The Poet's Poet Part 12

He will a.s.sert that the mission of the poet is "to see life steadily and see it whole," a feat which is impossible if the wors.h.i.+p of one figure out of the mult.i.tude is allowed to distort relative values, and to throw his view out of perspective.

Finally, the enemy of love may call as witnesses poets whom he fancies he has led astray. Strangely enough, considering the dedication of the _Ring and the Book_, he is likely to give most conspicuous place among these witnesses to Browning. Like pa.s.sages of Holy Writ, lines from Browning have been used as the text for whatever harangue a new theorist sees fit to give us. In _Youth and Art_, the non-lover will point out the characteristic att.i.tude of young people who are "married to their art," and consequently have no capacity for other affection. In _Pauline_, he will gloat over the hero's confession that he is inept in love because he is concerned with his perceptions rather than with their objects, and his explanation,

I am made up of an intensest life; Of a most clear idea of consciousness Of self ...

And I can love nothing,--and this dull truth Has come at last: but sense supplies a love Encircling me and mingling with my life.

He will point out that Sordello is another example of the same type, for though Sordello is ostensibly the lover of Palma, he really finds nothing outside himself worthy of his unbounded adoration. [Footnote: Compare Browning's treatment of Sordello with the conventional treatment of him as lover, in _Sordello_, by Mrs. W. Buck (1837).] Turning to Tennyson, in _Lucretius_ the non-lover will note the tragic death of the hero that grows out of the asceticism in love engendered by his absorption in composition. With the greatest pride the enemy of love will point to his popularity in the 1890's, when the artificial and heartless artist enjoyed his greatest vogue. As his most scintillating advocate he will choose Oscar Wilde. a.s.suring us of many prose pa.s.sages in his favor, he will read to us the expression of conflict between love and art in _Flower of Love_, where Wilde exclaims,

I have made my choice, have lived my poems, and though my youth is gone in wasted days, I have found the lover's crown of myrtle better than the poet's crown of bays,

and he will read the record of the same sense of conflict, in different mood, expressed in the sonnet _Helas_:

To drift with every pa.s.sion till my soul Is a stringed lute on which all winds can play, Is it for this that I have given away Mine ancient wisdom and austere control?

Methinks my life is a twice-written scroll Scrawled over on some boyish holiday With idle songs for pipe and virelai, Which do but mar the secret of the whole.

Surely there was a time I might have trod The sunlit heights, and from life's dissonance Struck one clear chord to reach the ears of G.o.d.

Is that time dead? Lo, with a little rod I did but touch the honey of romance, And must I lose a soul's inheritance?

And yet, when the non-lover has finally arrived at the peroration of his defense, we may remain unshaken in our conviction that from the _Song of Solomon_ to the _Love Songs of Sara Teasdale_, the history of poetry const.i.tutes an almost unbroken hymn to the power of love, "the poet, and the source of poetry in others," [Footnote: _The Symposium_ of Plato, -- 196.] as Agathon characterized him at the banquet in Love's honour.

Within the field of our especial inquiry, the last century, we may rest a.s.sured that there is no true poet whose work, rightly interpreted, is out of tune with this general acclaim. Even Browning and Oscar Wilde are to be saved, although, it may be, only as by fire.

The influence of love upon poetry, which we are a.s.suming with such _a priori_ certainty, is effected in various ways. The most obvious, of course, is by affording new subject matter. The confidence of Shakespeare,

How can my muse want subject to invent While thou dost breathe, that pourest into my verse Thine own sweet argument?

is at least as characteristic of the nineteenth as of the sixteenth century. The depletion of our lyric poetry, if everything relating to the singer's love affairs were omitted, is appalling even to contemplate. Yet, if this were the extent of love's influence upon poetry, one would have to cla.s.s it, in kind if not in degree, with any number of other personal experiences that have thrilled the poet to composition.

