ere it give the angel form; would it paint a picture, it must behold
within itself the transfiguration ere it live transfigured on the
canvas; would it write a poem, it must be a paradise of eternal love
and beauty ere it breathe immortal glory into words.
It is this soul within that comes out of the maker of the statue,
the maker of the picture, the maker of the melody, the maker of the
poem, and enters his creations, that distinguishes true art from mere
mechanism of art.
It is this same soul within that renders the artist, not a chiseler of
stone, a painter of canvas, a placer of notes, a rhymer of words, but a
maker, a creator, in his own lesser realm of nature.
It is this same intangible soul, just within yet just beyond the touch
of our finger-tips as we reach out farther and farther into the dim
unknown, this same indefinable spirit of beauty, shining through the
form that it inhabits, permeating it inscrutably, that somehow passes
out of the poem into the heart of the admirer, then slips out of his
heart into the poem again, and so on and on, again and again, ever
lifting the admiring soul as the poem itself is lifted higher still and
ever higher.
MISSION.
This practical age, “this nineteenth century with its knife and glass,”
ever botanizing and anatomizing, analyzing and scrutinizing in every
possible way, is constantly asking, “What is it good for?”; “Of what
use is it?” And whatever the knife and glass cannot explain to the
fact-loving intellect; whatever the age cannot thus analyze and convert
into ready cash or daily bread, it is wont to relegate to the Lethean
Limbo of Uselessness.--As if the mind of man were constituted of
intellect, pocket, and stomach, and whatever did not go to the filling
of these were useless.
It is well and just and right, indeed, that any age should thus
inquire, especially as to material things, so long as it does not dwarf
other faculties by giving all sustenance to one. To ask concerning
poetry, “What is it good for?”, “Of what use is it?”, is simply to ask
in a different form, “What is the soul good for?”; “Of what use is a
God!” There is nothing in God’s universe that does not have utility.
But to examine specifically and logically, and thus to discover
somewhat of the mission, the utility of poetry.
In order to do this, we must naturally refer to the human mind, since
thence poetry is brought forth and there it is perceived.
There are three great divisions of the mind; namely, Intellect,
Sensibilities, or Feelings, and Will.
The intellect is that power of the mind by which we think and know. The
sensibilities, or feelings, constitute that power of the mind by which
we feel. The will is that power of the mind by which we resolve to do
or not to do. These explanations are sufficient for our present purpose.
Therefore, whatever furnishes food for the intellect, the knowing-power
of the mind, must be of the nature of knowledge, didactic. Whatever
ministers to the feelings must waken emotion. Whatever gives action to
the will must rouse resolution.
All literature is for the mind. But since there are three departments
of the mind, and since literature is produced by and for the mind,
there must naturally be three divisions of literature that each
mental power may receive sustenance. That is, there should be that
literature for the intellect in which knowledge predominates. For
the sensibilities, there should be that literature in which feeling,
emotion, is the primary and essential element. For the will, there
should be that literature that has for its chief end the rousing of
resolution.
On examination of the literary products of the world, we find that
this philosophy is sustained. For the intellect, we have treatises (as
on the sciences, mathematics, etc.), histories, biographies, novels,
romances, essays, etc., etc. The primary object of these is to furnish
knowledge; to satisfy the intellect. They are in the highest sense
didactic, although, of course, just as the literature for each faculty
does, they incidentally furnish some food for the other powers.
This intellective literature is the kind that is most largely
cultivated at the present. In fact, it is cultivated almost to the
exclusion of the other two.
For the will, we have sermons, lectures, orations, speeches, addresses,
harangues, etc.; a class of literature that is small when compared with
the preceding. These two departments of the mind monopolize the whole
domain of prose.
That other department of literature, in which feeling is the dominating
and pervading principle, must, by its very nature, act upon that same
power of the mind that produced it; namely, the sensibilities.
Poetry is the literature of feeling, and consequently finds its
province here. It is the mission of poetry, therefore, as suggested
by the latter part of the definition, to minister to the feelings, to
interpret the Divine in the human heart. It is this that all writers on
the subject and that all poets mean when they say it is the mission of
poetry to give pleasure.
