TWENTY.

TWENTY.May the twenties yet triple,And then add their half,Still preserving the rippleAnd ring of your laugh.And may every bright twinkleThat falls from your eyeServe to smooth out each wrinkle,The track of a sigh.When the twenties shall twinkleAnd ten more shall run,I hope every cute wink’llStill shine out with fun.Oh the triple of twentyPlus none less than ten!May you be the same daintySweet girly-girl then!

May the twenties yet triple,And then add their half,Still preserving the rippleAnd ring of your laugh.And may every bright twinkleThat falls from your eyeServe to smooth out each wrinkle,The track of a sigh.When the twenties shall twinkleAnd ten more shall run,I hope every cute wink’llStill shine out with fun.Oh the triple of twentyPlus none less than ten!May you be the same daintySweet girly-girl then!

May the twenties yet triple,And then add their half,Still preserving the rippleAnd ring of your laugh.

May the twenties yet triple,

And then add their half,

Still preserving the ripple

And ring of your laugh.

And may every bright twinkleThat falls from your eyeServe to smooth out each wrinkle,The track of a sigh.

And may every bright twinkle

That falls from your eye

Serve to smooth out each wrinkle,

The track of a sigh.

When the twenties shall twinkleAnd ten more shall run,I hope every cute wink’llStill shine out with fun.

When the twenties shall twinkle

And ten more shall run,

I hope every cute wink’ll

Still shine out with fun.

Oh the triple of twentyPlus none less than ten!May you be the same daintySweet girly-girl then!

Oh the triple of twenty

Plus none less than ten!

May you be the same dainty

Sweet girly-girl then!

BEAUTIFUL MAY.Oh ’tis May,Beautiful May,Month of beautiful May,Beautiful month of May.Wild flowers blooming,Grasses growing,Wild brooks flowing,Pheasants booming—Oh ’tis May,Beautiful MayLovelier far than month of June,Beautiful May!And every dayIs putting the strings of life in tune.May-buds peepAt robins chatteringTo their matesAnd those asleep,Always flatteringWith nodding patesAnd promises freeThe farmer asnoozeThat they will keepFrom others the newsThat cherries are in the tree.The playful dawnIs after the moon,And the moon is running away.Oh the stars like sheep are all running awayAfter the moon,Away from the dawn,Away from the dawn of the month of May,Away, away, away.With skip and playThey dance awayAfter the dizzy moonThat pales with the pallor of fright so soonAt the brightening sight,Affright of the lightOf the morn of a lovelier month than June,So soon, soon, soon.Oh sweet May,Beautiful MayThus brightens her face each day,And lets the light of her tresses strayInto each partOf the earth’s dark heartWhere flashes like lashes from diamonds play—Astray each day at play.The light from her eyesIn the spring’s empriseSinks deep in the soul of the sands;And with glittering, flying handsEvery oneOf the sands doth runAnd lift into life the clod from its bondsThat climbs to a soul like man’s.She breathes on the air,And the sweet winds wearHer blooms in their billowy hair,And pour out their perfumes and nectars rareDistilled in the cupThat the goddesses supFor the beautiful dutiful May so fair,So rare and fairy fair.She drinks of the stream,And the glad waters gleamWith delight as they leap to her lips.She creeps up the mountains and merrily sipsOf the fountains that springFrom the snows as they stringUp their bows for a shot at the lower rock-cryptsWhere the sun like the dew-drop drips.She skims to the plainAnd frightens the trainThat the winter has left on guard.She whistles her bird-notes soft and hardAnd calls from retreatThe bickering feetOf the green that the winter in prison has barred,—Sweet, te-weet, wheat.