The scope of love's influence is widened when one reflects upon its efficacy as a prize held up before the poet, spurring him on to express himself. In this aspect poetry is often a form of spiritual display comparable to the gay plumage upon the birds at mating season. In the case of women poets, verse often affords an essentially refined and lady-like manner of expressing one's sentiments toward a possible suitor. The convention so charmingly expressed in William Morris' lines, _Rhyme Slayeth Shame_, seems to be especially grateful to them. At times the ruse fails, as a writer has recently admitted:

All sing it now, all praise its artless art, But ne'er the one for whom the song was made, [Footnote: Edith Thomas, _Vos non n.o.bis_.]

but perhaps the worth of the poetry is not affected by the stubbornness of its recipient. Sara Teasdale very delicately names her anthology of love poems by women, _The Answering Voice_, but half the poems reveal the singer speaking first, while a number of them show her expressing an open-minded att.i.tude toward any possible applicant for her hand among her readers. But it is not merely for its efficacy as a matrimonial agency that poets are indebted to love.

Since the nineteenth century is primarily the age of the love story, personal experience of love has been invaluable to the poet in a third way. The taste of the time has demanded that the poet sing of the tender theme almost exclusively, whether in dramatic, lyric or narrative, whether in historical or fictional verse. This is, of course, one reason that, wherever the figure of a bard appears in verse, he is almost always portrayed as a lover. Not to ill.u.s.trate exhaustively, three of the most widely read poems with poet heroes, of the beginning, middle and end of the century respectively, _i. e._, Moore's _Lalla Rookh_, Mrs. Browning's _Lady Geraldine's Courts.h.i.+p_, and Coventry Patmore's _The Angel in the House_, all depend for plot interest upon their hero's implication in a love affair. The authors'

love affairs were invaluable, no doubt, since a poet is not be expected to treat adequately a pa.s.sion which he has not experienced himself. It is true that one hears from time to time, notably in the 1890's, that the artist should remain apart from, and coldly critical of the emotions he portrays. But this is not the typical att.i.tude of our period. When one speaks thus, he is usually thought to be confusing the poet with the literary man, who writes from calculation rather than from inspiration.

The dictum of Aristotle, "Those who feel emotion are most convincing through a natural sympathy with the characters they represent,"

[Footnote: _Poetics_ XVII, Butcher's translation.] has appeared self-evident to most critics of our time.

But the real question of inspiration by love goes deeper and is connected with Aristotle's further suggestion that poetry involves "a strain of madness," a statement which we are wont to interpret as meaning that the poet is led by his pa.s.sions rather than by his reason.

This const.i.tutes the gist of the whole dispute between the romanticist and the cla.s.sicist, and our poets are such ardent devotees of love as their muse, simply because, in spite of other short-lived fads, the temper of the last century has remained predominantly romantic. It is obvious that the idea of love as a distraction and a curse is the offspring of cla.s.sicism. If poetry is the work of the reason, then equilibrium of soul, which is so sorely upset by pa.s.sionate love, is doubtless very necessary. But the romanticist represents the poet, not as one drawing upon the resources within his mind, but as the vessel filled from without. His afflatus comes upon him and departs, without his control or understanding. Poetical inspiration, to such a temperament, naturally a.s.sumes the shape of pa.s.sion. Bryant's expression of this point of view is so typical of the general att.i.tude as to seem merely commonplace. He tells us, in _The Poet_,

No smooth array of phrase, Artfully sought and ordered though it be, Which the cold rhymer lays Upon his page languid industry Can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed.

The secret wouldst thou know To touch the heart or fire the blood at will?

Let thine own eyes o'erflow; Let thy lips quiver with the pa.s.sionate thrill.

Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past, And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast.

Coleridge's comprehension of this fact led him to cry, "Love is the vital air of my genius." [Footnote: Letter to his wife, March 12, 1799.]

All this, considering the usual subject-matter of poetry, is perhaps only saying that the poet must be sincere. The mathematician is most sincere when he uses his intellect exclusively, but a reasoned portrayal of pa.s.sion is bound to falsify, for it leads one insensibly either to understate, or to burlesque, or to indulge in a psychopathic a.n.a.lysis of emotion. [Footnote: Of the latter type of poetry a good example is Edgar Lee Masters' _Monsieur D---- and the Psycho-a.n.a.lyst_.]

Accordingly, our poets have not been slow to remind us of their pa.s.sionate temperaments. Landor, perhaps, may oblige us to dip into his biography in order to verify our thesis that the poet is invariably pa.s.sionate, but in many cases this state of things is reversed, the poet being wont to a.s.sure us that the conventional incidents of his life afford no gauge of the ardors within his soul. Thus Wordsworth solemnly a.s.sures us,

Had I been a writer of love poetry, it would have been natural to me to write with a degree of warmth which could hardly have been approved by my principles, and which might have been undesirable for the reader.

