The Poet's Poet Part 18

What is this mysterious increment, that must be added to aspiration before it becomes poetically creative? So far as a mere layman can understand it, it is a sudden arrest, rather than a satisfaction, of the poet's longing, for genuine satisfaction would kill the aspiration, and leave the poet heavy and phlegmatic. Inspiration, on the contrary, seems to give him a fict.i.tious satisfaction; it is an arrest of his desire that affords him a delicate poise and repose, on tiptoe, so to speak.

[Footnote: Compare Coleridge's statement that poetry is "a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order." _Biographia Literaria_, Vol. II, Chap. I, p. 14, ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge.]

Does not the fact that inspiration works in this manner account for the immemorial connection of poetic creativeness with Bacchic frenzy? To the aspiring poet wine does not bring his mistress, nor virtue, nor communion with G.o.d, nor any object of his longing. Yet it does bring a sudden ease to his craving. So, wherever there is a romantic conception of poetry, one is apt to find inspiration compared to intoxication.

Such an idea did not, of course, find favor among typical eighteenth century writers. Indeed, they would have seen more reason in ascribing their clear-witted verse to an ice-pack, than to the bibulous hours preceding its application to the fevered brow. We must wait for William Blake before we can expect Bacchus to be reinstated among the G.o.ds of song. Blake does not disappoint us, for we find his point of view expressed, elegantly enough, in his comment on artists, "And when they are drunk, they always paint best." [Footnote: _Artist Madmen: On the Great Encouragement Given by the English n.o.bility and Gentry to Correggio, etc_.]

As the romantic movement progresses, one meets with more lyrical expositions of the power in strong drink. Burns, especially, is never tired of sounding its praise. He exclaims,

There's naething like the honest nappy.

I've seen me daist upon a time I scarce could wink or see a styme; Just ae half mutchkin does me prime; Aught less is little, Then back I rattle with the rhyme As gleg's a whittle.

[Footnote: _The First Epistle to Lapraik_.]

Again he a.s.sures us,

But browster wives and whiskey stills, They are my muses.

[Footnote: _The Third Epistle to Lapraik_.]

Then, in more exalted mood:

O thou, my Muse, guid auld Scotch drink!

Whether through wimplin' worms thou jink, Or, richly brown, ream o'er the brink In glorious faem, Inspire me, till I lisp and wink To sing thy name.

[Footnote: _Scotch Drink_.]

Keats enthusiastically concurs in Burns' statements. [Footnote: See the _Sonnet on the Cottage Where Burns Was Born_, and _Lines on the Mermaid Tavern_.]

Landor, also, tells us meaningly,

Songmen, gra.s.shoppers and nightingales Sing cheerily but when the throat is moist.

[Footnote: _Homer_; _Laertes_; _Agatha_.]

James Russell Lowell, in _The Temptation of Ha.s.san Khaled_, presents the argument of the poet's tempters with charming sympathy:

The vine is nature's poet: from his bloom The air goes reeling, typsy with perfume, And when the sun is warm within his blood It mounts and sparkles in a crimson flood, Rich with dumb songs he speaks not, till they find Interpretation in the poet's mind.

If wine be evil, song is evil too.

His _Bacchic Ode_ is full of the same enthusiasm. Bacchus received his highest honors at the end of the last century from the decadents in England. Swinburne, [Footnote: See _Burns_.] Lionel Johnson,[Footnote: See _Vinum Daemonum_.] Ernest Dowson, [Footnote: See _A Villanelle of the Poet's Road_.] and Arthur Symonds, [Footnote: See _A Sequence to Wine_.] vied with one another in praising inebriety as a lyrical agent.

Even the sober Watts-Dunton [Footnote: See _A Toast to Omar Khayyam_.]

was drawn into the contest, and warmed to the theme.

Poetry about the Mermaid Inn is bound to take this tone. From Keats [Footnote: See _Lines on the Mermaid Inn_.] to Josephine Preston Peabody [Footnote: See _Marlowe_.] writers on the Elizabethan dramatists have dwelt upon their conviviality. This aspect is especially stressed by Alfred Noyes, who imagines himself carried back across the centuries to become the Ganymede of the great poets. All of the group keep him busy. In particular he mentions Jonson:

And Ben was there, Humming a song upon the old black settle, "Or leave a kiss within the cup And I'll not ask for wine,"

But meanwhile, he drank malmsey.

[Footnote: _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_.]

Fortunately for the future of American verse, there is another side to the picture. The teetotaler poet is by no means non-existent in the last century. Wordsworth takes pains to refer to himself as "a simple, water-drinking bard," [Footnote: See _The Waggoner_.] and in lines _To the Sons of Burns_ he delivers a very fine prohibition lecture.

Tennyson offers us _Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue, a reductio ad absurdum_ of the claims of the bibulous bard. Then, lest the temperance cause lack the support of great names, Longfellow causes the t.i.tle character of _Michael Angelo_ to inform us that he "loves not wine," while, more recently, E. A. Robinson pictures Shakespeare's inability to effervesce with his comrades, because, Ben Jonson confides to us,

Whatso he drinks that has an antic in it, He's wondering what's to pay on his insides.

