The Gentle Reader Part 4

Sh.e.l.ley describes a mood such as Keats brings to us:--

"My spirit like a charmed bark doth swim Upon the liquid waves of thy sweet singing Far away into regions dim Of rapture, as a boat with swift sails winging Its way adown some many-winding river."

He who finds himself afloat upon the "many-winding river" throws aside the laboring oar. It is enough to float on,--he cares not whither.

What greater pleasure is there than in the "Idylls of the King" provided we do not study them, but dream them. We must enter into the poet's own mood:--

"I seemed To sail with Arthur under looming sh.o.r.es, Point after point, till on to dawn, when dreams Begin to feel the truth and stir of day."

It is good to be there, in that far-off time, good to come to Camelot:--

"Built by old kings, age after age, So strange and rich and dim."

All we see of kings, and magicians, and ladies, and knights is "strange and rich and dim." Over everything is a luminous haze. There are

"hollow tramplings up and down, And m.u.f.fled voices heard, and shadows past."

There is the flashing of swords, the weaving of spells, the seeing of visions. All these things become real to us; not simply the stainless king and the sinful queen, the prowess of Lancelot and the love of Elaine, but the magic of Merlin and the sorceries of Vivien, with her charms

"Of woven paces and of waving hands."

And we must stand at last with King Arthur on the sh.o.r.e of the mystic sea, and see the barge come slowly with the three queens, "black-stoled, black-hooded, like a dream;" and hear across the water a cry,

"As it were one voice, an agony Of lamentation, like a wind that shrills All night in a waste land, where no one comes, Or hath come, since the making of the world."

But what good is there in all this? Why waste time on idle dreams? We hear Walt Whitman's challenge to romantic poetry:--

"Arthur vanished with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and Galahad, all gone, dissolved utterly like an exhalation; Embroidered, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, myths, Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and courtly dames, Pa.s.sed to its charnel vault, coffined with crown and armor on, Blazoned with Shakspere's purple page And dirged by Tennyson's sweet sad rhyme."

Away with the old romance! Make room for the modern bard, who is

"Bluffed not a bit by drain-pipes, gasometers, and artificial fertilizers."

The Gentle Reader, also, is not to be bluffed by any useful things, however unpleasant they may be, but he winces a little as he reads that the "far superber themes for poets and for art" include the teaching by the poet of how

"To use the hammer and the saw (rip or cross-cut), To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting, To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter, To invent a little something ingenious to aid the washing, cooking, cleaning."

The Muse of Poetry shrieks at the mighty lines in praise of "leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making," and the rest.

Boiler-making, she protests, is a useful industry and highly to be commended, but it is not music. When asked to give a reason why she should not receive all these things as poetry, the Muse is much embarra.s.sed. "It's all true," she says. "Leather-dressing and boiler-making are undoubted realities, while Arthur and Lancelot may be myths." Yet she is not quite ready to be off with the old love and on with the new,--it's all so sudden.

Whitman himself furnishes the best ill.u.s.trations of the difference between poetry and prose. He comes like another Balaam to prophesy against those who a.s.sociate poetry with beauty of form and melody of words; and then the poetic spirit seizes upon him and lifts him into the region of harmony. In the Song of the Universal he declares that--

"From imperfection's murkiest cloud Darts always forth one ray of perfect light, One flash of heaven's glory.

To fashion's, customs discord, To the mad Babel's din, the deafening orgies, Soothing each lull, a strain is heard, just heard From some far sh.o.r.e, the final chorus sounding.

O the blest eyes, the happy hearts That see, that know the guiding thread so fine Along the mighty labyrinth."

There speaks the poet declaring the true faith, which except a man believe he is condemned everlastingly to the outer darkness. His task is selective. No matter about the murkiness of the cloud he must make us see the ray of perfect light. In the mad Babel-din he must hear and repeat the strain of pure music. As to the field of choice, it may be as wide as the world, but he must choose as a poet, and not after the manner of the man with the muck-rake.

"In this broad earth of ours Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, Inclosed and safe within the central heart Nestles the seed perfection."

When the poet delves in the grossness and the slag, he does so as one engaged in the search for the perfect.

"My feeling," says the Gentle Reader, "about the proper material for poetry, is very much like that of Whitman in regard to humanity--

'When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my friendly companions, I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and women like you.'

"So I say, when drain pipes and cross-cut saws and the beef on the butcher's stalls are invested with beautiful a.s.sociations and thrill my soul in some mysterious fashion, then I will make as much of these things as I do of the murmuring pines and the hemlocks. When a poet makes bank clerks and stevedores and wood-choppers to loom before my imagination in heroic proportions, I will receive them as I do the heroes of old. But, mind you, the miracle must be actually performed; I will not be put off with a prospectus."

Now and then the miracle is performed. We are made to feel the romance that surrounds the American pioneer, we hear the

"Crackling blows of axes sounding musically, driven by strong arms."

But, for the most part, Whitman, when under the influence of deep feeling, forgets his theory, and uses as his symbols those things which have already been invested with poetical a.s.sociations. Turn to that marvelous dirge, "When Lilacs last in the Dooryard bloomed." There is here no catalogue of facts or events, no parade of glaring realism.