Oh ’tis May,Beautiful May,Month of beautiful May,Beautiful month of May.Wild flowers blooming,Grasses growing,Wild brooks flowing,Pheasants booming—Oh ’tis May,Beautiful MayLovelier far than month of June,Beautiful May!And every dayIs putting the strings of life in tune.May-buds peepAt robins chatteringTo their matesAnd those asleep,Always flatteringWith nodding patesAnd promises freeThe farmer asnoozeThat they will keepFrom others the newsThat cherries are in the tree.The playful dawnIs after the moon,And the moon is running away.Oh the stars like sheep are all running awayAfter the moon,Away from the dawn,Away from the dawn of the month of May,Away, away, away.With skip and playThey dance awayAfter the dizzy moonThat pales with the pallor of fright so soonAt the brightening sight,Affright of the lightOf the morn of a lovelier month than June,So soon, soon, soon.Oh sweet May,Beautiful MayThus brightens her face each day,And lets the light of her tresses strayInto each partOf the earth’s dark heartWhere flashes like lashes from diamonds play—Astray each day at play.The light from her eyesIn the spring’s empriseSinks deep in the soul of the sands;And with glittering, flying handsEvery oneOf the sands doth runAnd lift into life the clod from its bondsThat climbs to a soul like man’s.She breathes on the air,And the sweet winds wearHer blooms in their billowy hair,And pour out their perfumes and nectars rareDistilled in the cupThat the goddesses supFor the beautiful dutiful May so fair,So rare and fairy fair.She drinks of the stream,And the glad waters gleamWith delight as they leap to her lips.She creeps up the mountains and merrily sipsOf the fountains that springFrom the snows as they stringUp their bows for a shot at the lower rock-cryptsWhere the sun like the dew-drop drips.She skims to the plainAnd frightens the trainThat the winter has left on guard.She whistles her bird-notes soft and hardAnd calls from retreatThe bickering feetOf the green that the winter in prison has barred,—Sweet, te-weet, wheat.

Oh ’tis May,Beautiful May,Month of beautiful May,Beautiful month of May.

Oh ’tis May,

Beautiful May,

Month of beautiful May,

Beautiful month of May.

Wild flowers blooming,Grasses growing,Wild brooks flowing,Pheasants booming—Oh ’tis May,Beautiful MayLovelier far than month of June,Beautiful May!And every dayIs putting the strings of life in tune.

Wild flowers blooming,

Grasses growing,

Wild brooks flowing,

Pheasants booming—

Oh ’tis May,

Beautiful May

Lovelier far than month of June,

Beautiful May!

And every day

Is putting the strings of life in tune.

May-buds peepAt robins chatteringTo their matesAnd those asleep,Always flatteringWith nodding patesAnd promises freeThe farmer asnoozeThat they will keepFrom others the newsThat cherries are in the tree.

May-buds peep

At robins chattering

To their mates

And those asleep,

Always flattering

With nodding pates

And promises free

The farmer asnooze

That they will keep

From others the news

That cherries are in the tree.

The playful dawnIs after the moon,And the moon is running away.Oh the stars like sheep are all running awayAfter the moon,Away from the dawn,Away from the dawn of the month of May,Away, away, away.

The playful dawn

Is after the moon,

And the moon is running away.

Oh the stars like sheep are all running away

After the moon,

Away from the dawn,

Away from the dawn of the month of May,

Away, away, away.

With skip and playThey dance awayAfter the dizzy moonThat pales with the pallor of fright so soonAt the brightening sight,Affright of the lightOf the morn of a lovelier month than June,So soon, soon, soon.

With skip and play

They dance away

After the dizzy moon

That pales with the pallor of fright so soon

At the brightening sight,

Affright of the light

Of the morn of a lovelier month than June,

So soon, soon, soon.

Oh sweet May,Beautiful MayThus brightens her face each day,And lets the light of her tresses strayInto each partOf the earth’s dark heartWhere flashes like lashes from diamonds play—Astray each day at play.

Oh sweet May,

Beautiful May

Thus brightens her face each day,

And lets the light of her tresses stray

Into each part

Of the earth’s dark heart

Where flashes like lashes from diamonds play

—Astray each day at play.

The light from her eyesIn the spring’s empriseSinks deep in the soul of the sands;And with glittering, flying handsEvery oneOf the sands doth runAnd lift into life the clod from its bondsThat climbs to a soul like man’s.

The light from her eyes

In the spring’s emprise

Sinks deep in the soul of the sands;

And with glittering, flying hands

Every one

Of the sands doth run

And lift into life the clod from its bonds

That climbs to a soul like man’s.

She breathes on the air,And the sweet winds wearHer blooms in their billowy hair,And pour out their perfumes and nectars rareDistilled in the cupThat the goddesses supFor the beautiful dutiful May so fair,So rare and fairy fair.

She breathes on the air,

And the sweet winds wear

Her blooms in their billowy hair,

And pour out their perfumes and nectars rare

Distilled in the cup

That the goddesses sup

For the beautiful dutiful May so fair,

So rare and fairy fair.

