mother, thine is the crowning cry!_--
I am bound to interrupt the quotation here in order to vent my feelings of
extreme irritation caused by the mere phrase. "O grey sea-mother.
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