[Footnote: _Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford_. See also Poe's letter, April 1, 1841, to Snodgra.s.s, on the unfortunate results of his intemperance.]

No, the poet will not allow us to take his words too seriously, lest we drag down Apollo to the level of Bacchus. In spite of the convincing realism in certain eulogies, it is clear that to the poet, as to the convert at the eucharist, wine is only a symbol of a purely spiritual ecstasy. But if intoxication is only a figure of speech, it is a significant one, and perhaps some of the other myths describing the poet's sensations during inspiration may put us on the trail of its meaning. Of course, in making such an a.s.sumption, we are precisely like the expounder of Plato's myths, who is likely to say, "Here Plato was attempting to shadow forth the inexpressible. Now listen, and I will explain exactly what he meant." Notwithstanding, we must proceed.

The device of Chaucer's _House of Fame_, wherein the poet is carried to celestial realms by an eagle, occasionally occurs to the modern poet as an account of his _Aufschwung_. Thus Keats, in _Lines to Apollo_, avers,

Aye, when the soul is fled Too high above our head, Affrighted do we gaze After its airy maze As doth a mother wild When her young infant child Is in an eagle's claws.

"Poetry, my life, my eagle!" [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] cries Mrs.

Browning, likening herself to Ganymede, ravished from his sheep to the summit of Olympus. The same att.i.tude is apparent in most of her poems, for Mrs. Browning, in singing mood, is precisely like a child in a swing, shouting with delight at every fresh sensation of soaring.

[Footnote: See J. G. Percival, _Genius Awaking_, for the same figure.]

Again, the crash of the poet's inspiration upon his ordinary modes of thought is compared to "fearful claps of thunder," by Keats [Footnote: See _Sleep and Poetry_.] and others. [Footnote: See _The Master_, A. E.

Cheney.] Or, more often, his moment of sudden insight seems a lightning flash upon the dark ways in which he is ordinarily groping. Keats says that his early visions were seen as through a rift of sheet lightning.

[Footnote: See _The Epistle to George Keats_.] Emerson's impression is the same; visions come "as if life were a thunderstorm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand." [Footnote: _Essay on Inspiration_.] Likewise Alexander Smith declares,

Across the midnight sea of mind A thought comes streaming like a blazing ship Upon a mighty wind, A terror and a glory! Shocked with light, His boundless being glares aghast.

[Footnote: _A Life Drama_.]

Perhaps this is a true expression of the poet's feelings during the deepest inspiration, yet we are minded of Elijah's experience with the wind and the fire and the still small voice. So we cannot help sympathizing with Browning's protest against "friend Naddo's" view that genius is a matter of bizarre and grandiose sensations. [Footnote: _Sordello_.] At least it is pleasant to find verse, by minor writers though it be, describing the quietude and naturalness of the poet's best moments. Thus Holmes tells us of his inspiration:

Soft as the moonbeams when they sought Endymion's fragrant bower, She parts the whispering leaves of thought To show her full-leaved flower.

[Footnote: _Invita Minerva_.]

Edwin Markham says,

She comes like the hush and beauty of the night.

[Footnote: _Poetry_.]

And Richard Watson Gilder's mood is the same:

How to the singer comes his song?

How to the summer fields Come flowers? How yields Darkness to happy dawn? How doth the night Bring stars?

[Footnote: _How to the Singer Comes His Song?_]

Various as are these accounts which poets give of their inspired moments, all have one point in common, since they indicate that in such moments the poet is wholly pa.s.sive. His thought is literally given to him. Edward Dowden, in a sonnet, _Wise Pa.s.siveness_, says this plainly:

Think you I choose or that or this to sing?

I lie as patient as yon wealthy stream Dreaming among green fields its summer dream, Which takes whate'er the gracious hours will bring Into its quiet bosom.

To the same effect is a somewhat prosaic poem, _Accident in Art_, by Richard Hovey. He inquires,

What poet has not found his spirit kneeling A sudden at the sound of such or such Strange verses staring from his ma.n.u.script, Written, he knows not how, but which will sound Like trumpets down the years.

Doubtless it is a very natural result of his resignation to this creative force that one of the poet's profoundest sensations during his afflatus should be that of reverence for his gift. Longfellow and Wordsworth sometimes speak as if the composition of their poems were a ceremony comparable to high ma.s.s. At times one must admit that verse describing such an att.i.tude has a charm of its own. [Footnote: Compare Browning's characterization of the afflatus of Eglamor in _Sordello_, Book II.] In _The Song-Tree_ Alfred Noyes describes his first sensation as a conscious poet:

The first note that I heard, A magical undertone, Was sweeter than any bird --Or so it seemed to me-- And my tears ran wild.

This tale, this tale is true.