[Footnote: See Arthur Symons, _The Romantic Movement_, p. 92 (from Myers, _Life of Wordsworth_).]

Such boasting is equally characteristic of our staid American poets, who shrink from the imputation that their orderly lives are the result of temperamental incapacity for unrestraint. [Footnote: Thus Whittier, in _My Namesake_, says of himself,

Few guessed beneath his aspect grave What pa.s.sions strove in chains.

Also Bayard Taylor retorts to those who taunt him with lack of pa.s.sion,

But you are blind, and to the blind The touch of ice and fire is one.

The same defense is made by Richard W. Gilder in lines ent.i.tled _Our Elder Poets_.] In differing mode, Swinburne's poetry is perhaps an expression of the same att.i.tude. The ultra-erotic verse of that poet somehow suggests a wild hullabaloo raised to divert our attention from the fact that he was const.i.tutionally incapable of experiencing pa.s.sion.

Early in the century, something approaching the Wordsworthian doctrine of emotion recollected in tranquillity was in vogue, as regards capacity for pa.s.sion. The Byronic hero is one whose affections have burned themselves out, and who employs the last worthless years of his life writing them up. Childe Harold is

Grown aged in this world of woe, In deeds, not years, piercing the depths of life, So that no wonder waits him, nor below Can love, or sorrow, fame, ambition, strife, Cut to his heart again with the keen knife Of silent, sharp endurance.

The very imitative hero of Praed's _The Troubadour_, after disappointment in several successive amours, at the age of twenty-six dismisses pa.s.sion forever. We are a.s.sured that

The joys that wound, the pains that bless, Were all, were all departed, And he was wise and pa.s.sionless And happy and cold-hearted.

The popularity of this sort of poet was, however, ephemeral. Of late years poets have shown nothing but contempt for their brothers who attempt to sing after their pa.s.sion has died away. It seems likely, beside, that instead of giving an account of his genius, the depleted poet depicts his pa.s.sionless state only as a ruse to gain the sympathy of his readers, reminding them how much greater he might have been if he had not wantonly wasted his emotions.

One is justified in asking why, on the other hand, the poet should not be one who, instead of spending his love on a finite mistress, should devote it all to poetry. The bard asks us to believe that love of poetry is as thrilling a pa.s.sion as any earthly one. His usual emotions are portrayed in Alexander Smith's _Life Drama_, where the hero agonizes for relief from his too ardent love:

O that my heart was quiet as a grave Asleep in moonlight!

For, as a torrid sunset boils with gold Up to the zenith, fierce within my soul A pa.s.sion burns from bas.e.m.e.nt to the cope.

Poesy, poesy!

But one who imagines that this pa.s.sion can exist in the soul wholly unrelated to any other, is confusing poetry with religion, or possibly with philosophy. The medieval saint was pure in proportion as he died to the life of the senses. This is likewise the state of the philosopher described in the _Phaedo_. But beauty, unlike wisdom and goodness, is not to be apprehended abstractly; ideal beauty is super-sensual, to be sure, but the way to vision of it is through the senses. Without doubt one occasionally finds asceticism preached to the poet in verse.

One of our minor American poets declares,

The bard who yields to flesh his emotion Knows naught of the frenzy divine.

[Footnote: _Pa.s.sion_, by Elizabeth Cheney. But compare Keats' protest against the poet's abstract love, in the fourth book of _Endymion_.]

But this is not the genuine poet's point of view. In so far as he is a Platonist--and "all poets are more or less Platonists" [Footnote: H. B.

Alexander, _Poetry and the Individual_, p. 46.]--the poet is led upward to the love of ideal beauty through its incarnations in the world of sense. Thus in one of the most Platonic of our poems, G. E. Woodberry's _Agathon_, Eros says of the hero, who is the young poet of the _Symposium_,

A spirit of joy he is, to beauty vowed, Made to be loved, and every sluggish sense In him is amorous and pa.s.sionate.

Whence danger is; therefore I seek him out So with pure thought and care of things divine To touch his soul that it partake the G.o.ds.

This does not imply that romantic love is the only avenue to ideal beauty. Rupert Brooke's _The Great Lover_ might dissipate such an idea, by its picture of childlike and omnivorous taste for sensuousbeauty.

These I have loved,

Brooke begins,