PROSE THE NATURAL LANGUAGE OF THE LITERATURE OF ECSTASY
Wordsworth believed that the language used by people in poetry should be
that of the natural language of men under the influence of their
feelings and that the diction of metrical poetry should differ in no
wise from that of prose. Yet the only writers who use the natural
diction of men are novelists, prose dramatists and short story writers,
and, curiously enough, because they did not write verse, it has not
often been suspected that these men were poets. Wordsworth's views are
really proofs that poetry is found in prose, for the prose writers
comply with his requirements of using in their compositions the natural
conversation of men under the influence of natural feelings. They also
comply with Wordsworth's definition of poetry, recording "emotions
recollected in tranquillity."
Hazlitt has ably summed up the influence of the French Revolution on
Wordsworth. Our poet did away with mythological references, with tales
about legendary characters. He wrote about the emotions of the common
people and introduced no far-fetched metaphors, nor made pedantic
allusions.
Wordsworth, however, did not claim, as Coleridge thought he did, that
the language of verse poetry must be that of ignorant people. Wordsworth
never asserted that he wanted the poets to use the language of peasants,
except when peasants were portrayed and represented as speaking. He
simply protested against stilted, artificial language in verse poetry.
He held the use of such language in verse poetry to be ridiculous, as it
was in prose. He was not an exponent of prose poetry, even though he
laid little stress on the importance of metre. As the authors of the
article on Wordsworth in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ state, the
farthest he went in defense of prose structure in poetry was to say that
if the words in verse happened to be in the order of prose, they were
not necessarily prosaic in the sense of unpoetic. He did not
(unfortunately) try to eliminate metre in poetry. He no doubt agreed
with Coleridge's own defense of meter in the _Biographia Literaria_. He
did not write against his own theory, for he always employed metre
and--except in some ballads--a diction that was even literary.
Though both Wordsworth and Coleridge were not overawed by the necessity
of metre in poetry, they believed in its use, and were opposed to prose
poetry. Coleridge, however, wrote a prose poem _The Wanderings of Cain_
and some of his essays are prose poetry. Coleridge also devoted an
entire chapter in his _Biographia Literaria_ to the defense of metre as
a vehicle for poetry. He attributes the origin of metre to the fact that
the mind makes a conscious effort to hold passion in check by fettering
it with regular numbers. On the contrary, this conscious check is due to
imitation of old examples, to fear in defying the critics, for the
natural language of passion is irregular rhythm, and it is impatient of
being confined in regular, artificial numbers. Coleridge thinks the
effect of metre is "to increase the vivacity and susceptibility both of
the general feelings and the attention" by the continued excitement of
surprise. I submit that metre often distracts the attention from the
poem's real object, which is to depict ecstasy. Metre often diverts our
ear to the singsong tone in which the emotions are couched. Instead of
adding to the vivacity and susceptibility of the feelings it really
makes us suspect that the poet is not sincere, for the man of emotions
expresses them spontaneously and does not trick them out in pattern.
Next, Coleridge assumes that because of custom, metre must have some
property in common with poetry. This argument cannot stand when we take
into consideration the innumerable emotional passages that have been
written in prose. A custom is only a passing practice, and free verse
writers have abandoned the custom of writing in metre and in many cases
have produced good poetry. Lastly, our critic thinks that every poet is
impelled "to seek unity by harmonious adjustment, and thus establishing
the principle, that all the parts of an organized whole must be
assimilated to the more important and essential parts." But why assume
that there is no unity of harmonious adjustment in an emotional passage
in prose? Or why identify such unity with a metrical pattern? Isn't a
Psalm in the Bible a unity of harmonious adjustment? Even if the
essential part of a poetic piece tends to assume a certain pattern it
does not mean that the whole piece should be given a patterned form.
Some day it will be recognized that a long composition recording
different emotions is really unaesthetic in a uniform pattern.
"As to the accents of words," says Bacon, in his _Advancement of
Learning_, Book VI, Ch. I, "there is no necessity for taking notice of
so trivial a thing; only it may be proper to intimate that these are
observed with great exactness, whilst the accents of sentences are
neglected; though it is nearly common to all mankind to sink the voice
at the end of a period, to raise it in interrogation, and the like."
