Sense to know what trouble was,--he was a idiotic chap.
An’ he couldn’t tell to save him if a voice was soft or gruff
For he couldn’t _talk_, nor _hear_, nor--_nothin’_ only grin
an’ gap.
An’ his eyes that kept a winkin an’ a squintin up an’ down
Never let the glorious sunlight paint no picter in his crown.
Plum stone deef an’ dumb an’ blind--a hunch-backed idiot at that!
Oh ’t’ould ’most-a broke your heart, as mine, to see him sittin’
flat
On the floor in sich an awful fix as he was dyin’ in an’
Rockin back an’ forth, a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.
GOOD-NIGHT.
A SONG OF THE CLOSE OF LIFE.
_Infant._
Good-night, good-night!--the brightest day must fall,
The sweetest joys, alas! must fade the sight;
Sad Night shall weep her silent tears o’er all--
Good-night, good-night, sweet babe, good-night.
_Child._
The day has kissed thy happy heart to sleep
And left thy lips apart in sweet delight;
But oh the Night, I know, must slowly creep--
Good-night, good-night, my child, good-night.
_Youth._
Good-night, good-night!--thy care and day is done.
The stars thy camp, the Deity thy light,
Thy soldier hand and heart at rest sleep on,--
Good-night, good-night, my boy, good-night!
_Man._
Or griefs or joys thy lot, the past be past!--
The star of hope is on the mountain height,
For sun and life must sleep and rise at last,--
Good-night, good-night, worn heart, good-night.
_All._
Good-night, Sad Heart, to Light and Darkness born!
The sun is sunk--but Stars and Hope are bright;--
And all that sleep at night will wake at Morn!--
Good-night, good-night, Dear Heart, good-night!
TO FANCY.
Light and gay
Flight away
Over the rolling sea,
Night and day
Bright my fay
Bringing sweet music to me.
Deep in the sea
Leap with glee
Braiding the mermaiden’s hair;
Leap the sea,
Sweep to me,
Bearing her kisses rare.
O my fay,
Row away
Out in a nautilus shell,
Glowingly,
Flowingly,
Its rhythmical story to tell.
Greet the morn
Fleetly borne
Over the foam of the sea,
Meet the morn,
Sweet return
Bringing its beauties to me.
Lie and dream
By the beam
Thrown from the rolling moon,
Lie and dream
Night its gleam
Asleep in some deep lagoon.
Far enskyed
Star-like ride
Down in the doming deep,
Where the wide
Bar and tide
Croon to the moon asleep.
GOOD-NIGHT, MY LOVE.
Good-night, good-night!
Thy dreams to-night,
Thy dreams, thy silent dreams,
Be sweet as love, as chaste as light,
Thy dreams be sweet and deep.
Oh dream, my Love,
And sleep, my Love,
While star-laced moon-light beams
Above so bright with love and light,
Good-night, good-night, my Love.
THROUGH REVERENT EYES.
To-night I saw her. Strange indeed
My faint heart should thus fail me;--strange
That after such transporting love
In me three days should work such change.
Not more than three?--Nay, barely three;
And yet, within that raptured time
I’ve lived, it seems, a century
Of hope in Love’s own blissful clime.
’Tis strange, this love of mine, so strange;
So strange I fear sometimes I do
Not love, but only dream I love,
And sleep the mid-life watches through.
How many, many is the time
I’ve looked upon some face, some form,
And felt the sudden thrill of some
Fair hand awake the passion-storm!
But only momentary; and then
That old, old longing for the real
And soul-enlighted face of her
Whose image is my heart’s ideal.
Ah yes! to-night as I sit and write
Sweet visions come before my eyes.
Sweet visions only! and like lights
Along the shore they fall and rise.
Who are they? Friends of my happy days,
The friends of my childhood, boyhood, youth,
And later age. Yet none there are,
I fear, I ever loved in truth.
I’ve often wondered what love is.
I’ve heard men speak of it,--ah yes!
I’ve heard fair women, too! but what
It is, I wonder did they guess?
I’ve read of love; I’ve thought of love;
I’ve read and thought that in that hour
When love should truly come to one,
’Twould come an all-possessing power;
’Twould smite upon the chord of self,
And break the faulty string in twain;
’Twould touch a more melodious chord
And wake a glad, harmonious strain.
And so I wonder what love is;
And if I ever knew before
A few short, happy days ago
How love can rise, and sing, and soar.
Too sacred for my heart to hold,
To me a woman is divine--
As far above me as the stars
That I adore because they shine.
