simplicity of the scene; the naturalness of the dialogue; the
homeliness of the old leech-gatherer; these all seemed to be outside
the realm of the heroic, the elevated, the sublime,--the particular
business of poetry, as she mistakenly thought. The reason why John
Masefield admires this poem is because of its vitality, its
naturalness, its easy dialogue--main characteristics of his own work.
In writing _The Daffodil Fields_, he consciously or unconsciously
selected the same metre, introduced plenty of conversation, as he
loves to do in all his narrative poetry, and set his tragedy on a
rural stage.

It is important here to repeat the last few phrases already quoted
from Wordsworth's famous Preface: "The manners of rural life germinate
from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of
rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable;
and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are
incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." If Mr.
Masefield had written this preface for _The Daffodil Fields_, he
could not have more accurately expressed both the artistic aim of his
poem and its natural atmosphere. "The passions of men are incorporated
with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature." In this work, each
one of the seven sections ends with the daffodils; so that no matter
how base and truculent are the revealed passions of man, the final
impression at the close of each stage is the unchanging loveliness of
the delicate golden flowers. Indeed, the daffodils not only fill the
whole poem with their fluttering beauty, they play the part of the old
Greek chorus. At the end of each act in this steadily growing tragedy,
they comment in their own incomparable way on the sorrows of man.

So the night passed; the noisy wind went down;