There are some phrases that convey only a vague and indefinite
meaning, that make an impression upon the mind so faint as to be
scarcely resolvable into shape or character. Being associated,
however, with the feeling of beauty or enjoyment, they are ever on our
lips, and pass current in conversation at a conventional value. Of
these phrases is the 'poetry of life'--words that never fail to excite
an agreeable though dreamy emotion, which it is impossible to refer to
any positive ideas. They are generally used, however, to indicate
something gone by. The poetry of life, we say, with sentimental
regret, has passed away with the old forms of society; the world is
disenchanted of its talismans; we have awakened from the dreams that
once lent a charm to existence, and we now see nothing around us but
the cold hard crust of external nature.
This must be true if we think it is so; for we cannot be mistaken,
when we feel that the element of the poetical is wanting in our
constitutions. But we err both in our mode of accounting for the fact,
and in believing the loss we deplore to be irretrievable. The fault
committed by reasoners on this subject is, to confound one thing with
another--to account for the age being unpoetical--as it unquestionably
is--by a supposed decay in the materials of poetry. We may as well be
told that the phenomena of the rising and setting sun--of clouds and
moonlight--of storm and calm--of the changing seasons--of the
infinitely varying face of nature, are now trite and worn-out. They
are as fresh and new as ever, and will be so at the last day of the
world, presenting, at every recurring view, something to surprise as
well as delight. To each successive generation of men, the phenomena
both of the outer and inner world are absolutely new; and the child of
the present day is as much a stranger upon the earth as the first-born
of Eve. But the impression received by each individual from the things
that surround him is widely different--as different as the faces in a
crowd, which all present the common type of humanity without a single
feature being alike. This fact we unconsciously assert in our everyday
criticism; for when any similarity is detected in a description,
whether of things internal or external, we at once stigmatise the
later version as a plagiarism, and as such set it down as a confession
of weakness.
But although the manifestations of nature, being infinite, cannot be
worn out, the capacity to enjoy them, being human, may decay. It may,
in fact, in some natures, be entirely wanting, and in some generations
at least partially so. Seamen, for instance, who live, move, and have
their being in a world of poetry and romance, are the least poetical
of men; even in their songs they affect the prosaic and matter of
fact, and discard everything appertaining to the fanciful.[1] Here is
a direct instance of the materials of poetry being present, and its
spirit wanting. So common, however, is it to confound the poetical
with the faculty of enjoying it, that we find a hygienic power
ascribed as an absolute property to the beauty of that very element,
from which they who view it, both in its sweetest and grandest
aspects, derive no elevation of feeling whatever. Hufeland, who
reckons among the great panaceas of life the joy arising from the
contemplation of the beauties of nature, in estimating the advantage
of sea-bathing as the chief natural tonic, attributes it in great part
to the action of the prospect of the sea upon the nervous system. 'I
am fully convinced,' says he, 'that the physical effects of
sea-bathing must be greatly increased by the impression on the mind,
and that a hypochondriac or nervous person may be half-cured by
residing on the sea-coast, and enjoying a view of the grand scenes of
nature which will there present themselves--such as, the rising and
setting of the sun over the blue expanse of the waters, and the awful
majesty of the waves during a storm.' Now, if all patients were alike
impressionable, this would be sound doctrine; but, as it is, few see
the sun rise at all, many retire before the dews of evening begin to
condense, and almost all shut themselves carefully up during a storm.
The poetry of life, we need hardly say, is not associated exclusively
with the things of external nature:
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
are likewise a portion of the materials which it informs as with a
soul. For poetry does not create, but modify. It is neither passion
nor power; neither beauty nor love; but to one of these it gives
exaltation, to another majesty; to one enchantment, to another
divinity. It is not the light of 'the sun when it shines, nor of the
moon walking in brightness,' but the glory of the one, and the grace
and loveliness of the other. It is not instruction, but that which
lends to instruction a loftier character, ascending from the finite to
the infinite. It is not morality, but that which deepens the moral
impression, and sends the thrill of spiritual beauty throughout the
whole being. But its appeals, says an eloquent writer, are mainly 'to
those affections that are apt to become indolent and dormant amidst
the commerce of the world;' and it aims at the 'revival of those purer
and more enthusiastic feelings which are associated with the earlier
and least selfish period of our existence. Immersed in business,
which, if it sharpen the edge of intellect, leaves the heart barren;
toiling after material wealth or power, and struggling with fortune
for existence; seeing selfishness reflected all around us from the
hard and glittering surface of society as from a cold and polished
mirror; it would go hard with man in adversity, perhaps still more in
prosperity, if some resource were not provided for him, which, under
the form of an amusement and recreation, administered a secret but
powerful balsam in the one case, and an antidote in the other.' Poetry
elevates some of our emotions, disinters others from the rubbish of
the world, heightens what is mean, transforms what is unsightly,
Clothing the palpable and the familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn.