I can but stand and gaze above,
I can but worship and adore,
Nor dream that I could reach her height--
I could but drag her down; no more.
Yet other men have loved. Must I,
Must I alone throughout the night
Stand gazing at a star that shines
For me alone upon the mountain height?
Ah yes! I fear me that all night
I’ll watch the silent waning star
Adoring and revering till
It sinks behind some rugged scar.
I fear I do not love; I hold
The fairer sex too high, I fear;
And bowed with awe and humbleness,
Instead of loving I revere.
Among the noisy human crowd,
I stand as stands the silent stone;
And like it, too, I dumbly pray
To whom I love, and inly moan.
And thus it is my reverence brings
Me woe. As silent as the tomb,
My heart bowed down with sacred awe
Still wanders thro’ Love’s trackless dome.
Men call me cold. Alas! could they
But feel the half, the tenth I feel,
Could they but look thro’ reverent eyes,
They might my sealed heart unseal.
Too deep the mighty river flows;
Too deep the silent waters are;
I catch the image, not the form,
Embrace the vision, not the star.
Can heart of man pluck down a star
And wear it on his breast? or dip
Its gleam from out the soundless sea
And press it to his loving lip?
No more, no more indeed can I,
No more can I pluck down the love
That like an angel day and night
Still wanders through the dome above.
Oh could I ask a woman’s love?
I could not, would not drag her down!
I could not gratify a thought
So selfish--wed her to a clown!
No! no! my only hope must be
To rise above this selfish self;
To grow more pure in heart and hope,
To lose myself in her sweet self.
To-night, I say, I saw her; her
Who wakes in me such thoughts as these;
I felt her hand as I sometimes feel
An angel’s hand in the dreamy breeze.
She seemed far off--so far away!
And yet, I knew and saw her near:
I touched her hand; I heard her voice,
And oh the music thrilled my ear.
When here alone within my room,
I feel most brave; but when before
The one I love, my heart grows faint,
I can but silently adore.
I talk to her? Ah yes, sweet hours!
Tho’ every act and word I know
Must say my heart is full of love,
I dare not, can not tell her so.
Some day, perhaps,--some bright, sweet day!--
My tongue may tell her as my song
The struggle of my striving soul
To rise to her above the throng.
Great God, lift up my failing soul,
And purify this heart of mine.
Oh lead me through the realms of love
With that unfailing hand of Thine.
I ask nor wealth, nor fame, nor power;
I ask a pure and loving heart
That I may join that heart to hers
Forever nevermore to part.
And oh then peace, peace, the peace of love
For that old, old longing; and the real
And soul-enlighted face of her,
The image of my heart’s ideal.
WHAT IS POETRY?
Proper conception and appreciation of the poetic, whether in objects
of nature or in the mirror of words reflecting the human heart,
presupposes a delicate and divinely wrought nature tuned to the touch
of the Maker’s hand. Only such a beauty-loving soul finds responsive
a chord to the soul of beauty that dwells in the bodying words of
poetry. The finer the soul, the finer the music. To possess this
light-receiving and radiant Divinity is to possess at once both the
highest attainment of human culture and aspiration and the greatest
gift of God. It is thus at the same time both a growing seed and the
seed’s growth. That is, the poetic soul is both a gift divine and
a cultivation of it consecrated to the Divine Giver. Or, in other
words, the poet is both born and made. _Poeta nascitur non fit_--the
poet is born, not made--is true in this sense and in no other; for
the feelings, the gifts of the poet, are the gifts of every human
soul in greater or less degree. Else the proverb is not true, and we
must say, _Poeta nascitur et fit_; which would, no doubt, be equally
misunderstood. But _Poeta nascitur non fit_ is true; and if, instead of
being translated literally, it is rendered in an explanatory way, it
means simply:--“The poet possesses the same faculties that others do;
but the poetic faculty in him at birth is more highly developed than
it is in others, and is consequently susceptible of a higher degree of
cultivation. If the poetic faculty is naturally slight or insignificant
at birth, no amount of cultivating and polishing can create, or make,
a poet of its possessor.” This is the ancient meaning, and the only
sensible meaning, the meaning accepted by all who understand the
subject.
To see it from a different angle. The true poet has both genius
and talent--or rather, genius has the poet and compels the poet to
have talent. Genius is the divine gift; talent is the cultivation.