But what shall be the limit of that word “pleasure”? Herein lies the
chief cause of great differences of opinion, especially with those who
hold that there is such a thing as didactic poetry. Or rather, what
is the true meaning of “pleasure” as thus used? The very essence of
pleasure, as opposed to pain, is that it gratify some emotion and set
it at perfect rest.
What emotions when gratified are at perfect rest? The answer at once
forces itself upon us, only the better emotions. That poetry does
minister to and satisfy the higher and nobler feelings, and that what
does not do this is not poetry, even the meanest heart that it touches
fully knows.
The attempted gratification of hate, or of any desire whatsoever to
give pain to any one, as illustrated in Pope’s _Dunciad_, Dryden’s
_Absalom and Achitophel_, Butler’s _Hudibras_, Byron’s _English Bards
and Scotch Reviewers_, and all such, never sets the mind of the writer
at rest, nor gives enjoyment to the reader. Indeed, who now ever reads
these, the world’s greatest illustrations of witty bitterness and
venom, couched in verse and unjustifiably designated as poetry?
These are accounted “great works.” But who, let me ask, ever reads any
of these “great works,” or ever heard of them, except in some text on
Literature? Or, having read them, who loves them, or their authors for
having written them? None. No, not one.
On the other hand, who has not read some of the noblest works of
Shakespeare, Burns, Milton, Tennyson, Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell,
Whittier, Holmes? And who does not feel nobler for having read, and who
does not hold these authors shrined in his heart of hearts for having
written? Is not this proof enough that it is the mission of poetry to
minister only to the higher emotions?
After all, hate is merely the negative of love; simply the absence of
the better emotion, a void, an ache, a pain. All attempts to gratify
it only make it stronger--or rather drive the better emotion farther
away--as illustrated by the cases of Pope, Dryden, Byron, and their
fellows in revenge and bitterness wherever we find them. No one ever
felt better or nobler or happier for gratifying a hate, for doing
a bad deed, or for giving pain to a fellow-mortal’s feelings. The
ever-accusing conscience, if he but listen, will never permit him to
say in his heart that such gratification has given him pleasure.
If, then, it is the mission of poetry to give pleasure, no matter
whether its interpretation of the Divine in the human heart be by tears
or by laughter, its ministration necessarily must be to the immortal
part of man.
In the light of all this, therefore, without further argument, it is
clear and conclusive that all verse that is sarcastic, satiric, etc.,
such as that of Swift, Butler, Pope, Gay, Prior, and their hosts, is
not poetry.
But what of the didactic? Whatever has the primary object of teaching
delivers its treasures to the keeping of the intellect. If, therefore,
verse aims primarily to teach, but ministers to the sensibilities only
incidentally, it is not true poetry. Poetry does not teach nor preach
nor argue nor discuss. Those are the provinces of prose. Poems and
roses must not teach; they must bloom. Their breath delights us, their
suggestions, their reflections of a Divinity that is above them, lifts
us--God knows why! The cry of pain, the romping laugh of children at
play, the pathos of death, the touch of the hand or the lips of the
one we love needs no argument to fill the heart with uncontrollable
emotion. These are the sweetest of the poet’s themes, and he has but
to reveal them without argument as they are experienced in the heart.
Argument kills them. Just in proportion to the didactic character of
verse the path of poetry is departed from, and the realm of prose
invaded. You cannot find a solitary purely didactic piece of verse the
meaning of which could not be better expressed in prose. Not so with
true poetry. That cannot be expressed in any other way.
