A COLLECTION OF

LYRICS FOR LEISURE MOMENTS

SPUN AT IDLE HOURS

BY

CHARLES WILLIAM WALLACE

Professor of Rhetoric and Literature Western Normal College

LINCOLN, NEB.:

STATE JOURNAL COMPANY, PRINTERS.

1892.

BY

C. W. WALLACE

TO

JUDGE T. D. WALLACE

AND

MRS. OLIVE WALLACE.

My Dear Father and Mother:

No word, no act, no consecrated gift of mine, how great or slight soever it may be, can ever repay the beneficence and love of you to whom I owe life and whatever of prosperity has been granted me.

As my eyes glance in retrospect along the fading perspective of years and lose themselves in the dim days of the cradle, and thence to the present look forwards to the distant peaks of hope that rise above unknown mists and shadows and horizons, I hear the counseling words of a father, and feel the ever-present touch of a mother’s hand, as both guide me with love into the dim unknown of life. Though I pass onwards with a father’s “God-speed,” and a mother’s lingering embrace and loving kiss, and leave you both fondly looking after me, still your presence in my memory is ever a guiding reality that even now directs this good right hand of mine to inscribe these dedicatory words of filial affection.

If in the days agone I ever seemed unheeding of that counsel of a father, and unmindful of that dearest love of a cherished and cherishing mother, I can but say that[iv] both that counsel and that love reach through those moulding and shaping years of my life and take hold on my heart with a firmness and a gentleness that nothing else of all the years can boast.

It is but right and just, therefore, that in these your later days I should likewise be your guide and your stay in so far as my hand may let;—that I should reach out my strong young arm and steady the tottering years that throng around you.

Withal, if I can afford you even one slight pleasure, it is my heart’s desire so to do. It is, therefore, with somewhat more than filial love that I dedicate this little volume to you, my Father and my Mother, both together my counselor and guide, still mercifully spared to your children; and in doing so, I can but express the hope that your years may yet be many and happy; that the iris struck by a New Sun from the crystals of the whitened and whitening wintry years may be as full of beauty and joy as were the early spring blossoms of love and hope that you pressed to your bosoms in youth.

Your Son,

CHARLES.

BY THE WAY.

As the presentation of these collected verses in their present printed form has been induced largely by the request of many of my former college students and by the importunities of my most intimate friends, and as this volume has consequently been prepared chiefly for their pleasure, it is hoped that those into whose hands the book may fall are already so well acquainted with the author that the selections themselves need no formal introduction to make them agreeable company and engaging companions.

In justice, I should here say that this collection contains only a few out of the vast number of good, bad, and indifferent pieces of verse that I have been making at odd hours of a busy life, ever since my boyhood, for my own pastime, pleasure, and literary and linguistic improvement, with no thought nor distant dream of ever permitting them thus to invade the domains of the sovereign public.

That the little book that thus modestly goes forth will attain either a large circulation or great popularity I neither expect, nor attempt to bring about; but that men and women with hearts that love and souls that look above may find much quiet pleasure and satisfaction in the following pages I do sincerely hope.

It is neither my desire nor befitting to my work to lay claim to any degree of excellence in the verses[vi] herein presented. Quite to the contrary, I see and regret many defects which I can now neither remove nor repair. But, however defective they may be in form or in spirit, I have ever thought that little else than the interpretation of the relations of the human soul to life, here and hereafter, and the presentation of the good, the beautiful, and the true of the human heart is worthy of serious effort.

As a consequence, most of these pieces are dual in meaning—one, in plain view, the reality; the other, less distinct, the finer ideality, the reflection, or mirrored image of the first.

It is this second, this finer and often, at first, obscure meaning that, in my judgment, is the essential—the preserving salt—of any poem. Certainly if not this meaning but the apparent one, the one on the surface, is the basis of judgment on these poems, they will fall far below the estimate accorded that poetry which is deemed worthy of existence.

I wish here to return my thanks for the hearty reception accorded the few selections of the prospectus, and to express the hope that the completed volume will equal whatever expectations the recipients of the prospectus may have.

Also, I cannot pass without noting the fact that a large share of the first edition of this volume was engaged nearly six months before it went to press, even before I had determined what productions I should use, and that, too, upon the mere announcement that the publication was contemplated for the present summer.

I wish, therefore, thus publicly to thank those who have given this substantial earnest of their appreciation.

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Any opinion or criticism, favorable or unfavorable, or any suggestion or correction on thought, arrangement, typography, or other point, that the reader may see fit to express, is not only invited and encouraged, but will be most gratefully received and carefully considered.