She drinks of the stream,And the glad waters gleamWith delight as they leap to her lips.She creeps up the mountains and merrily sipsOf the fountains that springFrom the snows as they stringUp their bows for a shot at the lower rock-cryptsWhere the sun like the dew-drop drips.

She drinks of the stream,

And the glad waters gleam

With delight as they leap to her lips.

She creeps up the mountains and merrily sips

Of the fountains that spring

From the snows as they string

Up their bows for a shot at the lower rock-crypts

Where the sun like the dew-drop drips.

She skims to the plainAnd frightens the trainThat the winter has left on guard.She whistles her bird-notes soft and hardAnd calls from retreatThe bickering feetOf the green that the winter in prison has barred,—Sweet, te-weet, wheat.

She skims to the plain

And frightens the train

That the winter has left on guard.

She whistles her bird-notes soft and hard

And calls from retreat

The bickering feet

Of the green that the winter in prison has barred,

—Sweet, te-weet, wheat.

DEEP UNTO DEEP.A DOUBLE THRENODY.Oh the bounding of the billows of the seaRolls the rhythm of their music unto me;And a footstep that has fallen on the leaSeems to echo from the boundless, soundless deep.But the breaking of the billows—the billows as they leap,Makes the silence of my sorrow with them weep;While the echoes of the grottoes—the grottoes wildly start,Ever throbbing to the music of my heart;—Throbbing to the threnode,Rocking to the rhythm,Moaning to the music of my heart,—Threnode throbbing ever,Rhythm rocking ever,Music moaning ever in my heart.Oh my Love is on the billows of the sea,Sending messages along the waves to me;And the ever-singing shells along the leaWith my longing heart a constant chorus keep.But the breaking of the message—the message from the deep,Makes the silence of my sorrow inly weep;While the moaning shells intoning, intoning griefs impartEver sobbing to the silence of my heart;—Sobbing to the silence,Intoning to the moaning,Breaking to the breaking of my heart,—Silent sobbing ever,Grief intoning ever,Breaking, breaking ever in my heart.

Oh the bounding of the billows of the seaRolls the rhythm of their music unto me;And a footstep that has fallen on the leaSeems to echo from the boundless, soundless deep.But the breaking of the billows—the billows as they leap,Makes the silence of my sorrow with them weep;While the echoes of the grottoes—the grottoes wildly start,Ever throbbing to the music of my heart;—Throbbing to the threnode,Rocking to the rhythm,Moaning to the music of my heart,—Threnode throbbing ever,Rhythm rocking ever,Music moaning ever in my heart.Oh my Love is on the billows of the sea,Sending messages along the waves to me;And the ever-singing shells along the leaWith my longing heart a constant chorus keep.But the breaking of the message—the message from the deep,Makes the silence of my sorrow inly weep;While the moaning shells intoning, intoning griefs impartEver sobbing to the silence of my heart;—Sobbing to the silence,Intoning to the moaning,Breaking to the breaking of my heart,—Silent sobbing ever,Grief intoning ever,Breaking, breaking ever in my heart.

Oh the bounding of the billows of the sea

Rolls the rhythm of their music unto me;

And a footstep that has fallen on the lea

Seems to echo from the boundless, soundless deep.

But the breaking of the billows—the billows as they leap,

Makes the silence of my sorrow with them weep;

While the echoes of the grottoes—the grottoes wildly start,

Ever throbbing to the music of my heart;—

Throbbing to the threnode,

Rocking to the rhythm,

Moaning to the music of my heart,—

Threnode throbbing ever,

Rhythm rocking ever,

Music moaning ever in my heart.

Oh my Love is on the billows of the sea,Sending messages along the waves to me;And the ever-singing shells along the leaWith my longing heart a constant chorus keep.But the breaking of the message—the message from the deep,Makes the silence of my sorrow inly weep;While the moaning shells intoning, intoning griefs impartEver sobbing to the silence of my heart;—Sobbing to the silence,Intoning to the moaning,Breaking to the breaking of my heart,—Silent sobbing ever,Grief intoning ever,Breaking, breaking ever in my heart.

Oh my Love is on the billows of the sea,

Sending messages along the waves to me;

And the ever-singing shells along the lea

With my longing heart a constant chorus keep.

