A Great Pilgrim-Pagan

George Soule

Shakespearein red morocco seems always wan and pathetic. I see him looking gloomily out of his unread respectability, bored with his scholarly canonization and his unromantic owners. How he longs for the irresponsible days when he was loved or ignored for his own sake! Now he is forever imprisoned in marble busts and tortured in Histories of English Literature. There is no more tragic fate in the annals of imagination. Terrible is the vengeance taken by institutional culture on those who are great enough to command its admiration.

Therefore, a genius who has not been tagged unduly by the pundits inspires me with a profound delicacy, in a sense akin to the reverence for a beautiful child. Here is a virtue which the world needs. One would like to proclaim it from the housetops. Yet there are the rabble, ready with their election-night enthusiasm, and the scholars, with their pompous niches. If one could only find all those whom the man himself would have selected as friends and whisper the right word in their ears! But, after all, we must speak in public, remembering that even misunderstanding is the birthright of the genius. It is better that power should be expressed in devious and unforeseen channels than not at all.

A flippant friend once told me that he had never had the courage to read William Vaughn Moody because the poet had such a dark brown name. That is important because of its triviality. I have no doubt that if the gospel hymns had never been written, and if we had never on gloomy Sunday evenings seen those pale books with the scroll-work Moody-and-Sankey covers, bringing all their dismal train of musical and religious doggerel, we should have been spared many misgivings about the evangelistâ€™s vicarious name-sake. Let it be firmly understood, therefore, that there is nothing dark brown, or evangelistic, or stupidly sober-serious about the new poet of the Fire-Bringer. May he never go into a household-classics edition!

But there is a tinge of New England about him, just the same. Only one who has in his blood the solemn possibilities of religious emotion can react against orthodox narrowness without becoming trivial. It is the fashion to blame all modern ills on puritan traditions. We should be wise if in order to fight our evils we should invoke a little of the Pilgrim Fathersâ€™ heroism. Too many of us take up the patter of radicalism with as little genuine sincerity as a spearmint ribbon-clerk repeats the latest Sunday-comic slang. If you have ever walked over a New England countryside the endless miles of stone walls may have set you thinking. Every one of those millions of stones has been laboriously picked out of the fieldsâ€”and there are still many there. Before that the trees had to be cleared away, and the Indians fought, and the ocean crossed without chart or government buoy. For over two centuries our ancestors grimly created our country for us, with an incessant summer- and winter-courage that seems the attribute of giants. What wonder if they were hard and narrow? We scoff at their terminal morraine; but we should be more deserving of their gift if we should emulate their stout hearts in clearing away the remaining debris from the economical and spiritual fields. In spite of injurious puritan traditions there is something inalienably American and truly great about old New England. It is the same unafraid stoutness of heart that is at the bottom of Moodyâ€™s personality. It gives him power; it gives him unconscious dignity.

Yet Moody was indeed a rebel against the religious and social muddle in which he found himself. Something red and pagan poured into his veins the instinct of defiance to a jealous god and to pale customs. The best of the Greek was his; instinctively he turned at last to Greek drama for his form and to Greek mythology for his figures. There was in him that ÏƒÏ€Î¿Î½Î´Î· which Aristotle believed essential for the poetâ€”a quality so rare among us that the literal translation, â€œhigh seriousness,â€ conveys little hint of its warmth, its nobility and splendor. He believed in the body as in the soul; and his conception of the godly was rounded and not inhuman. Dionysus was every bit as real to him as the man of sorrows. Is not this the new spirit of America which we wish to nourish? And is there not a peculiar virtue in the poet who with thestrong arm of the pilgrim and the consecration of the puritan fought for the kingdom of joy among us? InThe Masque of Judgmenthe pictures a group of heroic unrepentant rebels against divine grace who have not yet fallen under the sword of the destroying angel. Of them one, a youth, sings:

Better with captives in the slaverâ€™s penHear women sob, and sit with cursing men,Yea, better here among these writhen lips,Than pluck out from the blood its old companionships.If God had set me for one hour alone,Apart from clash of swordAnd trumpet pealÃ©d word,I think I should have fled unto his throne.But always ere the dayspring shook the sky,Somewhere the silver trumpets were acry,â€”Sweet, high, oh, high and sweet!What voice could summon so but the soulâ€™s paraclete?Whom should such voices call but me, to dare and die?O ye asleep here in the eyrie town,Ye mothers, babes, and maids, and aged men,The plain is full of foemen! Turn againâ€”Sleep sound, or waken halfOnly to hear our happy bugles laughLovely defiance down,As through the steepGrey streets we sweep,Each horse and man a ribbÃ©d fan to scatter all that chaff!How from the lance-shock and the griding swordUntwine the still small accents of the Lord?How hear the Prince of Peace and Lord of HostsSpeak from the zenith â€™mid his marshalled ghosts,â€œVengeance is mine, I will repay;Cease thou and come away!â€Or having seen and hearkened, how refrainFrom crying, heart and brain,â€œSo, Lord, Thou sayest it, Thineâ€”But also mine, ah, surely also mine!Else why and for what goodThe strength of arm my father got for meBy perfect chastity,This glorious anger poured into my bloodOut of my motherâ€™s depths of ardency?â€

Better with captives in the slaverâ€™s pen

Hear women sob, and sit with cursing men,

Yea, better here among these writhen lips,

Than pluck out from the blood its old companionships.

If God had set me for one hour alone,

Apart from clash of sword

And trumpet pealÃ©d word,

I think I should have fled unto his throne.

But always ere the dayspring shook the sky,

Somewhere the silver trumpets were acry,â€”

Sweet, high, oh, high and sweet!

What voice could summon so but the soulâ€™s paraclete?

Whom should such voices call but me, to dare and die?

O ye asleep here in the eyrie town,

Ye mothers, babes, and maids, and aged men,

The plain is full of foemen! Turn againâ€”

Sleep sound, or waken half

Only to hear our happy bugles laugh

Lovely defiance down,

As through the steep

Grey streets we sweep,

Each horse and man a ribbÃ©d fan to scatter all that chaff!

How from the lance-shock and the griding swordUntwine the still small accents of the Lord?How hear the Prince of Peace and Lord of HostsSpeak from the zenith â€™mid his marshalled ghosts,â€œVengeance is mine, I will repay;Cease thou and come away!â€Or having seen and hearkened, how refrainFrom crying, heart and brain,â€œSo, Lord, Thou sayest it, Thineâ€”But also mine, ah, surely also mine!Else why and for what goodThe strength of arm my father got for meBy perfect chastity,This glorious anger poured into my bloodOut of my motherâ€™s depths of ardency?â€

How from the lance-shock and the griding sword

Untwine the still small accents of the Lord?

How hear the Prince of Peace and Lord of Hosts

Speak from the zenith â€™mid his marshalled ghosts,

â€œVengeance is mine, I will repay;

Cease thou and come away!â€

Or having seen and hearkened, how refrain

From crying, heart and brain,

â€œSo, Lord, Thou sayest it, Thineâ€”

But also mine, ah, surely also mine!

Else why and for what good

The strength of arm my father got for me

By perfect chastity,

This glorious anger poured into my blood

Out of my motherâ€™s depths of ardency?â€

So the sanctity of the warrior. And the sanctity of other passions is there, too. A woman says:

O sisters, brothers, help me to arise!Of Godâ€™s two-hornÃ©d throne I will lay holdAnd let him see my eyes;That he may understand what love can be,And raise his curse, and set his children free.

O sisters, brothers, help me to arise!

Of Godâ€™s two-hornÃ©d throne I will lay hold

And let him see my eyes;

That he may understand what love can be,

And raise his curse, and set his children free.

But quotations crowd upon me. Most of Moodyâ€™s best work bears witness to his glorification of manâ€™s possible personality in rebellion against manâ€™s restrictive conception of society and god. We have had many such rebels; the peculiar significance of Moody lies in the fact that he lacks utterly the triviality of the little radical, and that his is a power which springs from the most heroic in American quality.

Of course all this would be worth nothing unless Moody had the authentic utterance of the poet. His fulness of inspiration, combined with his sensitive editing, has left us scarcely a line which should have gone to oblivion. As an example of his magic take three lines fromI Am the Woman, in which the woman is walking with her lover:

But I was mute with passionate prophecies;My heart went veiled and faint in the golden weather,While universe drifted by after still universe.

