The Poet's Poet Part 28

Swinburne, in particular, praises his daring, in that he

Smote the G.o.d of base men's choice At G.o.d's own gate.

[Footnote: _Burns._]

Young poets have not yet lost their taste for religious persecution. It is a great disappointment to them to find it difficult to strike fire from the faithful in these days. Swinburne in his early poetry denounced the orthodox G.o.d with such vigor that he roused a momentary flutter of horror in the church, but nowadays the young poet who craves to manifest his spiritual daring is far more likely to find himself in the position of Rupert Brooke, of whom someone has said, "He imagines the poet as going on a magnificent quest to curse G.o.d on his throne of fire, and finding--nothing."

The poet's youthful zest in scandalizing the orthodox is likely, however, to be early outgrown. As the difficulties in the way of his finding a G.o.d worthy of his adoration become manifest to him, it may be, indeed, with a sigh that he turns from the conventional religion in which so many men find cert.i.tude and place. This is the mood, frequently, of Browning, [Footnote: See _Christmas Eve_ and _Easter Day._] of Tennyson, [Footnote: See _In Memoriam._] of Arnold, [Footnote: See _Dover Beach._] of Clough. [Footnote: See _The New Sinai, Qui Laborat Orat, Hymnos Amnos, Epistrausium._] So, too, James Thomson muses with regret,

How sweet to enter in, to kneel and pray With all the others whom we love so well!

All disbelief and doubt might pa.s.s away, And peace float to us with its Sabbath bell.

Conscience replies, There is but one good rest, Whose head is pillowed upon Truth's pure breast.

[Footnote: _The Reclusant._]

In fact, as the religious world grows more broad-minded, the mature poet sometimes appeals to the orthodox for sympathy when his daring religious questing threatens to plunge him into despair. The public is too quick to cla.s.s him with those whose doubt is owing to la.s.situde of mind, rather than too eager activity. Tennyson is obliged to remind his contemporaries,

There lives more faith in honest doubt, Believe me, than in half the creeds.

Browning, as always, takes a hopeful view of human stupidity when he expresses his belief that men will not long "persist in confounding, any more than G.o.d confounds, with genuine infidelity and atheism of the heart those pa.s.sionate impatient struggles of a boy toward truth and love." [Footnote: _Preface_ to the Letters of Sh.e.l.ley (afterwards proved spurious).]

The reluctance of the world to give honor too freely to the poet who prefers solitary doubt to common faith is, probably enough, due to a shrewd suspicion that the poet finds religious perplexity a very satisfactory poetic stimulus. In his character as man of religion as in that of lover, the poet is apt to feel that his thirst, not the quenching of it, is the aesthetic experience. There is not much question that since the beginning of the romantic movement, at least, religious doubt has been more prolific of poetry than religious certainty has been. Even Cowper, most orthodox of poets, composed his best religious poetry while he was tortured by doubt. One does not deny that there is good poetry in the hymn books, expressing settled faith, but no one will seriously contend, I suppose, that any contentedly orthodox poet of the last century has given us a body of verse that compares favorably, in purely poetical merit, with that of Arnold.

Against the imputation that he deliberately dallies with doubt, the poet can only reply that, again as in the case of his human loves, longing is strong enough to spur him to poetic achievement, only when it is a thirst driving him mad with its intensity. The poet, in the words of a recent poem, is "homesick after G.o.d," and in the period of his blackest doubt beats against the wall of his reason with the cry,

Ah, but there should be one!

There should be one. And there's the bitterness Of this unending torture-place for men, For the proud soul that craves a perfectness That might outwear the rotting of all things Rooted in earth.

[Footnote: Josephine Preston Peabody, _Marlowe._]

The public which refuses to credit the poet with earnestness in his quest of G.o.d may misconceive the dignified attempts of Arnold to free himself from the tangle of doubt, and deem his beautiful gestures purposely futile, but before condemning the poetic att.i.tude toward religion it must also take into account the contrary disposition of Browning to kick his way out of difficulties with entire indifference to the greater dignity of an att.i.tude of resignation; and no more than Arnold does Browning ever depict a poet who achieves religious satisfaction. Thus the hero of _Pauline_ comes to no triumphant issue, though he maintains,

I have always had one lode-star; now As I look back, I see that I have halted Or hastened as I looked towards that star, A need, a trust, a yearning after G.o.d.

The same bafflement is Sordello's, over whom the author muses,

Of a power above you still, Which, utterly incomprehensible, Is out of rivalry, which thus you can Love, though unloving all conceived by man-- What need! And of--none the minutest duct To that out-nature, naught that would instruct And so let rivalry begin to live-- But of a Power its representative Who, being for authority the same, Communication different, should claim A course, the first chosen, but the last revealed, This human clear, as that Divine concealed-- What utter need!

There is, after all, small need that the public should charge the poet with deliberate failure to gain a satisfactory view of the deity. The quest of a G.o.d who satisfies the poet's demand that He shall include all life, satisfy every impulse, be as personal as the poet himself, and embody only the harmony of beauty, is bound to be a long one. It appears inevitable that the poet should never get more than incomplete and troubled glimpses of such a deity, except, perhaps, in

The too-bold dying song of her whose soul Knew no fellow for might, Pa.s.sion, vehemence, grief, Daring, since Byron died.

