'O Constant to Thy Vow'—St George, Masefield, & England

I have already referred once on this blog to the English Poet Laureate, John Masefield, of whom I first learned in the writings of Fr Andrew Philips (see for instance, this and this). Here was a modern English poet who, according to Fr Philips, was in touch with England’s spiritual heart, and through it, with the Orthodoxy of her past. I just stumbled onto this little book, A Play of St George (NY: Macmillan, 1948), the first of Masefield’s works I read, at my favourite used bookstore, and I was not disappointed.

Although this is indeed a play, with stage directions and the other expected theatrical accoutrements, it is written largely in verse, and thus reads much like a long poem. Most of the poetry is blank verse, but Masefield utilises choruses in a few places that have rhymed parts. Overall, the verse is quite eloquent, as one would expect from a Poet Laureate.

But the real strength of the work is its spiritual significance. It is true that Masefield has ‘demythologised’ the most famous incident in St George’s Life—his slaying of the dragon—by making the ‘dragon’ in question a fearsome pirate nicknamed ‘the Dragon’. But the poet does not give Christianity short schrift. Quite the contrary. The climax of the play is a wonderful and very moving depiction of St George’s martyrdom, complete with his replies to the attempts to persuade him to renounce his faith by ‘the form of words’. Upon his execution, there is the passage of the Martyr's soul from this life and his reception in Heaven by Christ, the angels, and the Saints, who sing (p. 52)—

O, sing a welcome; sing
To this new friend they bring
Home here to Heaven’s King
And his reward.

O, constant to thy vow
Welcome, thrice welcome, thou,
The Ruler wills thy brow
Shall now be starred.

Finally, the last lines are spoken in prose by ‘A Spirit’ and ‘Dancers’ in Heaven (p. 53):

A Spirit:

O spirits, spirits, come swiftly . . . All the host of Heaven has come with banners for him. O splendour. O beauty.

Dancers:

O come. O come. O come.

How wonderful it is to see major literary figures of modern times becoming so enchanted by the holiness of the Saints that they choose such subjects to write on, rather than wasting their talents with nihilism and libertinism as so many others have.

St George has of course been considered the Patron Saint of England for some centuries now. Hence Henry V’s words (King Henry V, III.i):

. . . The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge,
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

While Fr Philips has argued with his usual eloquence that St Edmund ought to be considered England’s premier patron, another piece on his site admits that St George ‘has acted as our patron-saint for many years, and has fulfilled his charge well’. Masefield himself has written eloquently of the significance of the Dragonslayer to England (qtd. by Fr Philips here):

So, I thought, that today is St George’s Day, and that today—in the far past, that great knight of God rode out, in the Eastern country, and killed a dragon which had been devouring women, and the Englishmen had thought that deed a holy, and most beautiful and manly thing, and had chosen St George from among all saints to be their saint, and had taken his banner to be their banner, and called upon him, century after century, when they went into battle. For they felt that such a man lived on after death, and would surely help all holy and beautiful and manly men for ever and ever. . . . The spirit of England is the something of the spirit of St. George, a manly and beautiful spirit, ready to help someone weaker, and something of the spirit of Shakespeare, a just and tender spirit, fond of fun and kindness and of the rough and busy life of men. That delicate, shy, gentle, humorous and most manly soul is the soul of England. It is in Chaucer, in Shakespeare, in Dickens. It is in the old ballads and tales of Robin Hood, who stood up for the poor, and was merry walking in the green forest. It is in the little villages of the land, in the old homes, in the churches, in countless old carvings, in old bridges, in old tunes, and in the old acts of the English, a shy, gentle, humorous and most manly soul, that stood up for the poor and cared for beauty. No finer thing can be said of men than that, that they stood up for the poor and cared for beauty; that they cared to be just and wise.

So whatever we may say about the prudence of resurrecting St Edmund as England’s true Patron (to which at least one blog is devoted!), we must be careful how we treat the matter. It seems to me we ought to applaud such things as the Royal Society of St George, and the efforts to promote St George’s feastday as an occasion of English patriotism, such as the St George’s Day site.