But the breaking of the message—the message from the deep,

Makes the silence of my sorrow inly weep;

While the moaning shells intoning, intoning griefs impart

Ever sobbing to the silence of my heart;—

Sobbing to the silence,

Intoning to the moaning,

Breaking to the breaking of my heart,—

Silent sobbing ever,

Grief intoning ever,

Breaking, breaking ever in my heart.

A HUMPTY-DUMPTY IDIOTIC CHAP.There was once a little humpty-dumpty idiotic chap,Who had both a mug an’ muzzle most remarkable to see.An’ he couldn’t do a solitary thing but grin an’ gap,But he done that simply awful an’ he done it constantly.His tater head was sorto’ meller like a punkin over-ripeAn’ his yaller face was puckered like a lemon with the gripe;An’ his front teeth like stalites—or what you call ’em—always gaveTo the cavity behind them the appearance of a cave,—Jist forever an’ forever from life’s earliest beginnin’Simply nachelly a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin an’ a-grinnin’.Well, you see,hecouldn’t help it, couldn’t help it not a bit,’Cause for some peculiar reason he was born jist that-a-way.An’ if Nater marks a feller he had better jist submit,’Cause she wants that mark for somepm, an’ she’s goin to have it stay.Caint no doctor make a rose-bud of a busted-thistle mouth,Nor he caint turn north a foot that’s got to growin’ sorto’ south.Spect this chap inside him knowed it wa’n’t no earthly kind o’ useTo be squeezin’ on a lemon that didn’t have a bit o’ juice;—Maybe ’lowed his ugly mug ’ould be a doin’ less of sinnin’If he’d leave it jist a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.’Course he didn’t reason on it, cause he didn’t have no sense;But I kindo’ sorto’ reckon that he done like others do—Jist set down up where he’d clum on top o’ Nater’s ol worm-fenceAn’ let the sun bile down onto him an’ soak him clean plum thro’ an’ thro’While with busy boom an’ buzz the plunder’n’ bug an’ bumble-beeWent a-nosin’ thro’ the clover where the rosy-posies be.An’ with one eye squinted up an’ t’other squinted down plum shet,Up on top the fence, I spect, twixt brute an’ human there he set,An’ jist let the whirly-gigy world whirl off its spindle spinnin’While he joyed hisself a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.Hopehedidenjoy hisself, ’cause he didn’t have enoughSense to know what trouble was,—he was a idiotic chap.An’ he couldn’t tell to save him if a voice was soft or gruffFor he couldn’ttalk, norhear, nor—nothin’only grin an’ gap.An’ his eyes that kept a winkin an’ a squintin up an’ downNever 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’ flatOn 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’.

There was once a little humpty-dumpty idiotic chap,Who had both a mug an’ muzzle most remarkable to see.An’ he couldn’t do a solitary thing but grin an’ gap,But he done that simply awful an’ he done it constantly.His tater head was sorto’ meller like a punkin over-ripeAn’ his yaller face was puckered like a lemon with the gripe;An’ his front teeth like stalites—or what you call ’em—always gaveTo the cavity behind them the appearance of a cave,—Jist forever an’ forever from life’s earliest beginnin’Simply nachelly a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin an’ a-grinnin’.Well, you see,hecouldn’t help it, couldn’t help it not a bit,’Cause for some peculiar reason he was born jist that-a-way.An’ if Nater marks a feller he had better jist submit,’Cause she wants that mark for somepm, an’ she’s goin to have it stay.Caint no doctor make a rose-bud of a busted-thistle mouth,Nor he caint turn north a foot that’s got to growin’ sorto’ south.Spect this chap inside him knowed it wa’n’t no earthly kind o’ useTo be squeezin’ on a lemon that didn’t have a bit o’ juice;—Maybe ’lowed his ugly mug ’ould be a doin’ less of sinnin’If he’d leave it jist a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.’Course he didn’t reason on it, cause he didn’t have no sense;But I kindo’ sorto’ reckon that he done like others do—Jist set down up where he’d clum on top o’ Nater’s ol worm-fenceAn’ let the sun bile down onto him an’ soak him clean plum thro’ an’ thro’While with busy boom an’ buzz the plunder’n’ bug an’ bumble-beeWent a-nosin’ thro’ the clover where the rosy-posies be.An’ with one eye squinted up an’ t’other squinted down plum shet,Up on top the fence, I spect, twixt brute an’ human there he set,An’ jist let the whirly-gigy world whirl off its spindle spinnin’While he joyed hisself a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.Hopehedidenjoy hisself, ’cause he didn’t have enoughSense to know what trouble was,—he was a idiotic chap.An’ he couldn’t tell to save him if a voice was soft or gruffFor he couldn’ttalk, norhear, nor—nothin’only grin an’ gap.An’ his eyes that kept a winkin an’ a squintin up an’ downNever 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’ flatOn 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’.