[Footnote: Said of Emily Bronte. Arnold, _Haworth Churchyard._]

A complete view of the poet's deity is likely always to be as disastrous as was that of Lucretius, as Mrs. Browning conceived of him,

Who dropped his plummet down the broad Deep universe, and said, "No G.o.d,"

Finding no bottom.

[Footnote: _A Vision of Poets._]

If the poet's independent quest of G.o.d is doomed to no more successful issue than this, it might seem advisable for him to tolerate the conventional religious systems of his day. Though every poet must feel with Tennyson,

Our little systems have their day, They have their day and cease to be; They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they, [Footnote: _In Memoriam._]

yet he may feel, with Rossetti, that it is best to

Let lore of all theology Be to thy soul what it can be.

[Footnote: _Soothsay._]

Indeed, many of the lesser poets have capitulated to overtures of tolerance and not-too-curious inquiry into their private beliefs on the part of the church.

In America, the land of religious tolerance, the poet's break with thechurch was never so serious as in England, and the s.h.i.+fting creeds of the evangelical churches have not much hampered poets. In fact, the frenzy of the poet and of the revivalist have sometimes been felt as akin. Noteworthy in this connection is George Lansing Raymond, who causes the heroes of two pretentious narrative poems, _A Life in Song,_ and _The Real and the Ideal,_ to begin by being poets, and end by becoming ministers of the gospel. The verse of J. G. Holland is hardly less to the point. The poet-hero of Holland's _Bitter Sweet_ is a thoroughgoing evangelist, who, in the stress of temptation by a woman who would seduce him, falls upon his knees and saves his own soul and hers likewise. In _Kathrina,_ though the hero, rebellious on account of the suicide of his demented parents, remains agnostic till almost the end of the poem, this is clearly regarded by Holland as the cause of his incomplete success as a poet, and in the end the hero becomes an irreproachable churchman. At present Vachel Lindsay keeps up the tradition of the poet-revivalist.

Even in England, the orthodox poet has not been nonexistent. Christina Rossetti portrays such an one in her autobiographical poetry. Jean Ingelow, in _Letters of Life and Morning_, offers most conventional religious advice to the young poet. And in Coventry Patmore's _The Angel in the House_, one finds as orthodox a poet as any that the eighteenth century could afford.

The Catholic church too has some grounds for its t.i.tle, "nursing mother of poets." The rise of the group of Catholic poets, Francis Thompson, Alice Meynell, and Lionel Johnson, in particular, has tended to give a more religious cast to the recent poet. If Joyce Kilmer had lived, perhaps verse on the Catholic poet would have been even more in evidence. But it is likely that Joyce Kilmer would only have succeeded in inadvertently bringing the religious singer once more into disrepute.

There is perhaps nothing nocuous in his creed, as he expressed it in a formal interview: "I hope ... poetry ... is reflecting faith ... in G.o.d and His Son and the Holy Ghost." [Footnote: Letter to Howard Cook, June 28, 1918, _Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays and Letters_, ed. Robert Cortes Holliday.] But Kilmer went much farther and advocated the suppression of all writings, by Catholics, which did not specifically advertise their author's Catholicism. [Footnote: See his letter to Aline Kilmer, April 21, 1918, _Joyce Kilmer, Poems, Essays and Letters_, ed. Robert Cortes Holliday.] And such a doctrine immediately delivers the poet's freedom of inspiration into the hands of censors.

Perhaps a history of art would not square with the repugnance one feels toward such censors.h.i.+p. Conformance to the religious beliefs of his time certainly does not seem to have handicapped Homer or Dante, to say nothing of the preeminent men in other fields of art, Phidias, Michael Angelo, Raphael, etc. Yet in the modern consciousness, the theory of art for art's sake has become so far established that we feel that any compromise of the purely aesthetic standard is a loss to the artist. The deity of the artist and the churchman may be in some measure the same, since absolute beauty and absolute goodness are regarded both by poets and theologians as identical, but there is reason to believe that the poet may not go so far astray if he cleaves to his own immediate apprehension of absolute beauty as he will if he fas.h.i.+ons his beliefs upon another man's stereotyped conception of the absolute good.

Then, too, it is not unlikely that part of the poet's reluctance to embrace the creed of his contemporaries arises from the fact that he, in his secret heart, still hankers for his old t.i.tle of priest. He knows that it is the imaginative faculty of the poet that has been largely instrumental in building up every religious system. The system that holds sway in society is apt to be the one that he himself has just outgrown; he has, accordingly, an artist's impatience for its immaturity. There is much truth to the poet's nature in verses ent.i.tled _The Idol Maker Prays_:

Grant thou, that when my art hath made thee known And others bow, I shall not wors.h.i.+p thee, But as I pray thee now, then let me pray Some greater G.o.d,--like thee to be conceived Within my soul.