One word more. If a selection will not bear a second reading, or a third, a fourth, or a fiftieth reading; if it does not grow better and better at each reading; if it does not lift the soul to a higher plane, a nobler aim, a purer life, and a grander view; if at each successive reading something does not come out of it and enter the heart, and then pass back into the poem again, and thus again and again, each beautifying and ennobling the other, like a sunset halo among the clouds and the liquid, translucent image thereof in the mirroring lake, then it is no true poem, and should be cast aside.

The only proof of the excellence of a poem is that it makes the heart larger and the soul nobler for having read it, and that at each successive reading both the poem and the reader grow better and better.

Believing, as I do, that poetry is nothing less than the interpretation of the Divine in the human heart (whether in the mood of tears or of laughter), I can but hope, in entrusting these “children of the brain” to the care of others, that in the heart of each little waif some good may be found, some song may be heard, some beauty be revealed, some experience be verified.

C. W. W.

Lincoln, 22 June, 1892.

[viii][ix]

CONTENTS.

SPIDER-WEBS IN VERSE.

[2]

[9]

[12]

[18]

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SYMBOLS IN SONNETS OF LIFE.

On submitting this poem to critics, I find that various ideas are gleaned. Some take it as a literal description of night and day, or light and darkness! Others think that it celebrates the victory of truth over error, right over wrong, virtue over vice, or possibly the triumph of learning over ignorance, or civilization over barbarism. This is not so surprising; for I confess it does, indeed, admit various interpretations. Some say that in its obscurity, though in nothing else, it somewhat resembles the work of some great poet. The only consolation that I can squeeze out of all these various opinions is that obscurity and occultness synchronously attend upon and are concomitant with both iconographic delineations and symbolical phraseology. ’Tis said ’tis so,—and so ’tis sad!

“Sing a song o’ six-pence, pocket full of rye, four and twenty black-birds baked in a pie,” etc., is comparatively meaningless, tho’ pleasing, unless we know what is symbolized. The “pie” is the day, the “four and twenty black-birds” are the twenty-four hours of the day, etc., etc. The symbols thus completed give a new beauty to that old jingle. In fact, it was that identical jingle with its symbols that suggested Sonnets of Life.

As the title and staring Carlylean capitals throughout suggest, I intended this poem to be a sort of Analogue of Life. In consequence of all the foregoing, and for the delectation of those who care to read the piece a second time, I have subjoined these

Symbols and Notes.

I.

• Darkness,—death.
• Light,—life (on earth).
• day,—one’s duration of life.
• Sun,—one’s life.
• black’ning height,—hour of death.
• quiver of the planets,—thoughts, desires, longings, hopes.
• arrows,—faith in the future.
• iron-plated breast of Night,—gloom of one’s death.
• streams of living blood,—hope others receive from the Christian’s death.[25]
• dire,—i. e., dire only to Darkness.
• sorrowing sea,—sorrowing friends.
• skyed in the doming flood,—acts, deeds, words, hopes, etc., of the dead, reflected in humanity and especially in the hearts of friends.

II.

• Reviving Sun,—soul, on morning of resurrection.
• eastern gray,—dawning of the morning of the resurrection day.
• mail of Night,—sleep of death.
• Last sonnet closes all life on earth, triumphs over death, and brings the resurrection day.
• Last two lines begin and indefinitely extend the Life Eternal.

This may aid somewhat. Too close an interpretation cannot be permitted in any poem: ’twould make some of the most exquisite poetic thought of literature ridiculous and nonsensical. The true poetic nature never needs more in the interpretation of any poem than the title and the naked poem itself to suggest thoughts and images infinitely more beautiful than explanation can possibly make them.

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FAMILY OF THE EPHEMERA.

(To be read in connection with the following poem, “Shut In.”)

Somewhere, sometime, I know not when or where, I have heard a strangely beautiful and beautifully strange and altogether wonderful story—a story of a pygmy people.

In the long, long ago that has slipped into the lethal tide of the flow of Time where even the years have forgotten the rolling chime that they used to sing to the shore of a heavenly clime (and where poets don’t ever, nor ever, nor ever rhyme), whence even Tradition, asleep, forgets to climb, so long ago that I don’t know but that the time still antedates all dates, there lived the Family of the Ephemera.

As the sun came up in the morning, the race came into existence. During the night, a toad-stool of wonderful dimensions had sprung up, and beneath this over-shadowing phenomenon, built by the genii of darkness, the first glint of the new day’s sun kissed the first born of a new race—the Adam and Eve of the Family called Ephemera.