It is a spiritual wine which revives the weary denizen of the vale of
tears, and softens, warms, and stimulates, without the reaction of
material cordials. 'It gives him wings,' says another writer, 'and
lifts him out of the dirt; and leads him into green valleys; and
carries him up to high places, and shews him at his feet the earth and
all its glories.'
The poetry of life, therefore, although one of those expressions that
baffle definition, points to something of vast importance to the
happiness of men and the progress of the race. It is no idle dream, no
mere amusement of the fancy. Whenever we feel a generous thrill on
hearing of a great action--that is poetry. Whenever we are conscious
of a larger and loftier sympathy than is implied in the exercise of
some common duty of humanity--that is poetry. Whenever we look upon
the hard realities of life through a medium that softens and relieves
them--that medium is poetry. Without poetry, there is no loftiness in
friendship, no devotedness in love. The feelings even of the young
mother watching her sleeping child till her eyes are dim with
happiness, are one half poetry. Hark! there is music on the evening
air, always a delightful incident in the most delightful scene; and
here there are ruins, and woods, and waters, all the adjuncts of a
picture. This is beauty; but if we breathe over that beauty the spirit
of poetry, see what a new creation it becomes, and what a permanent
emotion it excites!
The splendour falls on castle walls,
And snowy summits, old in story;
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle blow, set the wild echoes flying;
Blow bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark! O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, further going;
O sweet and far, from cliff and scar,
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying;
Blow bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O love, they die in yon rich sky!
They faint on field, and hill, and river;
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle blow, set the wild echoes flying;
And answer, echoes answer, dying, dying, dying.[2]
This is a sample of the spiritual wine we have talked of--something to
elevate and intoxicate. But the picture it presents does not pass away
in the reaction of the morning. It haunts us in all after-life, rising
up before us in the pauses of the world, to heal and refresh our
wearied spirits.
As in this poem the pleasure is caused by its appeals to the
imagination heightening the feeling the scene naturally excites; by
the spiritual and material world being linked together as regards the
music; and by the connection established between the echoes and the
sky, field, hill, and river, where they die--just so it is with the
poetry of moral feeling. The spectacle we have instanced of the young
mother watching her sleeping infant, is in itself beautiful; but it
becomes poetical when we imagine the feeling of beauty united in her
mind with the instinct of love, and detect in her glance, moist with
emotion, the blending of hopes, memories, pride, and tearful joy.
Poetry, therefore, is not moral feeling, but something that heightens
and adorns it. It is not even a direct moral agent, for it deepens the
lesson only through the medium of the feelings and imagination. Thus
moral poetry, when reduced to writing, is merely morality conveyed in
the form of poetry; and in like manner, religious poetry, is religion
so conveyed. The thing conveyed, however, must harmonise with the
medium, for poetry will not consent to give an enduring form to what
is false or pernicious. It has often been remarked, with a kind of
superstitious wonder, that poems of an immoral character never live
long; but the reason is, that it is the characteristic of immorality
to tie down man in the chains of the senses, and this shews that it
has nothing in common with the spiritual nature of poetry. For the
same reason, a poem based upon atheism, although it might attract
attention for a time, would meet with no permanent response in the
human breast; religion being Truth, and poetry her peculiar
ministrant.
Although written poetry, however, does not necessarily come into this
subject, it may be observed, that the comparative incapacity of the
present generation to enjoy the poetical is clearly exhibited in its
literature. Never was there so much verse, and so little poetry. Never
was the faculty of rhyming so impartially spread over the whole mass
of society. The difficulty used to be, to find one possessed of the
gift: now it is nearly as difficult to find one who is not. Formerly,
to write verses was a distinction: now it is a distinction not to
write them--and one of some consequence. But with all this multitude
of poets, there is not one who can take his place with the
comparatively great names of the past, or vanishing generation. Now
and then we have a brilliant thought--even a certain number of verses
deserving the name of a poem; but there is no sustained poetical
power, nothing to mark an epoch, or glorify a name. When we commend,
it is some passage distinct from the poem, something small, and
finished, and complete in itself. The taste of the day runs more upon
conceits and extravagances, such as Cowley would have admired, and
which he might have envied. The suddenness of the impression, so to
speak, made by great poets, their direct communication with the heart,
belongs to another time. It is our ambition to come to the same end by
feats of ingenuity; and instead of touching the feelings, and setting
the imagination of the reader instantaneously aglow, to exercise his
skill in unravelling and interpretation. We expect the pleasure of
success to reward him for the fatigue.