Genius--poetic genius--, the highest harmonious union of the feelings,
is the part of the poet that is born; talent, the ability to reveal
that genius, is the part that is cultivated, or made. Genius is power;
talent is skill. The man of poetic genius cannot help writing; the man
of poetic talent can help it, but won’t. That’s the main difference.
If you can’t help writing, nine chances out of nine you are a poet,
and are unconscious of your great power from the simple fact that it
is natural to you. If you can help writing, don’t write; for you are
evidently no poet, though you may have talent, and may believe (very
likely will) from the unnaturalness of it that you are great.
The genius which forces the poet to write is the same genius that is
ever reaching out of the poem and beckoning us upwards. Thus much for
the present as to what constitutes the poet.
Now as to poetry. Though we cannot hope to arrive at the seat of its
mysterious fountain of inspiration and bind its hidden springs of
immortality, we shall nevertheless, in earnest search, by upward,
honest, toilsome flight, at least behold the beauty-embodying mountain
heights whence its rivers of eternal glory flow, and whither the soul
must ever soar to drink of its purest living waters;--waters that
purify mortality and reflect Divinity, and make the soul bathed in
them and drunken of them better know its own vastness, grandeur, and
divinity.
Until the soul by this upward flight shall have beheld itself thus
divinely reflected in the immortal streams of poetry, it can never feel
and know its own vastness, its infinitude. Likewise, until it shall
have bathed in and drunk of these mighty purifying waters of goodness,
truth, and beauty, the soul can never know the divinity and immortality
of poetry. Thus, if the soul know not the one, it cannot know the
other; the two knowledges are reciprocal.
It may be said æsthetically and as nearly scientifically as it can well
be said, that poetry is naturally rhythmical and metrical imaginative
language interpreting the Divine in the human heart. This defines at
once, as nearly as can well be defined in a single sentence, the Form
(or mechanism), the Spirit, and the Mission of poetry.
Form we can define and anatomize, just as we can define and anatomize
the human body. The spirit of poetry we cannot define and anatomize,
just as we cannot define and anatomize the human soul. Form alone
cannot constitute a poem, just as body alone cannot constitute a man.
Spirit alone may constitute poetry (in the abstract) though not a
concrete poem, just as the soul alone may constitute life though not a
living man. Just as both body and soul are necessary to constitute a
man, so also both form and spirit are necessary to constitute any of
his visible art-creations, as a poem.
FORM.
The requisites of form are rhythm and metre. The accidents of form are
rhyme (consonance), assonance, stanza, alliteration, onomatopœia, etc.,
etc.
Rhythm has to do with the kind of feet in a line, while metre has to do
with the number of feet in a line. Rhythm corresponds with the regular
rise and fall of the waves of the sea, each wave-length being counted
a poetic foot. Metre corresponds with the swell of the sea, composed
of several successive waves. Thus metre is, after all, a kind of
rhythm,--the larger ebb and flow of rhythm.
The accidents of form, such as rhyme, stanza, alliteration, etc.,
we find worthily and advantageously used in much true poetry,
as well as worthlessly used in the tawdry puppet-shows of mere
mechanicians;--those persons who, having nothing to say, yet attempting
to say something, mistake rhyme for sense, a tickling jingle for
meaning, their desire to create for the creative power. They do not
rightly read nor well heed the trite epigrammatic precept, “When you
have nothing to say, say it.”
But these accidents of form, I say, are sometimes material aids to the
thought; indeed, always are when used not for their own sakes but for
the meaning’s sake. Notwithstanding this fact, many of our greatest
poems, such as Paradise Lost and others on the epic order, as well as
many not epic, lack these accidents either wholly or in part.
On the other hand, rhythm and metre are found in all poetic forms, and
are the only two elements of the form of poetry that are thus found.
Hence, rhythm and metre are not only essentials but they are the only
essentials of form, and constitute the complete body in which the
spirit of poetry naturally and inevitably clothes itself. They are,
therefore, just as necessary to poetry in its concrete or visible forms
as the spirit is.
But since rhythm and metre are thus essential to a poem, it is the
common custom to call anything poetry that has this external appearance
of the poetic.
This is a misapplication of terms. There is so much trash masquerading
in the poetic garb that this misapplication inevitably throws ridicule
upon true poetry.
Rhythm, when carried to excess and when used not for the meaning’s
sake, the feeling’s sake, but for the rhythm’s sake alone, becomes
simply jingle; quite invariably a rhyming jingle at that.