There was once a little humpty-dumpty idiotic chap,

Who had both a mug an’ muzzle most remarkable to see.

An’ he couldn’t do a solitary thing but grin an’ gap,

But he done that simply awful an’ he done it constantly.

His tater head was sorto’ meller like a punkin over-ripe

An’ his yaller face was puckered like a lemon with the gripe;

An’ his front teeth like stalites—or what you call ’em—always gave

To the cavity behind them the appearance of a cave,—

Jist forever an’ forever from life’s earliest beginnin’

Simply nachelly a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin an’ a-grinnin’.

Well, you see,hecouldn’t help it, couldn’t help it not a bit,’Cause for some peculiar reason he was born jist that-a-way.An’ if Nater marks a feller he had better jist submit,’Cause she wants that mark for somepm, an’ she’s goin to have it stay.Caint no doctor make a rose-bud of a busted-thistle mouth,Nor he caint turn north a foot that’s got to growin’ sorto’ south.Spect this chap inside him knowed it wa’n’t no earthly kind o’ useTo be squeezin’ on a lemon that didn’t have a bit o’ juice;—Maybe ’lowed his ugly mug ’ould be a doin’ less of sinnin’If he’d leave it jist a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.

Well, you see,hecouldn’t help it, couldn’t help it not a bit,

’Cause for some peculiar reason he was born jist that-a-way.

An’ if Nater marks a feller he had better jist submit,

’Cause she wants that mark for somepm, an’ she’s goin to have it stay.

Caint no doctor make a rose-bud of a busted-thistle mouth,

Nor he caint turn north a foot that’s got to growin’ sorto’ south.

Spect this chap inside him knowed it wa’n’t no earthly kind o’ use

To be squeezin’ on a lemon that didn’t have a bit o’ juice;

—Maybe ’lowed his ugly mug ’ould be a doin’ less of sinnin’

If he’d leave it jist a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.

’Course he didn’t reason on it, cause he didn’t have no sense;But I kindo’ sorto’ reckon that he done like others do—Jist set down up where he’d clum on top o’ Nater’s ol worm-fenceAn’ let the sun bile down onto him an’ soak him clean plum thro’ an’ thro’While with busy boom an’ buzz the plunder’n’ bug an’ bumble-beeWent a-nosin’ thro’ the clover where the rosy-posies be.An’ with one eye squinted up an’ t’other squinted down plum shet,Up on top the fence, I spect, twixt brute an’ human there he set,An’ jist let the whirly-gigy world whirl off its spindle spinnin’While he joyed hisself a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.

’Course he didn’t reason on it, cause he didn’t have no sense;

But I kindo’ sorto’ reckon that he done like others do—

Jist set down up where he’d clum on top o’ Nater’s ol worm-fence

An’ let the sun bile down onto him an’ soak him clean plum thro’ an’ thro’

While with busy boom an’ buzz the plunder’n’ bug an’ bumble-bee

Went a-nosin’ thro’ the clover where the rosy-posies be.

An’ with one eye squinted up an’ t’other squinted down plum shet,

Up on top the fence, I spect, twixt brute an’ human there he set,

An’ jist let the whirly-gigy world whirl off its spindle spinnin’

While he joyed hisself a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’ an’ a-grinnin’.

Hopehedidenjoy hisself, ’cause he didn’t have enoughSense to know what trouble was,—he was a idiotic chap.An’ he couldn’t tell to save him if a voice was soft or gruffFor he couldn’ttalk, norhear, nor—nothin’only grin an’ gap.An’ his eyes that kept a winkin an’ a squintin up an’ downNever 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’ flatOn 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’.

Hopehedidenjoy hisself, ’cause he didn’t have enough

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’ttalk, norhear, 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 sleepAnd 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!

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 sleepAnd 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!

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.

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.