[Footnote: By Arthur Guiterman.]

CHAPTER VII

THE PRAGMATIC ISSUE

No matter how strong our affection for the ingratiating ne'er-do-well, there are certain charges against the poet which we cannot ignore. It is a serious thing to have an alleged madman, inebriate, and experimenter in crime running loose in society. But there comes a time when our patience with his indefatigable accusers is exhausted. Is not society going a step too far if, after the poet's positive faults have been exhausted, it inst.i.tutes a trial for his sins of omission? Yet so it is.

If the poet succeeds in proving to the satisfaction of the jury that his influence is innocuous, he must yet hear the gruff decision, "Perhaps, as you say, you are doing no real harm. But of what possible use are you? Either become an efficient member of society, or cease to exist."

Must we tamely look on, while the "light, winged, and holy creature," as Plato called the poet, is harnessed to a truck wagon, and made to deliver the world's bread and b.u.t.ter? Would that it were more common for poets openly to defy society's demands for efficiency, as certain children and malaperts of the poetic world have done! It is pleasant to hear the naughty advice which that especially impractical poet, Emily d.i.c.kinson, gave to a child: "Be sure to live in vain, dear. I wish I had." [Footnote: Gamaliel Bradford, _Portraits of American Women_, p. 248 (Mrs. Bianchi, p. 37).] And one is hardly less pleased to hear the irrepressible Ezra Pound instruct his songs,

But above all, go to practical people, go, jangle their door-bells.

Say that you do no work, and that you will live forever.

[Footnote: _Salutation the Second_.]

Surely no one else has had so bad a time with efficiency experts as has the poet, even though everyone whose occupation does not bring out sweat on the brow is likely to fall under their displeasure. The scholar, for instance, is given no rest from their querulous complaints, because he has been sitting at his ease, with a book in his hand, while they have dug the potatoes for his dinner. But the poet is the object of even bitterer vituperation. He, they remind him, does not even trouble to maintain a decorous posture during his fits of idleness. Instead, he is often discovered flat on his back in the gra.s.s, with one foot swinging aloft, wagging defiance at an industrious world. What right has he to loaf and invite his soul, while the world goes to ruin all about him?

The poet reacts variously to these attacks. Sometimes with (it must be confessed) aggravating meekness, he seconds all that his beraters say of his idle ways. [Footnote: For verse dealing with the idle poet see James Thomson, _The Castle of Indolence_ (Stanzas about Samuel Patterson, Dr.

Armstrong, and the author); Barry Cornwall, _The Poet and the Fisher_, and _Epistle to Charles Lamb on His Emanc.i.p.ation from the Clerks.h.i.+p_; Wordsworth, _Expostulation and Reply_; Emerson, _Apology_; Whitman, _Song of Myself_; Helen Hunt Jackson, _The Poet's Forge_; P. H. Hayne, _An Idle Poet Dreaming_; Henry Timrod, _They Dub Thee Idler_; Was.h.i.+ngton Allston, _Sylphs of the Seasons_; C. W. Stoddard, _Utopia_; Alan Seeger, _Oneata_; J. G. Neihardt, _The Poet's Town_.] Sometimes he gives them the plaintive a.s.surance that he is overtaxed with imaginary work. But occasionally he seems to be really stung by their reproaches, and tries to convince them that by following a strenuous avocation he has done his bit for society, and has earned his hours of idleness as a poet.

When the modern poet tries to establish his point by exhibiting singers laboring in the business and professional world, he cannot be said to make out a very good case for himself. He has dressed an occasional fictional bard in a clergyman's coat, in memory, possibly, of Donne and Herbert. [Footnote: See G. L. Raymond, _A Life in Song_, and _The Real and the Ideal_.] In politics, he has exhibited in his verses only a few scattered figures,--Lucan, [Footnote: See _Nero_, Robert Bridges.]

Petrarch, [Footnote: See Landor, _Giovanna of Naples_, and _Andrea of Hungary_.] Dante, [Footnote: See G. L. Raymond, _Dante_.] Boccaccio, Walter Map, [Footnote: See _A Becket_, Tennyson.] Milton [Footnote: See _Milton_, Bulwer Lytton; _Milton_, George Meredith.]--and these, he must admit, belong to remote periods. Does D'Annunzio bring the poet-politician down to the present? But poets have not yet begun to celebrate D'Annunzio in verse. Really there is only one figure, a protean one, in the realm of practical life, to whom the poet may look to save his reputation. Shakespeare he is privileged to represent as following many callings, and adorning them all. Or no, not quite all, for a recent verse-writer has gone to the length of representing Shakespeare as a pedagogue, and in this profession the master dramatist is either inept, or three centuries in advance of his time, for the citizens of Stratford do not take kindly to his scholastic innovations.

[Footnote: See _William Shakespeare, Pedagogue and Poacher_, a drama, Richard Garnett.]

If the poet does not appear a brilliant figure in the business world, he may turn to another field with the confidence that here his race will vindicate him from the world's charges of sluggishness or weakness. He is wont proudly to declare, with Joyce Kilmer,