Mrs. Gurney’s Poems

by Algernon Blackwood

It is refreshing always to come across a genuine singer who is not afraid to sing simply of common things; and when that singer is possessed, as evidently Mrs. Gurney is, of a brave and wholesome view of life, the result may be more than merely refreshing: it may be inspiring. Hers is clearly the spontaneous lyrical utterance that sings because it must. There is often depth, but there is never obscurity in what she writes. It is as natural as the flow of a stream, rippling, pellucid, reflecting the homely yet precious flowers along the banks. You open this pretty book of rough-cut edges and attractive binding, and lo! you find yourself at once, and appropriately, in a garden, “God’s Garden”:

“The Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world.”

And the charm and peace of that garden accompany you throughout the little volume, soothing the heart as with the rustle of summer leaves:

“The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer God’s Heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.”

In these days of so much pretentious, tortured verse, it is delightful to listen to a voice like this, sincere and unaffected, giving melodious and felicitous expression to the common moods that are familiar to us all. Her vision runs like a thread of light through all the day’s events, touching each with beauty. Her gift, for all its modest humility, is no small one; you feel, moreover, the person of the singer behind all she writes: one who is brave enough to find some light and colour even when the darkness seems most hopeless:

“Sometimes when I was near you
The tears would fill my eyes;
To see and feel and hear you
Linked pain to ecstasies.

Now you are gone the stress is
That I must play my part,
And smile while no one guesses
The tears that fill my heart.”

Or in “Service”:

“Oh! Love, I am too small to stand
Beside you as an equal soul,
And meet your gaze and touch your hand
And own a common path and goal,

But this at least is in my power,
To mark your passing day by day,
And here and there to plant a flower,
Or move perhaps a stone away.”

Throughout the hundred pages of this book, including Songs for Music (that might well tempt a composer) and Sonnets, Triolets, Translations and Sacred Poems too, there runs the same simple, spontaneous utterance, whose natural flow hardly challenges criticism. It is genuine poetry of a high, sweet order, the sweeter, too, because it is unambitious; the higher, because the meaning is always clear as sunlight. It has, indeed, the sunny, sparkling quality of the woodland spring. Passion is touched, too, both earthly and divine; and though there is no attempt to thunder nor desire to amaze, there is a depth of suggestion in many of the poems that betray one who has felt or lived and suffered, you never lost sight of joy:

“I have determined what to do
At morning and at evening too;
I will find out a song to sing⁠—
Though it be but a little thing,
’Twill serve to hearten up my days,
To tune my pipe and give God praise!”

One can well imagine Mrs. Gurney’s poems reaching thousands of readers, could they but be known, for it is a book to carry out with one into the woods, upon the hills, to read on a voyage or in the train, to dip into at night before sleep comes, or to open on a dull and weary day and catch its light and hope and beauty. It deserves to be known and loved:

“Down the woods at Godalming
All the ways are green;
Thrush and tit and blackbird sing
Down the woods at Godalming,
For where Love is wandering
And where Spring has been,
Down the woods at Godalming
All the ways are green.”