Metre, in company with rhythm and rhyme, is often diverted from its
true purpose and used solely to jiggle some fact or some epigram into
the memory, as illustrated by “Thirty days,” etc., and by all other
didactic metrical arrangements, as mentioned farther on.
But rhymes and jingles and metrical arrangements are not poetry. They
are simply members of the form, the dancing legs and arms of the
body, sometimes possessed of life with an indwelling guiding spirit,
and sometimes whittled out of wood and set in motion by an inspiring
string. These senseless puppets, or jumping-jacks, sometimes, indeed
often, tickle the mob by their lively antics; but the great final
judgment of humanity relegates them to the rubbish-heap and forgets
their ephemeral and unlovely existence.
It is, I say, a misnomer to dignify such by the name of poetry. The
proper name is verse. Whatever is rhythmical and metrical, whether it
has any of the accidents of form or not, is verse. Hence, all poetry is
verse, but not all verse is poetry. Indeed, not one ten-thousandth part
of verse is poetry; for the requisite of verse is simply form,--the
body into which the spirit must enter ere it becomes poetry. To
illustrate,--
“Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November,” etc.,
has the form of poetry without the slightest touch of the poetic
spirit; thus constituting verse, simple and pure. It requires no
penetration to perceive that it is not poetry, though I doubt not that
nine hundred ninety-nine out of every thousand have called that stanza
in the usual loose way “a verse of poetry.”
But it is not only not poetry, but it is also not a verse, though it is
_verse_; for a verse is but one line of the poetic form, while _verse_
is the form itself. It is not poetry because it has merely form without
spirit. As well call the dead body a man (which indeed we sometimes do
in the same loose way) as call such by the name of poetry.
But the body of a man without the soul is a dead man; that is, not a
man at all. So also the body of one of his visible art-creations, as of
poetry, without the spirit, is dead art, a dead poem;--no poem at all.
Is it not so? Only look at our thousands of dailies, weeklies,
monthlies, quarterlies, and whatnotlies, where millions of these
poetry-bodies lie buried, smelling too much of mortality; then turn to
the time-glorified tomes of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Burns, Milton, Homer,
Virgil, and their eternal co-endurers for a breath of heaven. Let this
be the final answer.
Rhythm, it may be said (taking it beyond the realms of concrete
poetry), is the music of Nature. It is Nature’s natural expression, if
I may so speak. All her motions are rhythmical, have ripples and waves;
even at rest her forms lie in the rhythmic order.
Wherever billows beat the crags, or ripples kiss the sands; wherever
winds go soughing through the pines, or zephyrs toss a curl; wherever
snows may drive to drifts, or wheat-fields billow green and gold;
wherever drifting clouds, or dreaming skies, or bordering trees are
hung dependent on the smooth lake’s waters; wherever birds may sing,
or flowers bloom, or rivers run; wherever thunders wake, or hills and
valleys sleep;--there is rhythm, there is music, there is Nature’s
perfect harmony.
Nor is it different in man, Nature’s crown triumphant. In throes of
pain or woe’s distress; in joys that iris happy tears; in sorrow’s
mournful cadences; in laughter’s lilting melody; in peace and
bounteous plenty, or in war and woeful famine; in love or hate, or
life or death;--through all of man’s existence, there again is rhythm,
Passion’s only melody, the music of the soul.
True, in the calms of life, although ’tis there, we little feel this
rhythm,--this adjusting process by which man inevitably seeks to put
the heart in tune while here for higher harmonies hereafter. But when
the soul’s deep feeling is aroused, then listen to its rhythmic ebb and
flow like gently wimpling waters or like the surging beat, beat, beat
upon the sands.
Hear the lonesome cadences of sorrow crying up to heaven; listen to
the joyousness that tinkles through the melody of laughter; hark the
sharp, quick, fierce beat in the surge of righteous anger; hear the
tender, mellow music from the soothing lips of Love,--divine, immortal
Love--and dream of other worlds and better things as you listen thus
transported.
When these passions of the soul would express themselves in words,
the words, too, fashioned by the spirit that enters them, must
inevitably move in rhythm, and, in the greater wave-lengths, fit
themselves to metre. This feeling, or passion, that enters rhythmic
words--that unswervingly seeks rhythm as the only form in which it
can express itself--is the spirit of poetry. Thus it is that poetry
comes about; thus it is that poetry is spontaneous and not the result
of long meditation; thus it is that poetry is the natural outlet of
highly-wrought or great feeling.
SPIRIT.