The most illustrious types of the didactic are to be found in the
“Artificial School,” at the head of which stands Pope. When we cut out
the satiric and the sarcastic and all ill-feeling verse, as we see we
must, and then the didactic, as we are forced by reason and logic to
do, how much real poetry do we have left in this “School” so well named
“Artificial”? How much is there left that makes the heart feel larger,
nobler, better, and gives it new fountains of life? Only a rare gem
now and then in the form of a single felicitous line or happily wedded
couplet. Then, when we cut this same kind of verse out of the whole
literature of the world, and also that other kind, already spoken of at
length, in which there is merely spiritless poetic form as its chief
element, how much real poetry and how many real poets does the world
possess? Comparatively, only a few poets, the world’s great, and a few
of their works--those that have already stood the test of time and that
still stand the only true test of good literature, that it inspires the
heart with noble feelings and lofty purposes--can be placed in the list.
But enough on the kinds of verse.
Another question concerning pleasure arising from poetry presents
itself. “Violent delights have violent ends and in their triumph
die.” The poetic, by its very nature, is violent. Consequently, the
mind cannot long imbibe its intoxicating draughts. A little at a
time is exhilarating and invigorating; but an over-dose deadens the
sensibilities, and often creates a serious dislike for the poetic and a
consequent unconscious restlessness of longing for the satisfaction of
the higher emotions that prose can never furnish.
The mind cannot long endure extreme exertion, just as the body cannot.
Poetry requires extreme exertion of the sensibilities, consequently
its duration should be short that its full delight and pleasure may be
enjoyed. Since this is so, every poem, by the very nature of the mind,
must be brief. Who would live in a conservatory of roses where their
sweet scent, most delightful at first breath, soon becomes sickening?
Or who would hold even one of those odorous blooms to the nose for
long? Who, on the other hand, does not delight in an occasional sip of
the scent of a bursting rose-bud? And who does not find new delight at
each successive draught, and regret that the petals that breathe this
odor for us, alas! must fade and fall?
I believe most profoundly with Poe that, from the standpoint of the
mind that produces and the mind that perceives and enjoys it, there is
no such thing as a long poem. I shall go farther, and say, not only
that a poem must be short, but that it must be lyrical. This gets us
back to nature. Historically the first literature of every nation is
poetry, and that poetry is invariably lyrical; indeed, even inevitably
so. In every nation, we find it is many centuries before these lyrics
of the nation are gathered up and finally strung on the thread of
narrative, thus making the Epic. From the lyric, all imaginable forms
have been brought forth by ingenious poets of later day. The bard
of simple days lived, not close to nature’s intellect, but close to
nature’s heart. Burns was the best poet of modern days, because he did
the same; consequently, he is always lyrical when he is natural.
Shall we then say that the Æneid, the Odyssey, the Iliad, the
Canterbury Tales, the Faery Queen, or Paradise Lost is each one poem?
Viewed as I have just remarked, and that (in its relation to the mind)
is the only true way to view a poem, none of these is a single poem.
Each is made up of a number of poems--gems strung on the thread of a
common subject;--roses in a common conservatory.
Indeed, the whole of Homer is simply a collection of a great number
of short poems--lyrics, indeed, they were--sung by many authors for
centuries, and finally gathered up and pieced together to form books
and volumes. Each one of the Canterbury Tales contains many poems,
strung together to form one necklace of jewels.
I ask any one to sit down and read any of these great and wonderful
works continuously one day, as he might prose, and comprehend what he
is reading. Not even one book of Paradise Lost can be _read_ (in the
true sense of that word) at a single sitting. There are too many poems
in it, and the consequent demands upon the mind are too great for that.
Possibly this very fact had somewhat to do with calling forth the
unjust remark from Waller concerning that great epic, “If its length be
not considered as a merit it hath no other.”
Since a poem must be brief, naturally, and for the same cause, it
should be read judiciously and at intervals, if it is to be appreciated
and enjoyed, just as the rose must be smelled only occasionally. We
cannot read poetry as we can prose; it won’t let us. By their very
natures they demand a different manner of reading. One can read prose
continuously, hour after hour, without seriously wearying the mind,
for the simple reason that, in prose, thought is not condensed, but
is spread through a long series of sentences. Moreover, the thought
is not, as a rule, simply suggested, but is fully expressed, leaving
the mind in a comparative state of passive receptivity, with but
little active labor to perform in order to comprehend the meaning.