The day has kissed thy happy heart to sleepAnd left thy lips apart in sweet delight;But oh the Night, I know, must slowly creep—Good-night, good-night, my child, good-night.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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!

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 gayFlight awayOver the rolling sea,Night and dayBright my fayBringing sweet music to me.Deep in the seaLeap with gleeBraiding the mermaiden’s hair;Leap the sea,Sweep to me,Bearing her kisses rare.O my fay,Row awayOut in a nautilus shell,Glowingly,Flowingly,Its rhythmical story to tell.Greet the mornFleetly borneOver the foam of the sea,Meet the morn,Sweet returnBringing its beauties to me.Lie and dreamBy the beamThrown from the rolling moon,Lie and dreamNight its gleamAsleep in some deep lagoon.Far enskyedStar-like rideDown in the doming deep,Where the wideBar and tideCroon to the moon asleep.

Light and gayFlight awayOver the rolling sea,Night and dayBright my fayBringing sweet music to me.Deep in the seaLeap with gleeBraiding the mermaiden’s hair;Leap the sea,Sweep to me,Bearing her kisses rare.O my fay,Row awayOut in a nautilus shell,Glowingly,Flowingly,Its rhythmical story to tell.Greet the mornFleetly borneOver the foam of the sea,Meet the morn,Sweet returnBringing its beauties to me.Lie and dreamBy the beamThrown from the rolling moon,Lie and dreamNight its gleamAsleep in some deep lagoon.Far enskyedStar-like rideDown in the doming deep,Where the wideBar and tideCroon to the moon asleep.

Light and gayFlight awayOver the rolling sea,Night and dayBright my fayBringing sweet music to me.

Light and gay

Flight away

Over the rolling sea,

Night and day

Bright my fay

Bringing sweet music to me.

Deep in the seaLeap with gleeBraiding the mermaiden’s hair;Leap the sea,Sweep to me,Bearing her kisses rare.

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 awayOut in a nautilus shell,Glowingly,Flowingly,Its rhythmical story to tell.

O my fay,

Row away

Out in a nautilus shell,

Glowingly,

Flowingly,

Its rhythmical story to tell.

Greet the mornFleetly borneOver the foam of the sea,Meet the morn,Sweet returnBringing its beauties to me.

Greet the morn

Fleetly borne

Over the foam of the sea,

Meet the morn,

Sweet return

Bringing its beauties to me.

Lie and dreamBy the beamThrown from the rolling moon,Lie and dreamNight its gleamAsleep in some deep lagoon.

Lie and dream

By the beam

Thrown from the rolling moon,

Lie and dream

Night its gleam

Asleep in some deep lagoon.

Far enskyedStar-like rideDown in the doming deep,Where the wideBar and tideCroon to the moon asleep.

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 beamsAbove so bright with love and light,Good-night, 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 beamsAbove so bright with love and light,Good-night, 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.

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 beamsAbove so bright with love and light,Good-night, good-night, my Love.

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 indeedMy faint heart should thus fail me;—strangeThat after such transporting loveIn me three days should work such change.Not more than three?—Nay, barely three;And yet, within that raptured timeI’ve lived, it seems, a centuryOf hope in Love’s own blissful clime.’Tis strange, this love of mine, so strange;So strange I fear sometimes I doNot love, but only dream I love,And sleep the mid-life watches through.How many, many is the timeI’ve looked upon some face, some form,And felt the sudden thrill of someFair hand awake the passion-storm!But only momentary; and thenThat old, old longing for the realAnd soul-enlighted face of herWhose image is my heart’s ideal.Ah yes! to-night as I sit and writeSweet visions come before my eyes.Sweet visions only! and like lightsAlong 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 whatIt is, I wonder did they guess?I’ve read of love; I’ve thought of love;I’ve read and thought that in that hourWhen 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 chordAnd wake a glad, harmonious strain.And so I wonder what love is;And if I ever knew beforeA few short, happy days agoHow 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 starsThat 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 nightStand gazing at a star that shinesFor me alone upon the mountain height?Ah yes! I fear me that all nightI’ll watch the silent waning starAdoring and revering tillIt sinks behind some rugged scar.I fear I do not love; I holdThe 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 prayTo whom I love, and inly moan.And thus it is my reverence bringsMe woe. As silent as the tomb,My heart bowed down with sacred aweStill wanders thro’ Love’s trackless dome.Men call me cold. Alas! could theyBut 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 starAnd wear it on his breast? or dipIts gleam from out the soundless seaAnd press it to his loving lip?No more, no more indeed can I,No more can I pluck down the loveThat like an angel day and nightStill 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 thoughtSo selfish—wed her to a clown!No! no! my only hope must beTo 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; herWho wakes in me such thoughts as these;I felt her hand as I sometimes feelAn 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 beforeThe 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 knowMust 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 songThe struggle of my striving soulTo 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 loveWith that unfailing hand of Thine.I ask nor wealth, nor fame, nor power;I ask a pure and loving heartThat I may join that heart to hersForever nevermore to part.And oh then peace, peace, the peace of loveFor that old, old longing; and the realAnd soul-enlighted face of her,The image of my heart’s ideal.