This passage is the first attack in English on metre.
It was Whitman who gave the death blow to metre. He brought poetry back
to rhythmical prose, and is the greatest liberator poetry has ever had.
He demonstrated that an entire volume might be written in rhythmical
prose (with the lines broken up), and that the product could be the
highest poetry. His _Leaves of Grass_ ignored all the rules laid down in
various books on poetics. Whitman has done more than most critics to
convey to the world what poetry really is.
"In my opinion," says Whitman, "the time has arrived to essentially
break down the barriers of form between prose and poetry. I say the
latter is henceforth to win and maintain its character regardless of
rhyme, and the measurement-rules of iambic, spondee, dactyl, &c., and
that even if rhyme and those measurements continue to furnish the medium
for inferior writers and themes (especially for persiflage and the
comic, as there seems henceforward, to the perfect taste, something
inevitably comic in rhyme, merely in itself, and anyhow), the truest and
greatest _Poetry_ (while subtly and necessarily always rhythmic, and
distinguishable enough) can never again, in the English language, be
express'd in arbitrary and rhyming metre, any more than the greatest
eloquence, or the truest power and passion."
We have long been laboring under the mischievous Aristotelian division
of poetry into Epic, Dramatic and Lyric, and critics have exhausted
themselves trying to determine which of these was the highest form of
poetry.
As a matter of fact, the epic poem was only the primitive author's
method of writing a poetical novel centering around wars; or a later
poet's imitation of that form. The dramatic poem was another way of
telling a story without introducing much narration or description.
Poetry does not inhere in an epic of Homer or a play of Sophocles by
virtue of the form, but because of the emotions described, and similar
descriptions of emotions are to be found in our fiction and prose plays.
Again we have followed the ancients in subdividing lyric poetry into
elegy, pastoral, ode, satire, idyll. The moderns introduced the sonnet,
the ballade, the ballad and other forms. These divisions have perverted
our knowledge as to the nature of poetry. Any one can make a similar
classification of the poetry in prose, but it is useless to do so.
Poetry is recorded emotion and depicts various characteristics. The Song
of Deborah is a war song, a hymn and a satire, all in one.
Professor Posnett in his _Comparative Literature_ protested long before
Croce against these artificial divisions in poetry.
Poetry is the voice of excited man; it is as Baumgarten said--"perfect
sensitive speech," a definition that Croce regards as probably the best
ever given of poetry, while Saintsbury scoffs at it. It is immaterial
whether the rhythm is there or not. Prose is always poetry when it is
sensitized. Nietzsche, himself a great poet, also saw this. "Let it be
observed," said Nietzsche, "that the great masters of prose have almost
always been poets as well, whether openly, or only in secret and for the
closet; and in truth one only writes good prose _in view of poetry_." He
names Leopardi, Landor, Emerson and Merimée among the great prose
writers who were poets. We can add many other writers of essays,
dialogues, and criticisms to complement his list.
"The distinction between poetry and prose cannot be justified," said
Croce. "Poetry is the language of sentiment; prose of intellect; but
since the intellect is also sentiment, in its concretion and reality, so
all prose has a poetical side." "There exists poetry without prose, but
not prose without poetry." Poetical material permeates the souls of
all; any expression of it in verse or prose, in painting or music, is
poetry. Since all poetry is expression and all expression lyric, the
divisions of different kinds of poetry into epic, dramatic, etc., or
different divisions of one poem into scenes, books, chapters, acts,
stanzas, paragraphs, are of little importance, and are matters of
convenience.
Poetry is essentially lyrical. There is no such thing as dramatic or
epic poetry. All poetry is the emotional outcry of the poet or his
characters. We may have an emotion recorded in a separate poem called a
lyric, or in a speech in a composition divided into acts, following
certain rules and known as a drama. Similarly the speeches in epic poems
are lyrics. The poetry of Homer or Shakespeare is not epic or dramatic,
for poetry is just an emotional outburst. Andromache's speeches and
Hamlet's soliloquies could have appeared alone and they would have been
considered lyrics; they remain lyrics even in the body of a long
composition. The emotional passages in all prose works are also lyrical
poetry. There is really only one kind of poetry, lyrical poetry, for all
poems are emotional outbursts of an individual. Every imaginative
literary composition, whether in verse or prose, is made up of lyrical
poems, more or less.
