"Bluffed not a bit by drain-pipes, gasometers,
and artificial fertilizers."
The Gentle Reader, also, is not to be bluffed by any useful things,
however unpleasant they may be, but he winces a little as he reads that
the "far superber themes for poets and for art" include the teaching by
the poet of how
"To use the hammer and the saw (rip or cross-cut),
To cultivate a turn for carpentering, plastering, painting,
To work as tailor, tailoress, nurse, hostler, porter,
To invent a little something ingenious to aid the washing,
cooking, cleaning."
The Muse of Poetry shrieks at the mighty lines in praise of
"leather-dressing, coach-making, boiler-making," and the rest.
Boiler-making, she protests, is a useful industry and highly to be
commended, but it is not music. When asked to give a reason why she
should not receive all these things as poetry, the Muse is much
embarrassed. "It's all true," she says. "Leather-dressing and
boiler-making are undoubted realities, while Arthur and Lancelot may be
myths." Yet she is not quite ready to be off with the old love and on
with the new,--it's all so sudden.
Whitman himself furnishes the best illustrations of the difference
between poetry and prose. He comes like another Balaam to prophesy
against those who associate poetry with beauty of form and melody of
words; and then the poetic spirit seizes upon him and lifts him into the
region of harmony. In the Song of the Universal he declares that--
"From imperfection's murkiest cloud
Darts always forth one ray of perfect light,
One flash of heaven's glory.
To fashion's, customs discord,
To the mad Babel's din, the deafening orgies,
Soothing each lull, a strain is heard, just heard
From some far shore, the final chorus sounding.
O the blest eyes, the happy hearts
That see, that know the guiding thread so fine
Along the mighty labyrinth."
There speaks the poet declaring the true faith, which except a man
believe he is condemned everlastingly to the outer darkness. His task is
selective. No matter about the murkiness of the cloud he must make us
see the ray of perfect light. In the mad Babel-din he must hear and
repeat the strain of pure music. As to the field of choice, it may be as
wide as the world, but he must choose as a poet, and not after the
manner of the man with the muck-rake.
"In this broad earth of ours
Amid the measureless grossness and the slag,
Inclosed and safe within the central heart
Nestles the seed perfection."
When the poet delves in the grossness and the slag, he does so as one
engaged in the search for the perfect.
"My feeling," says the Gentle Reader, "about the proper material for
poetry, is very much like that of Whitman in regard to humanity--
'When warrantee deeds loafe in chairs opposite, and are my
friendly companions,
I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as
I do of men and women like you.'
"So I say, when drain pipes and cross-cut saws and the beef on the
butcher's stalls are invested with beautiful associations and thrill my
soul in some mysterious fashion, then I will make as much of these
things as I do of the murmuring pines and the hemlocks. When a poet
makes bank clerks and stevedores and wood-choppers to loom before my
imagination in heroic proportions, I will receive them as I do the
heroes of old. But, mind you, the miracle must be actually performed; I
will not be put off with a prospectus."
Now and then the miracle is performed. We are made to feel the romance
that surrounds the American pioneer, we hear the
"Crackling blows of axes sounding musically, driven by strong arms."
But, for the most part, Whitman, when under the influence of deep
feeling, forgets his theory, and uses as his symbols those things which
have already been invested with poetical associations. Turn to that
marvelous dirge, "When Lilacs last in the Dooryard bloomed." There is
here no catalogue of facts or events, no parade of glaring realism.
Tennyson's "sweet sad rhyme" has nowhere more delicious music than we
find in the measured cadence of these lines. We are not told the news of
the assassination of Lincoln as a man on the street might tell it. It
comes to us through suggestion. We are made to feel a mood, not to
listen to the description of an event. There is symbolism, suggestion,
color mystery. We inhale the languorous fragrance of the lilacs; we see
the drooping star; in secluded recesses we hear "a shy and hidden bird"
warbling a song; there are dim-lit churches and shuddering organs and
tolling bells, and there is one soul heart-broken, seeing all and
hearing all.
"Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to
keep, for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands--and
this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim."
This is real poetry, and yet while we yield to the charm we are
conscious that it is made up of the old familiar elements.