say, "If Burke and Bacon were not poets (measured lines not being necessary to constitute one), he did not know what poetry meant." 1 It would not be easy to refuse to Sir Thomas Browne's "Fragment on Mummies" the claim of poetry: "Of their living habitations they made little account, conceiving of them but as hospitia, or inns; while they adorned the sepulchers of the dead, and planting thereon lasting bases, defied the crumbling touches of time, and the misty vaporousness of oblivion. Yet all were but Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh all things, and is now dominant and sitteth upon a Sphinx, and looketh unto Memphis and old Thebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth semi-somnous 2 on a pyramid, gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The traveler as he paceth through those deserts asketh of her, 'Who builded them?' and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth not." 3 You shall not speak ideal truth in prose uncontradicted you may in verse. The best thoughts run into the best words; imaginative and affectionate thoughts, into music and meter. We ask for food and fire, we talk of our work, our tools, and material neces 1 Sir Thomas Browne (1605- 2 semi-somnous, 1682), a very distinguished English |(Latin somnum, sleep). writer, author of Religio Medici, Vulgar Errors, and other works. His style is marked by a splendid but pedantic diction. half asleep 8 Titanian = Titanic, like the Titans: huge, colossal. 4 best thoughts... best words. Note the balance of phrase. sities, in prose, that is, without any elevation or aim at beauty; but when we rise into the world of thought, and think of these things only for what they signify, speech refines into order and harmony. Let poetry, then, pass, if it will, into music and rhyme. That is the form which itself puts on. We do not inclose watches in wooden, but in crystal cases;1 and rhyme 2 is the transparent frame that allows almost the pure architecture of thought to become visible to the mental eye. Substance is much, but so are mode and form much. The poet, like a delighted boy, brings you heaps of rainbow bubbles, opaline, air-borne, spherical as the world, instead of a few drops of soap and water. Victor Hugo says well, "An idea steeped in verse becomes suddenly more incisive 5 and more brilliant: the iron becomes steel." 6 Poetry will never be a simple means, as when history or philosophy is rhymed, or laureate odes on state occasions are written. Itself must be its own end, or it is nothing. The difference between poetry and stock-poetry is this, that in the latter the rhythm is given, and the sense adapted to it; while in the former 7 5 incisive. See Webster. 1 watches... in crystal cases. Note the beauty of the implied com- 6 laureate: in England the sovparison. What objects are com-ereign appoints a poet-laureate to pared? celebrate any important event means ("state occasions") as a victory, a royal marriage, etc. Tennyson (see page 530) is the present poetlaureate. What 2 rhyme: the author rhythm as well as rhyme. metaphor in this sentence? 8 architecture: that is, the structure. 4 brings you... water. Translate this metaphor into plain prose. 7 stock-poetry: that is, poetry made to order, - conventional, not inspired verse. the sense dictates the rhythm. I might even say that the rhyme is there in the theme, thought, and image themselves. Ask the fact for the form. For a verse is not a vehicle to carry a sentence, as a jewel is carried in a case the verse must be alive2 and inseparable from its contents, as the soul of man inspires and directs the body; and we measure the inspiration by the music. In reading prose, I am sensitive as soon as a sentence drags; but in poetry, as soon as one word drags. Ever as the thought mounts the expression mounts. Indeed, the masters sometimes rise above themselves to strains which charm their readers, and which neither any competitor 5 could outdo, nor the bard himself again equal. Keats disclosed, by certain lines in his Hyperion, this inward skill; and Coleridge showed at least his love and appetency for it. It appears in Ben Jonson's songs, in Waller's 10 Go, lovely rose! in 1 as a jewel... case. What is the figure? * Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834): a distinguished Eng 2 must be alive. Explain this lish poet and metaphysician, author hyperbole. 3 inspires, animates. 4 mounts. Supply a synonym from the next sentence. 5 competitor. See Webster. 6 Keats, born in 1796, and who died at the early age of twenty-five, was one of the most distinguished of the modern school of poets that marked the early part of the present century. of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 9 Ben Jonson (1573-1637), "rare Ben Jonson," a celebrated poet and dramatist, a contemporary and friend of Shakespeare. 10 Edmund Waller (1605-1687): an English poet. He was a friend and connection of Oliver Cromwell, the "Protector." 1 3 Herbert's Virtue and Easter, in Lovelace's 2 lines To Althea and To Lucasta, and in Collins's Ode to Evening. Perhaps this dainty style of poetry is not producible to-day, any more than a right Gothic cathedral. belonged to a time and taste which is not in the world. It 3.-GOOD-BY, PROUD WORLD. GOOD-BY, proud world! I'm going home; Long I've been tossed like the driven foam : Good-by to Flattery's fawning face; 1 George Herbert (1503-1632): | English lyric poet; author of the an eminent English poet and di- odes To the Passions and To the vine. His verses are characterized Brave. by great sweetness and elevation of thought. Brother of Lord Herbert of Cherbury. 2 Richard Lovelace (1618-1658): an English poet, whose verses possess rare grace, simplicity, and sprightliness. 3 William Collins (1720-1756): 4 a river ark. Explain the metaphor. 5 Flattery's. What is the figure? (See Def. 7.) Point out in the same stanza other examples of this figure. 6 averted. See Glossary. To those who go, and those who come: I am going to my own hearthstone,1 And vulgar feet have never trod A spot that is sacred to thought and God. Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home, I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, 4.- CONCORD FIGHT. [This hymn was composed to be sung April 19, 1836, at the completion of a monument to commemorate the fight at Concord, April 19, 1775.] 1 hearthstone. What is the figure of speech? 2 lodge, habitation. 8 roundelay: a simple rural strain which is short and lively. 4 Greece and Rome: that is, learning and power, the lore and pride of man." 5 sophist (from Greek sophos, wise), one of a class of Grecian teachers who by fallacious but plausible reasoning puzzled inquirers after truth. 6 bush, referring to the burning bush of Scripture, out of which Moses heard God calling him. |