But I was mute with passionate prophecies;

My heart went veiled and faint in the golden weather,

While universe drifted by after still universe.

Or the womanâ€™s response to Pandoraâ€™s singing inThe Fire-Bringer:

Hark, hark, the pouring music! Never yetThe pools below the waterfalls, thy pools,Thy dark pools, O my heartâ€”!

Hark, hark, the pouring music! Never yet

The pools below the waterfalls, thy pools,

Thy dark pools, O my heartâ€”!

Fragmentary, mystic, unrelated with the context; yet who that has heard perfect music can fail to understand that cry? It is indeed this mystic richness, these depths below depths, that make a large part of Moodyâ€™s individual fascination. He rarely has the limpid clarity or the soaring simplicity which make the popular lyricist such as Shelley. There is too much grasp of the mind in his work for the large public; only those who have in some degree discovered the beauty of the wide ranges can feel at home in him. One breathes with the strength of great virility,â€”an able and demanding body, a mind which conquers the heights, and those infinitely subtle and vibrating reaches of spirit which belong especially to the poet.

To me the thought of Moody is satisfying not only because he typifies those qualities which I like to think we ought to find in American literature, but because he exemplifies my ideal of a poet. There have been many insane geniuses; men whose glory has shone sometimes fitfully through bodily or mental infirmity. Some of us are accustomed to the idea that genius is in fact insanity or is akin to it. Certainly the words â€œwholesomeâ€ and â€œhealthyâ€ have been applied so many times to mediocre productions that we are wary of them. But is not the insanity of genius after all merely the abnormal greatness and preponderance of a single quality in a man? If by some miracle his other qualities could have been equally great, would he not have been a still nobler artist? To me the Greek impulse of proportionate development has an irresistible appeal. To be sane, not by the denial of a disproportionate inspiration, but by the lifting of all the faculties to itslevel: that is a dream worthy of the god in man. To be an artist not by the denial of competing faculties, but by the fullest development of all faculties under an inexorable will which unites them in a common purpose: that is a rich conception of personality. The perfect poet should be the perfect man. He should be not insane, but saner than the rest of us. Moody not only expressed this ideal in his life, but in his work. He was strong and sound, physically, mentally, spiritually. No one who has read his letters can miss the golden roundness of his humor, his humanity, his manliness. Yet never for a moment did he make a comfortable denial of the will to soar. In his poemThe Death of Evehe has burningly expressed the development of personality. Eve, an aged woman, has not succumbed to the view that she committed an unforgivable sin in disobeying God to taste the apple. Taking old Cain with her, she fearlessly enters the garden again to show herself to God before she dies. In her mystic song she sings:

Behold, against thy will, against thy word,Against the wrath and warning of thy sword,Eve has been Eve, O Lord!A pitcher filled, she comes back from the brook,A wain she comes, laden with mellow ears;She is a roll inscribed, a prophetâ€™s bookWrit strong with characters.Behold, Eve willed it so; look, if it be so, look!

Behold, against thy will, against thy word,

Against the wrath and warning of thy sword,

Eve has been Eve, O Lord!

A pitcher filled, she comes back from the brook,

A wain she comes, laden with mellow ears;

She is a roll inscribed, a prophetâ€™s book

Writ strong with characters.

Behold, Eve willed it so; look, if it be so, look!

And after singing of her life and of how she had been sensitive to the love of her husband and children, she goes on:

Still, still with prayer and ecstasy she stroveTo be the woman they did well approve,That, narrowed to their love,She might have done with bitterness and blame;But still along the yonder edge of prayerA spirit in a fiery whirlwind cameâ€”Eveâ€™s spirit, wild and fairâ€”Crying with Eveâ€™s own voice the number of her name.Yea, turning in the whirlwind and the fire,Eve saw her own proud being all entireMade perfect by desire;And from the rounded gladness of that sphereCame bridal songs and harpings and fresh laughter;â€œGlory unto the faithful,â€ sounded clear,And then, a little after,â€œWhoso denyeth aught, let him depart from here!â€

Still, still with prayer and ecstasy she strove

To be the woman they did well approve,

That, narrowed to their love,

She might have done with bitterness and blame;

But still along the yonder edge of prayer

A spirit in a fiery whirlwind cameâ€”

Eveâ€™s spirit, wild and fairâ€”

Crying with Eveâ€™s own voice the number of her name.