One should no more look for a chapter on the drama in a book like this
dealing with poetry than for a treatise on the novel. A drama,
considered merely as a series of scenes bound together by a plot in a
fit manner to be presented on the stage to move people, and based on
rules that relate to economy of words, concentration of facts and
strikingness of action, is a performance that has a technique of its
own; the dramatist is a poet only by virtue of the ecstasy he puts in
the work. Considered in its primary significance as a performance where
action is the chief feature, the drama becomes poetry in those parts
where the action and emotion are concentrated.
It is, however, often difficult to extract scenes from the play, as they
lose in effectiveness by being thus separated. But the fact remains that
there is no such thing as dramatic poetry, for the essence of all poetry
is its lyricism. Dramatic scenes contain the lyric cries of the
_dramatis personæ_. Action is but the emotional disturbances of the
characters and no longer merely means violent conduct, surprises,
battles, duels, suicides, murders. All great novels have dramatic scenes
and they are often as exuberant in poetry as are similar scenes in
plays. We no longer regard as tragedies only those plays in verse where
a virtuous person of high degree is in a frightful predicament because
of unjust and unlooked-for defeat with fate. No, in spite of Aristotle,
the suffering of even a wicked person of low station, depicted as due to
his own fault as of Hurstwood in _Sister Carrie_, and described in prose
narrative, is also tragedy. There is incidentally no such thing as a
comic dramatic poem, but a comic scene may be poetic if it moves to
ecstasy (not merely to farcic laughter), and if it is essentially
lyrical. Comedy also appears in works of fiction in prose, and may be
poetical. Moreover, most performances in prose dialogue or fiction
present an admixture of tragic and comic.
Tragedy often presents lyric poems greater than any other work of
literature; hence Aristotle and his imitators concluded that a verse
tragedy was the highest form of poetry. This is not so. If Shakespeare
and Sophocles lived in our day they might have written novels or essays,
and I daresay with their genius those novels or essays would have been
as good as their plays and would have contained as great poetry.
Our great poets do not owe their greatness to the use of the
stereotyped literary metrical forms. A man may have a great gift for the
use of these forms and not be a great poet, just as he may be a great
poet and fall flat when they encumber him. Ruskin and Dickens were great
poets, but when we say that their metrical compositions were not great
poetry we merely mean that they were not adept in choosing rhymes and
complying with metrical rules. To do this requires a distinct gift. An
amateur selects forced rhymes and has no ear. Swinburne, besides being a
great poet, had a distinct gift of creating melodious verse; but many
parodists have shown that they also had this gift without being able to
write poetry.
Mrs. Browning was a good poet both in verse and in prose. She wrote her
love poems in prose in her letters to her husband, and in verse in the
Portuguese sonnets which are nothing more than some of the letters put
into metre and rhyme; there are some who think that the letters are the
better poetry of the two. Her sentiments did not become poetry because
they were put in sonnet form.
The following letter is poetry:
I pour out my thoughts to you, dearest, dearest, as if it were
right rather to think of doing myself that good and relief,
than of you who have to read all. But you spoil me into an
excess of liberty by your tenderness. Best in the world!
Oh--you help me to live--I am better and lighter since I have
drawn near to you even on this paper--already I am better and
lighter. And now I am going to dream of you . . . to meet you
on some mystical landing place . . . in order to be quite well
to-morrow. Oh--we are so selfish on this earth, that nothing
grieves us very long, let it be ever so grievous, unless we
are touched in _ourselves_ . . . in the apple of our eye . . .
in the quick of our heart . . . in _what_ you are and _where_
you are . . . my own dearest beloved! So you need not be
afraid for _me_. We all look to our own, as I to _you_; the
thunderbolts may strike the tops of the cedars, and, except in
the first part, none of us be moved. True it is of me--not of
you perhaps, certainly you are better than I in all things.