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As the sun arose, and ere, e’en years ere it showed its lower disk, the family increased most startingly. The whole of their known world was peopled. They developed the resources of their vast little land. They cultivated the soil. They delved in the mines for gold. They carried on commerce with their widely scattered selves. They built homes and cities. Their cities were magnificent, their houses built of exquisitely carved and polished stone quarried from a grain of sand. Each window was made of the filmy iridescence of a single sunbeam, and curtained with richly embroidered tapestries woven from threads of the delicate shadow cast by a single ray of spectral purple. Their tables were filled with all the rich and dainty micros of the land. Withal, they were a happy, though barbarous people.

The sun arose. Men of the present generation had already grown gray-headed, while myriads of their posterity were just starting on their paths. Generation after generation had already come and gone, each leaving the wealth of its history, its experience, its scientific researches, its learning to the inheritants of the next.

Centuries to them came and went, governments grew old, decayed, and passed into tradition, while others sprang up in their places;—for to this strange and fast-living people, our moments were days, our seconds were months, our minutes were years, our hours were centuries, and our days were ages untold that lap the two ends of time into one unbroken eternity.

The sun was mid-forenoon. The Family of the Ephemera had grown old and wise. They pointed with vaunting pride to their intelligence and prosperity, to[38] their grand achievements reaching down the long, fretted colonnades of history and vanishing in the dim perspective of tradition’s mystery. They looked upon all around, beneath, and above them, and rejoiced that all was for them. Their wise philosophers pointed to the sun and said, “All for us!” They told and taught how that great sun had always remained in its present place; for even in the memory of the oldest inhabitants no one had ever known the sun to be in other place than now. Nay, even history knew it not. They said, however, that there was a tradition, but not authenticated by history nor by later scientific investigation, that the sun long, long æons ago had occupied a position nearer the horizon. They showed how and why all things were made for them; how the great toad-stool, towering an immeasurable distance above them, had been placed on earth for them, and them alone, and philosophized how it was impossible for another to exist in the universe. They rejoiced that their little world was created, and endowed with all its richest blessings, for none other than them. They were a happy people, and prosperous. Their want of wisdom made them more happy and more prosperous.

Centuries came and went. The sun stood in the zenith. So stood the race of Ephemera. Wiser philosophers than those of the mid-forenoon of their existence still pointed toward the great red sun, and said, “It was always there; it was made for us!” Crowns crumbled. New nations arose as from chaos, flourished, and died. Others took their places. Schools had always been tolerated. They were now fostered. They pointed their telescopes toward the mighty fret-work of[39] the toad-stool above them, and computed the number of huge radial beams that supported its broad outer rim. The students of the universities and colleges delved deep into the lore of their ancestral nations. They studied history; they read their poets; they reasoned and computed with their mathematicians; they looked down into the earth and up into the heavens with their philosophers, and, withdrawing to their own narrow cells, they said, “All for us, all for us!”

The sun passed the zenith, declining to the west. The race declined! Still, philosophers said, pointing to the sun, “’Twas alway thus; ’twas made for us!”

They said Time was for them, and them alone. They could not conceive another similar or a different people. With prophecy, they looked into the future. They claimed that, also: for a hope and a faith, placed in their hearts at their creation, had grown and strengthened, that they should all meet again in another world, a brighter and a better world, all for them, all for them. The gods, with whom they peopled all things, watched over and guarded them, and them alone.

The sun sank low. The lower limb touched the horizon. With the going down of the sun, the race decayed in its old age. As the last ray of sun passed over the land of the Ephemera, only two of this strange Family, wandering hand in hand, old and lone, turned their eyes to the waning light of the west, and sank to rest as the ray shot up and out into the unfathomed sky beyond, and glinted its gold on the clinking stars, the beautiful golden gates of the sable and iron-bound night!

Thus passed away the Family of the Ephemera. Strange, strange story! A race wrapped up in them[40]selves, never dreaming that there might be innumerable other realms like their little own; that there might be peoples on peoples beyond their ken in worlds unknown as superior to them as the gods of Olympus were superior to the Romans.

A strange, strange story!—for we are looking through an inverted microscope, the large end at the eye, and the small end turned upon Time, Events, and the Human race!

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[49]

[52]

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WHITE-ENTHRONED ABOVE ME.
(ON A SMALL WHITE-ROSE BOUQUET PRESENTED BY A LADY AND PLACED IN PALGRAVE’S “GOLDEN TREASURY,” OPPOSITE “THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.”)