To-night I saw her. Strange indeedMy faint heart should thus fail me;—strangeThat after such transporting loveIn me three days should work such change.Not more than three?—Nay, barely three;And yet, within that raptured timeI’ve lived, it seems, a centuryOf hope in Love’s own blissful clime.’Tis strange, this love of mine, so strange;So strange I fear sometimes I doNot love, but only dream I love,And sleep the mid-life watches through.How many, many is the timeI’ve looked upon some face, some form,And felt the sudden thrill of someFair hand awake the passion-storm!But only momentary; and thenThat old, old longing for the realAnd soul-enlighted face of herWhose image is my heart’s ideal.Ah yes! to-night as I sit and writeSweet visions come before my eyes.Sweet visions only! and like lightsAlong 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 whatIt is, I wonder did they guess?I’ve read of love; I’ve thought of love;I’ve read and thought that in that hourWhen 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 chordAnd wake a glad, harmonious strain.And so I wonder what love is;And if I ever knew beforeA few short, happy days agoHow 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 starsThat 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 nightStand gazing at a star that shinesFor me alone upon the mountain height?Ah yes! I fear me that all nightI’ll watch the silent waning starAdoring and revering tillIt sinks behind some rugged scar.I fear I do not love; I holdThe 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 prayTo whom I love, and inly moan.And thus it is my reverence bringsMe woe. As silent as the tomb,My heart bowed down with sacred aweStill wanders thro’ Love’s trackless dome.Men call me cold. Alas! could theyBut 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 starAnd wear it on his breast? or dipIts gleam from out the soundless seaAnd press it to his loving lip?No more, no more indeed can I,No more can I pluck down the loveThat like an angel day and nightStill 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 thoughtSo selfish—wed her to a clown!No! no! my only hope must beTo 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; herWho wakes in me such thoughts as these;I felt her hand as I sometimes feelAn 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 beforeThe 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 knowMust 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 songThe struggle of my striving soulTo 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 loveWith that unfailing hand of Thine.I ask nor wealth, nor fame, nor power;I ask a pure and loving heartThat I may join that heart to hersForever nevermore to part.And oh then peace, peace, the peace of loveFor that old, old longing; and the realAnd soul-enlighted face of her,The image of my heart’s ideal.

To-night I saw her. Strange indeedMy faint heart should thus fail me;—strangeThat after such transporting loveIn me three days should work such change.

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 timeI’ve lived, it seems, a centuryOf hope in Love’s own blissful clime.

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 doNot love, but only dream I love,And sleep the mid-life watches through.

’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 timeI’ve looked upon some face, some form,And felt the sudden thrill of someFair hand awake the passion-storm!

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 thenThat old, old longing for the realAnd soul-enlighted face of herWhose image is my heart’s ideal.

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 writeSweet visions come before my eyes.Sweet visions only! and like lightsAlong the shore they fall and rise.

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.

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 whatIt is, I wonder did they guess?

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 hourWhen love should truly come to one,’Twould come an all-possessing power;

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 chordAnd wake a glad, harmonious strain.

’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 beforeA few short, happy days agoHow love can rise, and sing, and soar.

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 starsThat I adore because they shine.

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.

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 nightStand gazing at a star that shinesFor me alone upon the mountain height?

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 nightI’ll watch the silent waning starAdoring and revering tillIt sinks behind some rugged scar.

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 holdThe fairer sex too high, I fear;And bowed with awe and humbleness,Instead of loving I revere.

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 prayTo whom I love, and inly moan.