Best in the world you are--no one is like you. Can you read
what I have written? Do not love me less! Do you think that I
cannot feel you love me, through all this distance? If you
loved me less, I should know, without a word or sign. Because
I live by your loving me! (June 24, 1846.)
It took the Greeks and Romans some time to learn that prose was the best
medium for philosophy and history. Plato had the good sense to write in
prose instead of following the ridiculous method of versifying of the
early Greek philosophers, like Parmenides and Empedocles.
In the first century A.D. various Roman historians wrote of historical
events in the form of epic poems. These are really histories with a
little occasional glimmer of poetry. Thus we had Silius's _Pontica_,
Valerius Flaccus's _Argonautica_, Statius's _Thebais_, and Lucan's
_Pharsalia_. The last two works were especially admired in the medieval
ages when rhymed or metrical historical chronicles were the fashion, and
they were favorites of Dante. Very few people to-day read these metrical
histories. English literature also is full of metrical and rhymed
histories, geographies, criticisms, scientific works, essays, etc. But
no one reads Warner's _Albion's England_, Drayton's _Poly Olbion_, or
Daniel's _First Four Books of the Civil War_. And Darwin's versified
_Botanical Garden_ has been a standing joke.
It is remarkable how past usages in literature influence us. The
examples of Lucretius versifying philosophy in his _Nature of Things_,
and that of Horace writing literary criticism in verse in his _Art of
Poetry_, have been fruitful of mischief. Even much of the lengthy works
of Shelley, Byron and Browning would have been better had they been
written in prose, and they would have lost none of their poetic
qualities. The greatness of the _Ring and the Book_, _Don Juan_ and the
_Revolt of Islam_ remains when these works are translated into the prose
of another language.
The French have perfected the art of poetical prose,[86:A] or prose
poetry, probably more than any other nation. The reason may be that they
have not been prolific of good poetry in verse, and have instead
reserved their poetry for prose, a more natural medium than Alexandrine
lines.
Fénelon was one of the first moderns who attacked verse. In two critical
works, _Dialogues on Eloquence_ and _Letters to the French Academy_
(there is an English translation of both, out of print), he emphasized
the insignificant part played by versification in poetry. He held that
there was no true eloquence without a due mixture of poetry, that poetry
was the very soul of eloquence. He said that there were many poets who
were poetical without making verses, and he considered versification
distinct from poetry. In his definition of poetry he excluded a
consideration of versification. He thought the perfection of French
verse impossible, that versification loses more than it gains by rhyme,
and that French poets were cramped by versification. He wanted
superfluous ornaments removed and the necessary parts turned into
natural ornaments. Still he did not insist on a complete abandonment of
rhyme, but wanted greater freedom. His biographer, St. Cyr, says that
Fénelon wanted to abolish verse altogether in French poetry. Fénelon
also wrote a novel in prose poetry in 1699, _Télémaque_. But prose
poetry existed in France before him, in old romances like the story of
_Aucassin and Nicolette_ and in Bossuet's funeral orations. His example
was followed by Sainte Pierre, in _Paul and Virginia_, by Prévost in
_Manon Lescaut_, by Rousseau and especially by Chateaubriand in _Atala_,
_The Genius of Christianity_ and _The Martyrs_. Unfortunately, Fénelon
insisted in introducing the clichés of verse into prose; artificial and
unnatural language hence ruined some of his work and assisted in
bringing the term prose poetry into contempt.
The French have always regarded the poet in a broader sense than have
the English. The article on poetry in the French Encyclopedia deals with
prose poems as well as with verse poems. Victor Hugo in his
_Shakespeare_, when he calls the lists of poets, mentions prose writers
like Diderot, Rousseau, Balzac, Chateaubriand, George Sand, Le Sage and
Cervantes. He who was himself a great poet knew that poetry did not
depend on metre.
