The Pleasures of Life Part 21

And again, "All high Poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, and the inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight."

Or, as he has expressed himself in his Ode to a Skylark:

"Higher still and higher From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire; The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

"Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not.

"Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hue Among the flowers and gra.s.s, which screen it from the view."

We speak now of the poet as the Maker or Creator--[Greek: poiaetaes]; the origin of the word "bard" seems doubtful.

The Hebrews well called their poets "Seers," for they not only perceive more than others, but also help other men to see much which would otherwise be lost to us. The old Greek word was [Greek: aoidos]--the Bard or Singer.

Poetry lifts the veil from the beauty of the world which would otherwise be hidden, and throws over the most familiar objects the glow and halo of imagination. The man who has a love for Poetry can scarcely fail to derive intense pleasure from Nature, which to those who love it is all "beauty to the eye and music to the ear."

"Yet Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant rivers, fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, nor whatsoever else may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely." [12]

In the smokiest city the poet will transport us, as if by enchantment, to the fresh air and bright sun, to the murmur of woods and leaves and water, to the ripple of waves upon sand, and enable us, as in some delightful dream, to cast off the cares and troubles of life.

The poet, indeed, must have more true knowledge, not only of human nature, but of all Nature, than other men are gifted with.

Crabbe Robinson tells us that when a stranger once asked permission to see Wordsworth's study, the maid said, "This is master's Library, but he studies in the fields." No wonder then that Nature has been said to return the poet's love.

"Call it not vain;-they do not err Who say that, when the poet dies, Mute Nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies." [13]

Swinburne says of Blake, and I feel entirely with him, though in my case the application would have been different, that "The sweetness of sky and leaf, of gra.s.s and water--the bright light life of bird, child, and beast--is, so to speak, kept fresh by some graver sense of faithful and mysterious love, explained and vivified by a conscience and purpose in the artist's hand and mind. Such a fiery outbreak of spring, such an insurrection of fierce floral life and radiant riot of childish power and pleasure, no poet or painter ever gave before; such l.u.s.tre of green leaves and flushed limbs, kindled cloud and fervent fleece, was never wrought into speech or shape."

To appreciate Poetry we must not merely glance at it, or rush through it, or read it in order to talk or write about it. One must compose oneself into the right frame of mind. Of course for one's own sake one will read Poetry in times of agitation, sorrow, or anxiety, but that is another matter.

The inestimable treasures of Poetry again are open to all of us. The best books are indeed the cheapest. For the price of a little beer, a little tobacco, we can buy Shakespeare or Milton--or indeed almost as many books as a man can read with profit in a year.

Nor, in considering the advantage of Poetry to man, must we limit ourselves to its past or present influence. The future of Poetry, says Mr.

Matthew Arnold, and no one was more qualified to speak, "The future of Poetry is immense, because in Poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. But for Poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea _is_ the fact. The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious Poetry. We should conceive of Poetry worthily, and more highly than it has been the custom to conceive of it. We should conceive of it as capable of higher uses, and called to higher destinies than those which in general men have a.s.signed to it hitherto."

Poetry has been well called the record "of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds;" it is the light of life, the very "image of life expressed in its eternal truth;" it immortalizes all that is best and most beautiful in the world; "it purges from our inward sight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being;" "it is the center and circ.u.mference of knowledge;" and poets are "mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity caste upon the present."

Poetry, in effect, lengthens life; it creates for us time, if time be realized as the succession of ideas and not of minutes; it is the "breath and finer spirit of all knowledge;" it is bound neither by time nor s.p.a.ce, but lives in the spirit of man. What greater praise can be given than the saying that life should be Poetry put into action.

[1] See Lessing's _Laoc.o.o.n_.

[2] Arnold.

[3] Coleridge.

[4] Horace.

[5] Wordsworth.

[6] Plato.

[7] Bacon.

[8] Shakespeare.

[9] St. Hailare.

[10] Arnold.

[11] Plato styles poets the sons and interpreters of the G.o.ds.

[12] Sydney, _Defence of Poetry_.

[13] Scott.

CHAPTER VII.

MUSIC.

"Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good, just, and beautiful, of which it is the invisible, but nevertheless dazzling, pa.s.sionate, and eternal form."--PLATO.

CHAPTER VII.

MUSIC.

Music is in one sense far more ancient than man, and the voice was from the very commencement of human existence a source of melody: but so far as musical instruments are concerned, it is probable that percussion came first, then wind instruments, and lastly, those with strings: first the Drum, then the Flute, and thirdly, the Lyre. The early history of Music is, however, unfortunately wrapped in much obscurity. The use of letters long preceded the invention of notes, and tradition in such a matter can tell us but little.

The contest between Marsyas and Apollo is supposed by some to typify the struggle between the Flute and the Lyre; Marsyas representing the archaic Flute, Apollo the champion of the Lyre. The latter of course was victorious: it sets the voice free, and the sound

"Of music that is born of human breath Comes straighter to the soul than any strain The hand alone can make." [1]

Various myths have grown up to explain the origin of Music. One Greek tradition was to the effect Gra.s.shoppers were human beings themselves in a world before the Muses; that when the Muses came, being ravished with delight, they sang and sang and forgot to eat, until "they died of hunger for the love of song. And they carry to heaven the report of those who honor them on earth." [2]

The old writers and commentators tell us that Pythagoras, "as he was one day meditating on the want of some rule to guide the ear, a.n.a.logous to what had been used to help the other senses, chanced to pa.s.s by a blacksmith's shop, and observing that the hammers, which were four in number, sounded very harmoniously, he had them weighed, and found them to be in the proportion of six, eight, nine, and twelve. Upon this he suspended four strings of equal length and thickness, etc., fastened weights in the above-mentioned proportions to each of them respectively, and found that they gave the same sounds that the hammers had done; viz.

the fourth, fifth, and octave to the gravest tone." [3] However this may be, it would appear that the lyre had at first four strings only: Terpander is said to have given it three more, and an eighth was subsequently added.

We have unfortunately no specimens of Greek or Roman, or even of Early Christian music. The Chinese indicated the notes by words or their initials. The lowest was termed "Koung," or the Emperor, as being the Foundation on which all were supported; the second was Tschang, the Prime Minister; the third, the Subject; the fourth, Public Business; the fifth, the Mirror of Heaven. [4] The Greeks also had a name for each note. The so-called Gregorian notes were not invented until six hundred years after Gregory's death. The Monastery of St. Gall possesses a copy of Gregory's Antiphonary, made about the year 780 by a chorister who was sent from Rome to Charlemagne to reform the Northern music, and in this the notes are indicated by "pneumss," from which our notes were gradually developed, and first arranged along one line, to which others were gradually added. But I must not enlarge on this interesting subject.

In the matter of music Englishmen have certainly deserved well of the world. Even as long ago as 1185 Giraldus Cambrensis, Bishop of St.

David's, says, "The Britons do not sing their tunes in unison like the inhabitants of other countries, but in different parts. So that when a company of singers meet to sing, as is usual in this country, as many different parts are heard as there are singers." [5]