Yea, turning in the whirlwind and the fire,Eve saw her own proud being all entireMade perfect by desire;And from the rounded gladness of that sphereCame bridal songs and harpings and fresh laughter;â€œGlory unto the faithful,â€ sounded clear,And then, a little after,â€œWhoso denyeth aught, let him depart from here!â€

Yea, turning in the whirlwind and the fire,

Eve saw her own proud being all entire

Made perfect by desire;

And from the rounded gladness of that sphere

Came bridal songs and harpings and fresh laughter;

â€œGlory unto the faithful,â€ sounded clear,

And then, a little after,

â€œWhoso denyeth aught, let him depart from here!â€

And only thus does Eve find godâ€”in her perfect selfâ€”

Ready and boon to be fulfilled of Thee,Thine ample, tameless creature,â€”Against thy will and word, behold, Lord, this is She!

Ready and boon to be fulfilled of Thee,

Thine ample, tameless creature,â€”

Against thy will and word, behold, Lord, this is She!

Here, indeed, is the religion of our time. A faithfulness that is deeper than the old faithfulness; and that challenge which of all modern inspiration is the most flaming:

Whoso denyeth aught, let him depart from here!

This is not the balance of a personality that denies itself! Like Nietzsche, Moody is shaken with the conviction that the most deadly sin is not disobedience, but smallness.

There is a striking similarity between the religious attitude of Moody and that of Nietzsche. Moody mentions Zarathustra only once in his published letters. Certainly he was not obsessed by the German, or a confessed follower. Nor did Moody elaborate any social philosophy, beyond a general radicalism quite different from Nietzscheâ€™s condemnation of socialism. But, like Nietzsche, Moody was in reaction against a false and narrow culture. And like him, Moody found in Hellenic ideals a blood-stirring inspiration. He found not the external grace of the Greek which Keats celebrated, not the static classical perfection which has furnished an anodyne for scholars. It was the deeper, cloudy spirit of Aeschylus, the heaven-scaling challenge of Euripides, the Dionysiac worship of joy and passion. Take, for instance, the chorus of young men inThe Fire-Bringerwhich Professor Manly has called â€œinsolentâ€â€”though it seems to me of a divine insolence:

Eros, how sweetIs the cup of thy drunkenness!Dionysus, how our feetHasten to the burning cupThou liftest up!But O how sweet and how most burning it isTo drink the wine of thy lightsome chalices,Apollo! Apollo! To-dayWe say we will follow thee and put all others awayFor thou alone, O thou alone art heWho settest the prisoned spirit free,And sometimes leadest the rapt soul onWhere never mortal thought has gone;Till by the ultimate streamOf vision and of dreamShe standsWith startled eyes and outstretched hands,Looking where other suns rise over other lands,And rends the lonely skies with her prophetic scream.

Eros, how sweet

Is the cup of thy drunkenness!

Dionysus, how our feet

Hasten to the burning cup

Thou liftest up!

But O how sweet and how most burning it is

To drink the wine of thy lightsome chalices,

Apollo! Apollo! To-day

We say we will follow thee and put all others away

For thou alone, O thou alone art he

Who settest the prisoned spirit free,

And sometimes leadest the rapt soul on

Where never mortal thought has gone;

Till by the ultimate stream

Of vision and of dream

She stands

With startled eyes and outstretched hands,

Looking where other suns rise over other lands,

And rends the lonely skies with her prophetic scream.

Moody, too, transvaluates values everywhere.The Death of Eveis an example of it. It is to â€œThe Bruteâ€ that he looks for the regeneration of society. Prometheus is a heroic saviour of mankind; rebellion is his virtue,not his sin. Pandora is not a mischievous person who through her curiosity lets out all the troubles on the world, but a divine, wind-like inquirer, the inspiration of Prometheus. The God of judgment-day is himself swept away by the destruction of mankind for the sins of commission. And the insignificance of man compared with what he might be is satirically shown inThe Menagerie.

