A QUESTION OF FORM.

“LET ME NOT MUCH COMPLAIN.”Let me not much complain of life, in age;Life is not faulty, life is well enough,For those who love their daily round of doing,And take things rounded, never in the rough,Turning from day to day the same old page,And their old knowledge ever more renewing.I have known many such; through life they wentWith moderate use of moderate heritage,Giving and spending, saving as they spent,These are wise men, though never counted sage;They looked for little, easy men to please;But I, more deeply drunk of life’s full cup,Feel, as my lips come nearer to the lees,I dived for pearls, and brought but pebbles up.—Thomas William Parsons, in theCentury.

Let me not much complain of life, in age;Life is not faulty, life is well enough,For those who love their daily round of doing,And take things rounded, never in the rough,Turning from day to day the same old page,And their old knowledge ever more renewing.I have known many such; through life they wentWith moderate use of moderate heritage,Giving and spending, saving as they spent,These are wise men, though never counted sage;They looked for little, easy men to please;But I, more deeply drunk of life’s full cup,Feel, as my lips come nearer to the lees,I dived for pearls, and brought but pebbles up.

Let me not much complain of life, in age;

Life is not faulty, life is well enough,

For those who love their daily round of doing,

And take things rounded, never in the rough,

Turning from day to day the same old page,

And their old knowledge ever more renewing.

I have known many such; through life they went

With moderate use of moderate heritage,

Giving and spending, saving as they spent,

These are wise men, though never counted sage;

They looked for little, easy men to please;

But I, more deeply drunk of life’s full cup,

Feel, as my lips come nearer to the lees,

I dived for pearls, and brought but pebbles up.

—Thomas William Parsons, in theCentury.

By title the above lines commend themselves as “well enough” wisdom, yet will I “much complain” of them.

Here are fourteen lines.

At glance the eye anticipates a sonnet, following one of the fixed orders of sonnet rhymes. The endof the third line yielding no recurrent sound, the ear is disappointed and infers blank verse, while expectation is frustrated by the fourth line rhyming with the second.

Did we read aright? Perhaps the first and third lines do conform to the Shakspearean order now suggested! Go back. “Age,”—“doing,” no! and we reach “page” at the end of line fifth with the suspicion that we have stumbled on a nondescript.

Well, give it another chance, and begin again!

This time we ask: what is it in the third and fourth lines that gives the ear a sensation as if something was struck with a hammer?

Yes, “round” and its iterate “rounded.”

Such sforzando does not occur in a good sonnet unless there is an idea to be emphasized, to which the mind is pointed by the ear.

But we conclude that this is not a sonnet, and apatheticly scan didactic platitudes through eleven lines till sobriety is startled by the all too frank confession of the twelfth.

We read it twice, to see if it is not a lapse of grammar, or a squeeze of “have drank” to meet the exigencies of rhythm, and come up from the dive of the last line thirsty to know just what image Mr. Parsons had in his mind.

Was his conception analogous to that of the reporter’swho described the pretty actress as “standing on the brink of the rushing torrent of Niagara and drinking it all in with shining eyes”?

Was “life’s full cup” so immense that Mr. Parsons dove therein for pearls? A pretty large cup to drink to the lees, that? Is there, as a rule, any reasonable expectation of discovering pearls or pebbles, or, for that matter, lees, in a wine cup? Was the condition so awkwardly characterized in the twelfth line—but no! there is simply an unconsidered mixing of metaphors in this short poem, that starts with the book of life, and in the last three lines introduces the cup of life, and the sea of life. The last line, by the way, is mixed upon itself. Pearls and pebbles are not found mingled, and at the bottom of the sea, notwithstanding Robert Browning’s Divers inPan and Luna.

Who dive for pearls do not so on pebbly bottoms. No doubt, by unluck, they often bring up valueless shells.

The orders of rhythms and rhymes in a sonnet are supposed to be known to all poetasters—or one can consult the Century Dictionary.

These forms should be kept in sacred reserve. Therein the poet may mold some holy sentiment or feeling—not with wandering thought: rising through the personal to the universal, or perhaps veiling theuniversal in the personal. If one reproduces such trite didactic thought, why not bestow enough labor to shape a pure form?

By so doing the platitudes even might be polished and made to shine like new, with new metaphor.

I have not been able to resist the temptation of trying a prentice hand on the metaphors in Mr. Parsons’s lines. Perhaps with more spleen against the “well enough,” more enthusiasm for the intoxication not of the wine, and more sympathy for the luckless diver.

FAILURE.Too long I’ve lingered inland fruitlessly,Strolling with moonlit loves through narrow vales,Where to rapt hearts rave love-tranced nightingales!I so said, thrilling to the far off sea,Whose deep voiced tides and storms were calling me:Leave dalliance, and breast my wholesome gales,The world is known not in thy timid dales;My winds ’twixt nations waft my lovers free.But when I came unto the thundrous shore,Long enervating habit balked intent;My ventured wealth returned less than before,I dove for pearls, found only empty shells:Yet learned I then what love and peace have meant,Though not why famed ambitions strike their knells.William James Baker.

Too long I’ve lingered inland fruitlessly,Strolling with moonlit loves through narrow vales,Where to rapt hearts rave love-tranced nightingales!I so said, thrilling to the far off sea,Whose deep voiced tides and storms were calling me:Leave dalliance, and breast my wholesome gales,The world is known not in thy timid dales;My winds ’twixt nations waft my lovers free.But when I came unto the thundrous shore,Long enervating habit balked intent;My ventured wealth returned less than before,I dove for pearls, found only empty shells:Yet learned I then what love and peace have meant,Though not why famed ambitions strike their knells.

Too long I’ve lingered inland fruitlessly,

Strolling with moonlit loves through narrow vales,

Where to rapt hearts rave love-tranced nightingales!

I so said, thrilling to the far off sea,

Whose deep voiced tides and storms were calling me:

Leave dalliance, and breast my wholesome gales,

The world is known not in thy timid dales;

My winds ’twixt nations waft my lovers free.

But when I came unto the thundrous shore,

Long enervating habit balked intent;

My ventured wealth returned less than before,

I dove for pearls, found only empty shells:

Yet learned I then what love and peace have meant,

Though not why famed ambitions strike their knells.

William James Baker.

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