Eugene Véron, the great French critic, author of a valuable work on
_Æsthetics_ (fortunately translated into English), also takes a broad
conception of the term poetry. He says that it would be absurd to deny
Molière's _L'Avare_ is poetry because it is in prose, for poetical,
creative imagination and personal emotions are at work here. He states
that there was poetry in the story of Don Juan before Corneille put it
in verse. Versification, he urges, does not constitute poetry. He sees
that verse would not have improved such prose poems as _Paul and
Virginia_, _La Mare au Diable_, or _L'Oiseau_ (Michelet), and he places
in the front rank of poetry passages from Demosthenes, Cicero, Bossuet
(no doubt referring to some of the famous funeral orations) and
Mirabeau. He also says it is impossible to refuse to see poetic
character in the novel, for this deals with the creation of character
and the portrayal of passions.
I do not wish to go into the prose poetry written by other nations, for
every literature is full of it.
There is a growing tendency in England to encourage prose poetry.[88:A]
De Quincey having made a special plea for impassioned prose is looked
upon as the father of it, though there was prose poetry in English
literature from the earliest times; Malory, Sidney, Sir Thomas Browne,
Raleigh, Drummond, Milton, Bunyan, Taylor and Fuller were great prose
poets.
John Stuart Mill and Lord Beaconsfield both recognized the utterly
negligible rôle of metre in determining the nature of poetry. In an
early essay, originally published before he was thirty and collected
with another under the title _Poetry and Its Varieties_, Mill gives us
his definition of poetry. Guided by a statement of the author of the
_Corn Law Rhymes_, Ebenezer Elliot, that poetry is impassioned truth,
and by another definition from Blackwood's, that poetry is "man's
thought tinged by his feelings," he says, "Every truth which a human
being can enunciate, every thought, even every outward impression, which
can enter into his consciousness, may become poetry when shown through
any impassioned medium, when invested with the coloring of joy, or
grief, or pity, or affection, or admiration, or reverence, or awe, or
even hatred, or terror: and, unless so colored, nothing, be it as
interesting as it may, is poetry." There is nothing said in this
definition about rhythm or metre, and indeed Mill regarded as the
vulgarest of all any definition of poetry which confounds it with
metrical composition.
An idea emotionally treated becomes poetry whether in prose or verse,
whether rhythmical or not. Mill understood that, yet he erred when he
assigned a minor rôle to the emotions excited by the incidents in prose
fiction, though it is true that the emotions of excitement wakened by
the mere novel of adventure are indicative of a lower order of poetry.
It is to be regretted, however, that about five years later he somewhat
modified his main views.
Prose poetry was consciously written by Lord Beaconsfield, who tells us
in the early preface to his novel, _Alroy_, that he was trying to write
rhythmical prose poetry in that novel. He did not always succeed, but
throughout all his novels are found many excellent prose poems. He was
writing prose poetry in the early eighteen thirties before Baudelaire,
and in some of his tales, like _Pompanilla_, we have prose poems. He
often became bombastic, but he was a poet, nevertheless.
Later English critics have returned to the subject of prose poetry.
In his _Aspects of Poetry_ Professor John C. Shairp says that he grants
"that the old limits between prose and poetry tend to disappear." He
concludes his book with two chapters on prose poets, on Carlyle and
Newman. And Courthope, worshipper of metre that he is, concludes his
_History of English Poetry_ with a chapter on the poetry in the Waverly
Novels. We also recall that Bagehot could see little difference between
Tennyson's novels in verse and George Eliot's novels in prose.
A great critic like Pater maintained the rights of the poet in prose. In
his essay on Style he said "Prose will exert in due measure all the
varied charms of poetry down to the rhythm which, as in Cicero,
Michelet, or Newman, gives its musical value to every syllable."
The first lengthy and systematic plea for prose poetry I know of in
English, outside of Disraeli's and De Quincey's modest apologies for
writing in this manner, was made by David Masson in an essay on _Prose
and Verse: De Quincey_, published as a review of De Quincey in 1854. De
Quincey's preface, pleading for impassioned prose, suggested Masson's
essay. Masson had, however, dwelt on the poetic side of prose the year
before in an article on Dallas's _Poetics_, called _Theories of Poetry_.