But let me not create the impression that Moody cannot be delicate. FromHeartâ€™s Wild Flower:

But where she strays, through blight or blooth, one fadeless flower she wears,A little gift God gave my youth,â€”whose petals dim were fears,Awes, adorations, songs of ruth, hesitancies, and tears.

But where she strays, through blight or blooth, one fadeless flower she wears,

A little gift God gave my youth,â€”whose petals dim were fears,

Awes, adorations, songs of ruth, hesitancies, and tears.

From the gentle poem of motherhood,The Daguerreotype:

And all is well, for I have seen them plain,The unforgettable, the unforgotten eyes!Across the blinding gush of these good tearsThey shine as in the sweet and heavy yearsWhen by her bed and chairWe children gathered jealously to shareThe sunlit aura breathing myrrh and thyme,Where the sore-stricken body made a climeGentler than May and pleasanter than rhyme,Holier and more mystical than prayer.

And all is well, for I have seen them plain,

The unforgettable, the unforgotten eyes!

Across the blinding gush of these good tears

They shine as in the sweet and heavy years

When by her bed and chair

We children gathered jealously to share

The sunlit aura breathing myrrh and thyme,

Where the sore-stricken body made a clime

Gentler than May and pleasanter than rhyme,

Holier and more mystical than prayer.

Or fromThe Moon-Moth:

Mountains and seas, cities and isles and capes,All frail as in a dream and painted like a dream,All swimming with the fairy light that drapesA bubble, when the colors curl and streamAnd meet and flee asunder. I could deemThis earth, this air, my dizzy soul, the sky,Time, knowledge, and the godsWere lapsing, curling, streaming lazilyDown a great bubbleâ€™s rondure, dye on dye,To swell that perilous clinging drop that nods,Gathers, and nods, and clings, through all eternity.

Mountains and seas, cities and isles and capes,

All frail as in a dream and painted like a dream,

All swimming with the fairy light that drapes

A bubble, when the colors curl and stream

And meet and flee asunder. I could deem

This earth, this air, my dizzy soul, the sky,

Time, knowledge, and the gods

Were lapsing, curling, streaming lazily

Down a great bubbleâ€™s rondure, dye on dye,

To swell that perilous clinging drop that nods,

Gathers, and nods, and clings, through all eternity.

Here, surely, is an American poet who speaks in eternal terms of the new inspiration; one who was sane and blazing at the same time; one who in order to be modern did not need to use a poor imitation of Whitman, screech of boiler factories and exalt a somewhat doubtful brand of democracy; one who was uncompromisingly radical without being feverish; above all, one who succeeded in writing the most beautiful verse without going to London to do it. When one is oppressed with the doubt of American possibilities it is a renewal of faith to turn to him. If Whitman is of our soil, Moody is no less so; through these two the best in us has thus far found its individual expression.

The temptation to quote is one that should not be resisted. And I can think of no better way to send readers to Moody in the present world crisis than to quote the song of Pandora:

Of wounds and sore defeatI made my battle stay;WingÃ©d sandals for my feetI wove of my delay;Of weariness and fearI made my shouting spear;Of loss, and doubt, and dread,And swift oncoming doomI made a helmet for my headAnd a floating plume.From the shutting mist of death,From the failure of the breath,I made a battle-horn to blowAcross the vales of overthrow.O hearken, love, the battle-horn!The triumph clear, the silver scorn!O hearken where the echoes bring,Down the grey disastrous morn,Laughter and rallying!

Of wounds and sore defeat

I made my battle stay;

I wove of my delay;

Of weariness and fear

I made my shouting spear;

Of loss, and doubt, and dread,

And swift oncoming doom

I made a helmet for my head

And a floating plume.

From the shutting mist of death,

From the failure of the breath,

I made a battle-horn to blow

Across the vales of overthrow.

O hearken, love, the battle-horn!

The triumph clear, the silver scorn!

O hearken where the echoes bring,

Down the grey disastrous morn,

Laughter and rallying!

If they (men) were books, I would not read them.â€”Goethe.

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