The same feeling is at work, as we have already pointed out, in
decorative art; in which 'a redundancy of useless or ridiculous
ornament is called richness, and the inability to appreciate simple
and beautiful, or grand and noble forms, receives the name of genius.'
The connection is curious, likewise, between this ingenuity of poetry
and that of the machinery which gives a distinguishing character to
our epoch. It looks as if the complication of images, working towards
a certain end, were only another development of the genius that
invents those wonderful instruments which the eye cannot follow till
they are familiarly entertained--and sometimes not even then. If this
idea were kept in view, there would be at least some wit, although no
truth, in the common theory which attempts to account for the decline
of poetry. Neither advancement in science, however, nor ingenuity in
mechanics, is in itself, as the theory alleges, hostile to the
poetical; on the contrary, the materials of poetry multiply with the
progress of both. The prosaic character of the age does not flow from
these circumstances, but exists in spite of them. It has been said,
indeed, that the light of knowledge is unfavourable to poetry, by
making the hues and lineaments of the phantoms it calls up grow
fainter and fainter, till they are wholly dispelled. But this applies
only to one class of images. The ghost of Banquo, for instance, may
pale away and vanish utterly before the light of knowledge; but the
air-drawn dagger of Macbeth is immortal like the mind itself.
Knowledge cannot throw its illumination upon eternity, or dissipate
the influences by which men feel they are surrounded. A candle brought
into a darkened room discloses the material forms of the things in the
midst of which we are standing, and which may have been involved, to
our imagination, in a poetical mystery. But the light itself, as an
unexplained wonder--its analogies with the flame of life--the
modifications it receives from the faint gleam of the sky through the
shadowed window--all are poetical materials, and of a higher
character. Where one series of materials ends, another begins; and so
on in infinite progression, till poetry seems to spurn the earth from
beneath her foot--
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Telling of things which no gross ear can hear;
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begins to cast a beam on the outer shape--
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal.
Science with us, however, is a business instead of an ambition;
ingenuity a trade rather than a taste. We go on from discovery to
discovery, from invention to invention, with an insatiate but prosaic
spirit, which turns everything to a profitable and practical
account--imprisoning the very lightning, that it may carry our
messages over land and under sea! We do not stop to look, to listen,
to feel, to exalt with a moral elevation the objects of our study, and
snatch a spiritual enjoyment from imagination. All with us is
material; and all would be even mean, but for the essential grandeur
of the things themselves. And here comes the question: Is this
material progress incompatible with spiritual progress? Is the poetry
of life less abundant because the conveniences of life are more
complete and admirable? Is man less a spirit of the universe because
he is a god over the elements? We answer, No: the scientific and the
prosaic spirit are both independent elements in the genius of the age;
or, if there is a necessary connection, it is the converse of what is
supposed--the restless mind in which the fervour of poetry has died,
plunging into science for the occupation that is necessary to its
happiness. Thus one age is merely poetical, another merely scientific;
although here, of course, we use, for the sake of distinctness, the
broadest terms, unmindful of the modifications ranging between these
extreme points. The age, however, that has least poetry has most
science, and _vice versâ_.
But man, unlike the other denizens of the earth, has power over his
own destiny. He is able to cultivate the poetical as if it were a
plant; and if once convinced of its important bearing upon his
enjoyment of the world, he will do so. The imagination may be educated
as well as the moral sense, and the result of the advancement of the
one as well as the other is an expansion of the mind, and an
enlargement of the capacity for happiness. The grand obstacle is
precisely what we have now endeavoured to aid in removing--the common
mistake as to the nature of the poetical, which it is customary to
consider as something remote from, or antagonistic to, the business of
life. So far from this, it is essentially connected with the moral
feelings. It neutralises the conventionalisms of society, and makes
the whole world kin. It enlarges the circle of our sympathies, till
they comprehend, not only our own kind, but every living thing, and
not only animate beings, but all created nature.