Both of Masson's essays are to be found in his _Wordsworth, Shelley,
Keats and Other Essays_. Masson very ingeniously asks why we are not
allowed to write prose in the manner that Milton writes in verse, or in
the manner of Æschylus in prose translation. He concludes that poetry
and prose are not two entirely separate spheres, but intersecting and
penetrating. To-day we go even farther than Masson and urge that prose,
except in short lyrics when verse may be used, should be the sole
language of passion and the imagination. He vindicates De Quincey's
right to use impassioned prose; he quotes as an example of prose poetry
a beautiful passage from the conclusion of Milton's pamphlet, _Causes
That Have Hindered the Reformation in England_, and mentions especially
Jean Paul Richter, the prose poet who was responsible for the prose
poetry of two disciples, De Quincey and Carlyle. Richter's _Christ and
the Universe_ is highly regarded by him as prose poetry.
Masson's prediction that the time was coming when the best prose should
more resemble verse than it had done in the past, and that the best
verse should not disdain a certain resemblance to prose, is being
fulfilled. Remember Masson wrote before the _Leaves of Grass_ appeared,
and before the vogue of free verse.
Yet his viewpoint was severely criticized by a scholar like John Earle,
whose _English Prose_ contains an attack on prose poetry. Earle says
that prose poetry is found chiefly in ages of literary decadence like
the Latin Silver Age in writers from Tacitus to Boethius. On the
contrary, it is found as well in the golden ages of literature, as, for
example, in Sidney's _Arcadia_, which he himself quotes from, in Plato,
in Pascal, in Dante's prose. It is strange that this view of Earle's
should still largely prevail. Poetry and prose are still regarded by
academic scholars like Earle, Saintsbury, Courthope, Bosanquet
Watts-Dunton and Gummere as two distinct branches of literature. Earle
is right only when he objects to the clichés of verse in prose, but
to-day we object to all clichés.
Poetic prose, however, should not be used on every occasion, but only
when an ecstasy is to be expressed. And, above all, it should be
avoided--and this is how prose poetry got into disrepute--in expressing
sentimental emotions, commonplace ideas, and the merely popular. When we
read in eloquent prose, the grand eulogies on the flag, on the purity
and redeeming virtues of mother-love, on the dignity of toil, on the
glory of dying for one's country, on the goodness of God, etc., themes
which have been celebrated so often that they are nauseous to us because
nothing new is said, then we see how ridiculous prose poetry may become.
But as Pater says--impassioned prose has become the special and
opportune art of the modern world, and it can exert all the varied
charms of poetry down to the rhythm.
"The muse of prose-literature," says Masson, "has been hardly dealt
with. We see not why, in prose, there should not be much of that license
in the fantastic, that measured riot, the right of whimsy, that
unbalanced dalliance with the extreme and the beautiful, which the world
allows, by prescription, to verse. Why may not prose chase forest-nymphs
and see little green-eyed elves, and delight in peonies and musk-roses,
and invoke the stars, and roll mists about the hills, and watch the sea
thundering through caverns and dashing against the promontories? Why,
in prose, quail from the grand or ghastly in the one hand, or blush with
shame at too much of the exquisite on the other? Is Prose made of iron?
Must it never weep, never laugh, never linger to look at a butterfly,
never ride at a gallop over the downs?"
Yet George Moore, a great poet in prose himself, tells us in his
_Avowals_ that the greatness of English genius does not appear in its
prose, but in its poetry, i. e., in verse. The greatness of English
genius _is_ in its poetry, but in the poetry of its prose as well as in
the poetry of its verse. It appears in the ordinary dialect of its
novels and prose plays.
As a matter of fact, poetic prose has always been used. It is found in
the earliest as well as the later literature of every nation. The Bible,
Oriental Literature, the medieval romances, early Saxon prose are full
of it. It made a reappearance with renewed force in the romantic
movement that spread over England, Germany and France in the latter part
of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries. In an age
like the romantic, when the right to live and express emotions was
pleaded, poetic prose, seeking restraint from metre, was especially
appropriate. George Brandes has studied this movement in his _Main
Currents_. Many of the leading writers of the romantic period used
impassioned prose. Saintsbury has found much poetry even in the prose of
John Wilson, who is not much read, one who was to some extent an enemy
of the romantic movement, and Saintsbury reprints in his _Specimens of
English Prose Style_, Wilson's _The Fairy's Funeral_.