As in man, so in all art of man, the soul within fashions the body
without. True beauty is soul-beauty; that beauty that is in the heart
and is felt by the heart, without which there can be no physical beauty.
Whatever in the world is beautiful, is beautiful just in proportion
to the beauty of the soul that sees it. Thus if we would find beauty,
we must first have it. The white-flecked blue of the skies of June;
the wren or peewee pouring fourth its perfume-drunken melodies from
among the apple-blossoms; the stretch of plain or towering height
of mountain; the scenes of hill or valley, wood or meadow, lake or
river; the Apollo Belvedere; the great Transfiguration; Paradise
Lost;--nature’s various forms and reproductions--have no beauty to
the heart whose cavities are empty. But to the full soul, the soul of
beauty, they are perpetual springs of life, where Divinity is ever
mirrored forth; for the soul gives what it gets, and gets what it
gives, and the getting is proportioned to the giving. Give, and we get;
keep, and we lose.
But what is it in an Apollo, a Transfiguration, a Paradise Lost that
feeds this soul-hunger; that possesses this beauty?--The marble of the
Apollo? Hard by lies the rough, unchiseled Parian marble; but it has
no beauty.--The painted canvas of the Transfiguration? Sitting before
it, there are yearly hundreds of canvases and brushes and paints and
paintings; but they lack the beauty.--The words, the rhythm, the metre,
the music of Paradise Lost? Millions of productions, from musty tomes
in the British Museum to the upper left-hand corner of the “patent
inside” of a newspaper, have all these; but no beauty.
What then? That same indefinable something which in man we call
the soul, and in art, the spirit; that which the admiring soul
instinctively feels and recognizes.
Had the sculptor never touched his chisel to the marble, nor the
painter his brush to the canvas, nor the poet his pen to the paper,
that same spirit, yet not bodied, would have existed within his own
soul, but never would have been beheld by others. To be seen by other
eyes, it must needs take on a visible body, a concrete form, in which
it shall dwell.
Thus all forms of Nature and all forms of Art, whatsoever, are the
mere bodying expressions of the spirit that inhabits them. Form is
necessary, but only as a medium through which the spirit may reveal
itself visibly.
The intuitive and unconscious recognition of this principle, that the
soul within fashions the body it inhabits,--the grandest principle of
all God’s great laws, the foundation of them all, illimitable as the
immortal Giver--is the door-way through which he who thus recognizes
must inevitably enter Nature and Art to enjoy the full communion of the
soul within, and to interpret the beauties of that soul’s divinity to
us.
He who thus enters is possessed of genius. In other words, he has a
great soul and lives close to Nature’s heart. We of lesser genius,
or of less loving souls (for a great soul is one that loves greatly)
commune with the indwelling spirit less freely. If we approach Nature
or Art consciously and try to unlock some side-door by the key of the
intellect, we shall probably find only cast-off garments; nay, many of
us may find that the door will not open and we must content ourselves
with a peep through the key-hole. Indeed, do not the multitude behold
the elegant structures of Nature and Art wonderingly for but a moment,
without even so much as attempting the key-hole, and then plod on,
unconscious that there is an indwelling soul that has thus fashioned
its earthly home?
This same great foundation-principle of Nature is likewise the
fundamental law of poetry and of all other art. For art, at best, is
nature wrought by man. What else can it be? It is fashioned by simply
a lesser Divinity, the soul of man, consequently less perfectly, and
follows the same law. Or better yet, art is nature wrought through the
instrumentality of man by the great Divinity that works in him. Art
is simply a name used to designate a specific manifestation or kind
of nature;--that kind that comes through man, and has, not life, but
spirit; not life, but the picture, the show, the mirrored image of
life: a sort of record of the soul, and a lamp for its future guidance.
He who, by means of rhythmic words inspirited, can paint this picture,
represent this show, mirror this image of life, historicize this
record of the soul, light this lamp and hold it above the heads of the
trampling ages for the guidance of humanity, is the great poet.
Just in proportion to the greatness of such a soul will be the spirit
that imbues his creations. It cannot create a new form unless it first
implants some germ from its own spiritual self. Not only must there
be the spirit as the prime essential of poetry, the soul within that
fashions the rhythmical and metrical form it inhabits, but that spirit
must partake of that divinity that is in every human heart;--that
divine flower, deep-rooted in the soil of God, sometimes blossoming to
an angel-image, sometimes painting the glories of heaven on its petals,
sometimes breathing its deepest-drawn perfumes up from its muse-beloved
blooms to the throne above.