can let himself go with impressive power. In the introduction of
conversation into a poem--a special gift with Mr. Masefield--Tennyson
is usually weak, which ought to have taught him never to venture into
drama. Nothing is worse in _Enoch Arden_ than passages like
these:

"Annie, this voyage by the grace of God
Will bring fair weather yet to all of us.
Keep a clean hearth and a clear fire for me,
For I'll be back, my girl, before you know it."
Then lightly rocking baby's cradle, "and he,
This pretty, puny, weakly little one,--
Nay--for I love him all the better for it--
God bless him, he shall sit upon my knees
And I will tell him tales of foreign parts,
And make him merry, when I come home again.
Come, Annie, come, cheer up before I go."

One of the reasons why twentieth-century readers are so impatient with
_Enoch Arden,_ is because Tennyson refused to satisfy the all but
universal love of a fight. The conditions for a terrific "mix-up" were
all there, and just when the spectator is looking for an explosion of
wrath and blood, the poet turns away into the more heroic but less
thrilling scene of self-conquest. Mr. Masefield may be trusted never
to disappoint his readers in such fashion. It might be urged that
whereas Tennyson gave a picture of man as he ought to be, Mr.
Masefield painted him as he really is.

But _The Daffodil Fields_ is not melodrama. It is a poem of
extraordinary beauty. Every time I read it I see in it some "stray