On the other hand, poetry always expresses thought in condensed form
and suggests many fold more than it expresses. Consequently, a single
stanza or even a single line may sometimes require as much attention
for the full comprehension of its meaning and suggestion, as a whole
page of ordinary prose.
We must plant the poem in the heart and give it time to grow, as we
plant the flower-seeds in the soil. Finally, as the growing flower
bursts into bloom, so must the poem blossom from the heart into its
full perfection and beauty.
Fully to appreciate that flower’s beauty, it must not be dissected and
analyzed by glass and scalpel. Did Burns go botanizing the daisy? Need
we then go botanizing these flowers and blossoms of the soul of man? He
who does it tries to force the intellect to do what the emotive nature,
the beauty-loving part of man, alone can do. There is an intellectual
delight in botanizing and in picking to pieces and analyzing the
gathered specimens, but it is not that sweet, soul-inspiring pleasure
born of the love of the beautiful that the heart alone can feel. He who
botanizes the beautiful can never know in his head the supreme pleasure
that he who loves the simple daisy too well to turn it under the sod
feels in his heart.
Poetry is indeed immortal and divine. It is the breath of heaven in
the nostrils of man, the divinity of the human soul, the heart in full
flower and bloom. To an honest, earnest, sincere soul, it is the wonder
of the age, as it has ever been the wonder of all ages, that “men
endowed with highest gifts, the vision and the faculty divine,” being
divinely appointed as poet-priest of the Almighty, should pander to the
prurient taste of a so-called practical public;--that they should sell
the divinity within them for a strip of royal purple; for a salve to an
itching palm;--that they should barter immortality for a glitter-jingle.
But how shall this consummate artist not fall into the corruptions
that beset him and his art divine? Here are the driveling jinglers,
verse-makers, poetasters all about him, with their rattling,
rollicking, banging tin-panery, loudly applauded by a rough-and-ready
guffawing public; a “practical” public that loudly clamors for _sense_,
_fact_,--and then drops another penny into the chapeaux of these
venders of cheap jewelry for more of their applauded cheap sentiment
and glittering platitudes, and jingling chains and necklaces, and
rings, and things, whose brightness wears off in their mental pockets
before the wife or sweetheart is gladdened by a glimpse of its
“practical” glitter!
The great, true poet, he who alone is interpreter of the immortal in
the mortal, the invisible in the visible by means of words, never asks
how to avoid these corruptions. He does it. He despises, hates, abhors
them. He does it, too, by obeying that Divinity within him. Obedient
to that call, he walks majestically through this motley crowd;--aye,
through this sometimes maudlin, jeering crowd that throw stones at him
and mentally would crucify him!--and sets some stream of Beauty and
Glory flowing through the hearts of men, forever to wash away these
corruptions and stagnations of the human soul. Aye, truly! he asks not
how, but teaches us how. Was it not so with those old Divine Writers,
our highest type of poets, whose inspirations make the one Immortal
Book? So shall it ever be. ’Tis the Divine Law.
Such a poet, interpreting nature and mirroring Divinity, and thus
idealizing life that the seeing, aspiring soul may attain nearer its
illimitable possibilities, we call an original poet, a genius. He is
never a “popular” poet, as that term is used, but he is quite generally
unpopular. Popular in the sense of time-enduring he is by that same
Divine Law that brings him into existence. His soul will inevitably
have some greatness in common with other great souls. These will rescue
him and commend him to an increasing posterity; and so on and on,
touching more and more souls, and thus seeming to grow ever better and
better, though in reality he remains ever unchanged, while the souls he
touches are the ones that ever strive to his greater height, and draw
up numbers with them.
Thus does he whom an unappreciating, small-souled mob would have
crucified, become immortal through the reciprocal divinity that is
in himself and in the heart of humanity. Thus does, thus must, this
poet-genius create--call into activity--the taste that must make him
time-enduring. This is the penalty of genius and greatness--to suffer,
and then triumphantly to endure forever in the hearts of men. Who would
he were not a genius? Who would he were? In proof of all this, witness
Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, not to speak of all the greatest Great.