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WHAT IS POETRY?

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. But Poeta nascitur non fit is 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 in[77] him 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, toilsome[78] flight, 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 a[79] man, so also both form and spirit are necessary to constitute any of his visible art-creations, as a poem.

FORM.

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 all[80] poetic 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.

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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,—

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 is verse; for a verse is but one line of the poetic form, while verse is 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,[82] 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.

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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.

SPIRIT.

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;—na[84]ture’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 a[85] medium 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 the[86] great 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 the[87] melody, 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.

MISSION.

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 ask[88] in 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,[89] 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 essence[90] of 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’s Dunciad, Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel, Butler’s Hudibras, Byron’s English 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, a[91] pain. 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.[92] 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 from[93] poetry 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 are[94] gathered 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 be read (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.”

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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 botanizing[96] and 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 for sense, 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!

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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-souled[98] mob 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 through[99] great 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 though[100] ministering 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? It[101] does 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 of[102] the 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.

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Strolling arm in arm with good Dan Chaucer as

we may meet and join company with immortal Shakespeare, where

and then with them both we may pass down the slope to the sea-shore where we clasp hands with Laureate Tennyson and, as we listen to the break, break, break upon the sands, say in our hearts with him,

With Milton we may plunge to the lowest depths and rise to the greatest heights, and stand with him at last in a Paradise regained. With Dryden we may shout from the golden-tipped top of the mount of lyric song to the battling brave below,

and hear the reverberant echoes along the channeled valleys of the soul of Gray,

With Whittier, longing to do and doing the greatest good of which we are capable, we may often question,

Listening to the Preacher Kingsley, we may learn to

In our sadder moods we may, with Cowper, look[104] across the dark, Cimmerian tide and recall the face and the kiss and the touch of a mother gone. In our gayer hours, with Burns we may gather sweet field flowers and garland them in love; and, whether in field or shop or kirk, learn somewhat

With Wordsworth, receiving those faint intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood, we may realize

With Lowell we may feel that

If in the pursuit of life we shall have been drawn onwards by that divine link called conscience; if we shall have heeded the advice to the Divinity within us,

if within us daily we shall have said with dear old Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes,

if we shall have done all this, I say, and followed God: then, when at last with white-haired Bryant each of us

the Sun shall go down with a golden halo of glory;[105] Beauty, eternal Beauty, wedded to immortal Love, shall reign forever in the heart;

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[114]

[Written in youth one July in a hay-field, on a piece of paper that had contained my dinner, with an axle-grease box for my table, while lazily reclining under the wagon in the shade of the willows.]

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[117]

[Scribbled in about five minutes on the back of an old envelope while sitting by a new-made grave on which was a sickle of flowers.]

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[121]

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[In the above, first rhymes with last, second with second from last, and so on.]

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[The willow-tree is emblematical of death, or forsaken love—which, to the lover, is, of course, all the same thing. The custom of a disappointed lover’s hanging his harp on a willow-tree and going off to the wars in utter desperation—hoping to get killed, perhaps, and thus be revenged on his false sweetheart by making her sorry!—; also the custom of wearing a green-willow garland about the hat, and leaning up against the tree (they had no fences) to die, somewhat à la Job’s turkey, I presume, as they used to do before quicker, modern, new-fangled methods of a lover’s getting[141] out of the world came in; and the custom of doing many other things that were done by the young ancient lovers, is a custom that is dead. The preceding is the wail of one of these youthful old dolorous fellows, in the English-Ballad style of his day.]

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[151]

THE TRANSFORMATION.
A PSYCHOLOGICAL MYSTERY.

I am not superstitious, not in the least. But that certain things which we cannot explain by any natural method may happen in the lives of us all, there is no longer a shadow of a doubt in my own mind.

I had gone to bed as usual and had been sleeping soundly one night, with only the faint glimmer of a sweet vision now and then flitting through my mind, when suddenly I was startled from my sleep into a lively consciousness of a strange presence, and weird, mournful sounds, as of a dirge, in my room. Moreover, there was a peculiar sensation in my head, a sensation that I have never before or since felt, a kind of pain, yet not a pain; for in some indefinable way it was mysteriously mingled with a peculiar, almost transporting rapture that seemed to permeate my whole being. Indeed, the pain, starting immediately between my brows and running back to my crown, seemed born of this pleasurable sensation, which had no local residence but was in every nerve and fibre, both together producing that indescribable exhilarating feeling that I imagine the truly happy in the next world possess. But, you say, surely the angels have no pain. I hope not; but this I have learned, that every pleasure of earth has its pain. And as I cannot say that this sensation was altogether that of a mortal, I cannot say from experience that there is a pleasure without a pain.