Tennyson's "sweet sad rhyme" has nowhere more delicious music than we find in the measured cadence of these lines. We are not told the news of the a.s.sa.s.sination of Lincoln as a man on the street might tell it. It comes to us through suggestion. We are made to feel a mood, not to listen to the description of an event. There is symbolism, suggestion, color mystery. We inhale the languorous fragrance of the lilacs; we see the drooping star; in secluded recesses we hear "a shy and hidden bird"

warbling a song; there are dim-lit churches and shuddering organs and tolling bells, and there is one soul heart-broken, seeing all and hearing all.

"Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands--and this for his dear sake, Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim."

This is real poetry, and yet while we yield to the charm we are conscious that it is made up of the old familiar elements.

Tennyson's apology to a utilitarian age was not needed:--

"Perhaps some modern touches here and there Redeemed it from the charge of nothingness."

The "modern touches" we can spare. The modern life we have always with us; but it is a rare privilege to enjoy the best things of the past. It is the poet who is the minister of this fine grace. The historian tells us what men of the past did, the philosopher tells us how their civilizations developed and decayed; we smile at their superst.i.tions, and pride ourselves upon our progress. But the ethereal part has vanished, that which made their very superst.i.tions beautiful and cast a halo over their struggles. These are the elements out of which the poet creates his world, into which we may enter. In the order of historic development chivalry must give way before democracy, and loyalty to the king must fade before the increasing sense of liberty and equality; but the highest ideals of chivalry may remain. Imaginative and romantic poetry has this high mission to preserve what otherwise would be lost.

It lifts the mind above the daily routine into the region of pure joy.

Whatever necessary changes take place in the world we find, in

"All lovely tales which we have heard or read, An endless fountain of immortal drink, Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink."

I have said that one may be a true poet without having any very important thought to communicate, but it must be said that most of the great poets have been serious thinkers as well. They have had their philosophy of life, their thoughts about nature and about human duty and destiny. It is the function of the poet not only to create for us an ideal world and to fill it with ideal creatures, but also to reveal to us the ideal element in the actual world.

"I do not know what poetical is," says Audrey. "Is it honest in deed and word? Is it a true thing?" We must not answer with Touchstone: "No, truly! for the truest poetry is the most feigning."

The poetical interpretation of the world is not feigning; it is a true thing,--the truest thing of which we can know. The grace and sublimity which we see through the poet's eyes are real. We must, however, still insist on our main contention. The poet, if he is to hold us, must always be a poet. His thought must be in solution, and not appear as a dull precipitate of prose. He may be philosophical, but he must not philosophize. He may be moral, but he must not moralize. He may be religious, but let him spare his homilies.

"Whatever the philosopher saith should be done," said Sir Philip Sidney; "the peerless poet giveth a perfect picture of it. He yieldeth to the power of the mind an image of that of which the philosopher bestoweth but a wordish description.... The poet doth not only show the way, but doth give so sweet a prospect unto the way as will entice any man to enter it. Nay, he doth as if your journey should lie through a fair vineyard, at first give you a cl.u.s.ter of grapes."

We have a right to ask our poets to be pleasant companions even when they discourse on the highest themes. Even when they have theories of their own about what we should enjoy, let us not allow them to foist upon us "wordish descriptions" of excellent things instead of poetry.

When the poet invites me to go with him I first ask, "Let me taste your grapes."

You remember Mr. By-ends in the "Pilgrim's Progress,"--how he said of Christian and Hopeful, "They are headstrong men who think it their duty to rush on in their journey in all weathers, while I am for waiting for wind or tide. I am for Religion when he walks in his silver slippers in the sunshine." That was very reprehensible in Mr. By-ends, and he richly deserved the rebuke which was afterward administered to him. But when we change the subject, and speak, not of religion, but of poetry, I confess that I am very much of Mr. By-ends' way of thinking. There are literary Puritans who, when they take up the study of a poet, make it a point of conscience to go on to the bitter end of his poetical works. If they start with Wordsworth on his "Excursion," they trudge on in all weathers. They _do_ the poem, as when going abroad they do Europe in six weeks. As the revival hymn says, "doing is a deadly thing." Let me say, good Christian and Hopeful, that though I admire your persistence, I cannot accompany you. I am for a poet only when he puts on his singing robes and walks in the sunshine. As for those times when he goes on prosing in rhyme from force of habit, I think it is more respectful as well as more pleasurable to allow him to walk alone.

Sh.e.l.ley's definition of poetry as "the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds" suggests the whole duty of the reader. All that is required of him is to obey the Golden Rule. There must be perfect reciprocity and fraternal sympathy. The poet, being human, has his unhappy hours, when all things are full of labor. Upon such hours the Gentle Reader does not intrude. In their happiest moments they meet as if by chance. In this encounter they are pleased with one another and with the world they live in. How could it be otherwise? It is indeed a wonderful world, transfigured in the light of thought.

Familiar objects lose their sharp outlines and become symbols of universal realities. Likenesses, before unthought of, appear. Nature becomes a mirror of the soul, and answers instantly to each pa.s.sing mood. Words are no longer chosen, they come unbidden as the poet and his reader