America has contributed greatly to the development of prose poetry.
Hawthorne, Poe and Emerson were the first great masters in prose poetry
we have had, and I doubt if as poets they have been surpassed by any of
our metrical verse writers. One of the finest poems in American
literature is undoubtedly Hawthorne's reflections of his lonely life in
the Ivory Tower, when he revisited his old chamber in Salem where he
spent so many years. The famous passage from his diary, quoted in all
big biographies, is as great a poem, though in prose.
Emerson's essays are studied with prose poems. I shall mention only one,
the address to the poet, at the conclusion of the essay on "The Poet."
The Hawthorne passage is as follows:
Salem, Oct. 4th. Union Street (Family Mansion).--. . . . Here
I sit in my old accustomed chamber, where I used to sit in
days gone by. . . . Here I have written many tales,--many that
have been burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the
same fate. This claims to be called a haunted chamber, for
thousands upon thousands of visions have appeared to me in it;
and some few of them have become visible to the world. If ever
I should have a biographer, he ought to make great mention of
this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of my lonely youth
was wasted here, and here my mind and character were formed;
and here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been
despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently
for the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did
not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at
all,--at least, till I were in my grave. And sometimes it
seemed as if I were already in the grave, with only life
enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftener I was happy,--at
least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or was aware of the
possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out in my
lonely chamber, and called me forth,--not, indeed, with a loud
roar of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice,--and
forth I went, but found nothing in the world that I thought
preferable to my old solitude till now. . . . And now I begin
to understand why I was imprisoned so many years in this
lonely chamber, and why I could never break through the
viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made my escape
into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been
covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become
callous by rude encounters with the multitude. . . . But
living in solitude till the fulness of time was come, I still
kept the dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart. . . .
I used to think I could imagine all passions, all feelings,
and states of the heart and mind; but how little did I know!
. . . Indeed, we are but shadows; we are not endowed with
real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the
thinnest substance of a dream,--till the heart be touched.
That touch creates us,--then we begin to be,--thereby we are
beings of reality and inheritors of eternity. . . .
And the Emerson poem in prose is given herewith:
O poet! a new nobility is conferred in groves and pastures,
and not in castles or by the sword-blade any longer. The
conditions are hard, but equal. Thou shalt leave the world,
and know the muse only. Thou shalt not know any longer the
times, customs, graces, politics, or opinions of men, but
shalt take all from the muse. For the time of towns is tolled
from the world by funereal chimes, but in nature the universal
hours are counted by succeeding tribes of animals and plants,
and by growth of joy on joy. God wills also that thou abdicate
a manifold and duplex life, and that thou be content that
others speak for thee. Others shall be thy gentlemen, and
shall represent all courtesy and worldly life for thee; others
shall do the great and resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie
close hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the
Capitol or the Exchange. The world is full of renunciations
and apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a
fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and
sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and
thou shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall console
thee with tenderest love. And thou shalt not be able to
rehearse the names of thy friends in thy verse, for an old
shame before the holy ideal. And this is the reward; that the
ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual
world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not
troublesome to thy invulnerable essence. Thou shalt have the
sole land for thy park and manor, the sea for thy bath and
navigation, without tax and without envy; the woods and the
rivers thou shalt own, and thou shalt possess that wherein
others are only tenants and boarders. Thou true land-lord!
sea-lord! air-lord! Wherever snow falls or water flows or
birds fly, wherever day and night meet in twilight, wherever
the blue heaven is hung by clouds or sown with stars, wherever
are forms with transparent boundaries, wherever are outlets
into celestial space, wherever is danger, and awe, and
love,--there is Beauty, plenteous as rain, shed for thee, and
though thou shouldst walk the world over, thou shalt not be
able to find a condition inopportune or ignoble.
FOOTNOTES:
[86:A] See the selections in _Pastels in Prose_ (1890), and the
sympathetic introduction by William Dean Howells.
[88:A] See _The Chapbook_, April, 1921, London. _Poetry in Prose_, Three
Essays by T. S. Eliot, Frederic Manning, Richard Aldington.