I love that unswerving poetic genius who, in the face of taunts and
revilings and sneers, still is obedient to that sublime divinity within
him; who, conscious of his own soul’s illimitable vastness, must
inevitably write for that soul’s satisfaction, and thus write, not for
the present generation, but for posterity; and who, when he “wraps
the drapery of his couch about him,” having obeyed the divine voice
within him even to his latest breath, finally triumphs over all sneers
and taunts and jeers, triumphs even over death, and, though dead,
triumphantly lives in immortal words that still speak to us more and
more divinely through the trumpet-soul of the more and more divine ages.
Such a poet, I say, must create the taste that will make him
time-enduring. In other words, this true poet, this genius (else he
were no genius at all), must see some relation of soul to soul not
ordinarily seen, and never at all seen in exactly the same way, and
so express that relation in words that humanity can but recognize it
from the very fact of its commonness, its universality. Such a poet
never follows public opinion, in the narrow sense of the opinion of a
transitory present; but through great trials and suffering and much
enduring generally, he leads it, or creates it rather, and develops it
into that broader, truer public opinion,--humanity’s opinion; the only
opinion, I should say, that is equal to that of a great soul.
The great never follow, but ever lead. They never pander to a perverted
public taste, but follow their own convictions; and thus following the
guiding power within them, they lead others in the same path. Thus
drawn onwards and upwards by that link which binds man unto God, and
thus leading humanity aright, they instinctively obey the teachings of
Him, the Master, who “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister”;
for they follow in His footsteps by upward leading and by thus greatly
and divinely serving mankind.
In a general way, I may say of poets that there are two classes:--the
introspective, or those whose souls, ever standing in the presence of
the Divinity within them, hear the calls of other souls and the mighty
voice of God; and hearing, obey;--the extrospective, or those whose
souls, not less divine, but less conscious, perhaps, of that Divinity,
unconsciously perceive the manifold relations in external nature, and
through the universal spirit of nature none the less distinctly hear
that same Almighty Voice. We shall hardly find a poet in whom one
of these characteristics exists to the exclusion of the other; but
we shall find that in many cases one characteristic or the other is
dominant. For example, Browning is one of our best representatives
of the introspective, and Wordsworth of the extrospective; while
Shakespeare is the highest type of the perfect union of the two. Both
classes obey the same voice, and though ministering through different
sources, have the same mission to perform, the uplifting and purifying
of the human soul.
Indeed, whatever does not have this mission is not true poetry. It is
often said that that literature is best which has stood the test of
time. Not so, if by that is meant simply that the literature shall
have lived long; for both good and bad live. The true test is that it
betters man’s estate, and ennobles his heart. If a poem inspires the
heart with nobler feelings and greater love, then it is a good poem.
This is the crucial, the only true test.
There is no act of the human mind that is not controlled by the
feelings. When this is comprehended and when, at the same time, it
is perceived to what an extent poetry ministers to the feelings, the
utility of poetry will be better appreciated. Poetry thus ministering
to the controlling forces of life, is a guide and corrective of life;
a guide in that it is “a representation of life” (as Alfred Austin has
it), the experiences of the hearts of men; a corrective in that it is
“a criticism of life” (as Matthew Arnold says), an idealization that,
by uplifting, corrects the heart that else would droop. Austin thinks
his idea opposes Arnold’s. It does not. Each simply looks at one side;
each takes a different angle. Both are correct so far as they go. For
poetry is the heart’s history. It is also the ever present attempt, in
the light of that guiding lamp, to the making of a better history.
This, indeed, makes it philosophy. For what else does philosophy do?
The poet is ever a philosopher. Is not poetry philosophy teaching by
experience? It does not teach by precept, it is not didactic; that
is the province of prose; but it mirrors the human heart and reveals
its experiences. Nine hundred ninety-nine people shape their lives
by experience where one shapes his by rule and thumb. One rose of
experience with its warning thorns has more of humanity and guidance
in it than all the tangle-woods of teaching. The hand must follow the
heart. If the heart be right the hand can never go wrong.