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 bringsMe woe. As silent as the tomb,My heart bowed down with sacred aweStill wanders thro’ Love’s trackless dome.

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 theyBut feel the half, the tenth I feel,Could they but look thro’ reverent eyes,They might my sealed heart unseal.

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.

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 starAnd wear it on his breast? or dipIts gleam from out the soundless seaAnd press it to his loving lip?

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 loveThat like an angel day and nightStill wanders through the dome above.

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 thoughtSo selfish—wed her to a clown!

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 beTo rise above this selfish self;To grow more pure in heart and hope,To lose myself in her sweet self.

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; herWho wakes in me such thoughts as these;I felt her hand as I sometimes feelAn angel’s hand in the dreamy breeze.

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.

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 beforeThe one I love, my heart grows faint,I can but silently adore.

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 knowMust say my heart is full of love,I dare not, can not tell her so.

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 songThe struggle of my striving soulTo rise to her above the throng.

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 loveWith that unfailing hand of Thine.

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 heartThat I may join that heart to hersForever nevermore to part.

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 loveFor that old, old longing; and the realAnd soul-enlighted face of her,The image of my heart’s ideal.

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.

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. ButPoeta nascitur non fitis 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 inhim 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, toilsomeflight, 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 aman, so also both form and spirit are necessary to constitute any of his visible art-creations, as a poem.

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 allpoetic 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.,

“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 isverse; for a verse is but one line of the poetic form, whileverseis 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.

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 amedium 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 thegreat 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.

Would the soul create a statue, it must see “an angel in that marble” 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 themelody, 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.

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 askin 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 essenceof 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’sDunciad, Dryden’sAbsalom and Achitophel, Butler’sHudibras, Byron’sEnglish 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, apain. 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 frompoetry 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 aregathered 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 beread(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 botanizingand 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 forsense,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-souledmob 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 throughgreat 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 thoughministering 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? Itdoes 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.

He who would be an immortal poet must have a great and sympathizing heart; a heart that laughs and weeps, and most of all, a heart that loves. Were I asked the one essential of the poet, that essential which includes all minor requisites, I should answer, Love. “A Poet without Love,” says Carlyle, “were a physical and a metaphysical impossibility.” It is the dominating element of all great poets. What poet is greater, or what one has loved more deeply than Burns?

Love often reveals itself in sorrow and in humor. Though the poet need not be a humorist, must not be at all times, as the term is used, it is nevertheless essential that he have a lively appreciation of the ludicrous, lest he fall into grave errors of thought and expression. But the humor must not be the all-pervading element of his poetry; it should be simply a check, a guide, or sometimes a spur. A keen sense of humor should be to him the lash that whips thought out of its self-constituted morbid glooms, in which it appears ridiculous, into a lively harmony with things as they really are to the hearts of men. It were, indeed, a nice question to determine how far the grave or the humorous should enter poetic composition to the exclusion ofthe other. Certainly the most felicitous poetry is not all rain nor all shine, but the iris of Ulloa struck out of the depths of tears by the happy, hopeful shine of laughter.

But if the poet laugh, he must also love; for he laughs because he loves. This is the divine law. The man who hates never laughs; he may mock. Well may we ponder that. Indeed, tears and laughter, sometimes blended, are but forms of love. If laughter is music, certainly love, that divine gift in the human heart, love of the good, the beautiful, and the true, love of home, of country, of mankind, of God, or of a beautiful image of God, the one who is the heart’s ideal, divine immortal love, is perfect harmony. If the poet’s theme is of the good, the beautiful, and the true, so must his love be. If these dwell not in his heart, he shall search the world and the ages through and not find them; and if love dwell not there with them, his themes shall never touch our hearts.

But the poet, to be appreciated, is not the only one that must possess these qualities. It is the beauty and the love in the soul of him who is touched by the statue, the painting, the melody, the poem, that makes it beautiful to him. It is thus that we help the poet make the poem. Love makes poets of us all.

With our hearts thus tuned to the touch of the Maker’s hand, we may often hold sweet communion with our poet-friends whose love still reaches out to us through the mists of ages and beckons us to the Valhalla of the happy. We may stand alone in the stern, inquisitorial presence of self under the eye of Almighty God, and think thoughts our tongues can never tell.

Strolling arm in arm with good Dan Chaucer as

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