For a moment after awaking, I could not tell where I was or what was going on. But my senses being quickly roused to their fullest keenness, I soon saw I[152] was in my own room. But the matter of the presence and the weird sound was not so easily solved.

I lay quietly for a time, trying to persuade myself that I had been dreaming and that my waking fancy was merely the hallucination of the dream that had not yet passed away. Have you never done the like? However, I soon realized that the presence and the sound, whoever or whatever they were, were not mere fancy. Still I tried to shake off the feeling that some one had entered my room; for, as is my custom, I had securely barred the front door, also my bed-room door, before retiring. Besides, no one could possibly have climbed in at my windows of the second story without my knowing it; for when I am so nervous as I was this night, the slightest sound will waken me. I turned over and looked out of the window. The moon was still shining, and the trees swayed with a soft murmur in answer to the light breeze that wantoned among the virgin May leaves just lately from the bud. There were the houses, the barns, the road, everything, in fact, just as it really was, and I knew I could not possibly be asleep.

Still, that consciousness of a presence in my room, stronger and stronger grown until it had reached conviction, I could not rid myself of; nor could I shut my ears to the mournful sounds that came from somewhere—everywhere, it seemed.

Suddenly—most wonderful to tell!—I saw the very faintest streak of light creep up the farther wall of my room.

All that I have related did not, perhaps, occupy more than a full minute, though I must confess it seemed much longer.

[153]

The thread of light, different from all lights I have ever before seen, moved toward the ceiling rapidly, and held me in breathless attention. What could it be!—A ray of the moon through a slit in the curtain that was gently moved by the breeze blowing through the window? Wait! It reached the ceiling. Then with such a delicate light that it was almost imperceptible, it crept along the ceiling diagonally toward me. When it got immediately above my head, it stopped. What in the world could it be!

I lay almost breathless, wondering. Wouldn’t you, my friend, if you should see such a thing in your room? You may not know what you would do in such case. Possibly you say you would investigate at once. So, too, had I said many a time,—I would investigate whatever was strange, doubtful, or inexplicable. But if your hands would not move, if your feet lay motionless, and if your whole being were thrilled with a thralling rapture and pain all at once, you would probably do just as I did,—lie there fascinated.

Suddenly, like a flash, something struck me on the forehead, and instantly I sat bolt upright in bed. As I rose, whatever it was that struck me bounded off on the bed, then down on the floor, that mysterious filmy thread of light following it, and at the same time clinging to my forehead. I put my hand up to brush it away. But when I touched it (if I really did touch it, which I doubt, for my hand seemed suddenly arrested), my whole body trembled as if shaken by some supernatural power. It was something more than a light,—it was a film, a thread; and at my touch upon it, that sensation of mingled pain and rapture was almost be[154]yond my power to survive. I let my hand drop from it, and unable to resist doing what I did, I rose from my bed and started to follow up that thread of light and film; for somehow it seemed attached to my brain, and I involuntarily obeyed the will of whoever or whatever it was that controlled it. Though fully conscious of all I was doing, I could not resist. Great beads of sweat stood on my body, caused partly, I suppose, by extreme nervous excitement and partly by this influence upon me.

I would have hastened from the room, screamed for help, or cried “murder!” but it was impossible. Even the rapidity of my steps was under control, and I marched slowly, deliberately, and solemnly, as to martial music of the dead.

I passed from my sleeping-room to my study, obedient to the slightest inclination of the supernatural power that controlled the thread by which I was led.

When I reached my study-chair at my desk, I obediently sat down. Then for the first time I beheld the object that was exerting this power over me. I have seen many an object before and since very similar to it, but never at any time another just like it.

As I sat in my chair, my eyes riveted on the thread of light, suddenly that object appeared at the other end of the thread on a pile of blank writing paper that lay on my desk, and eyed me intently. I was horrified, and if possible, less capable of resisting than before. What I beheld, and what was exerting this supernatural influence over me was nothing more nor less than a horrible, ugly spider!—a supernatural spider, most certainly; different, I tell you, from any I have ever before or since seen.

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As I sat watching the spider, it began moving up and down, back and forth, and round and round on the paper in the most irregular motions imaginable. Being rather large and clumsy-looking, his movements, so very irregular though really not ungraceful, made the spider at first look awkward.

Wonder upon wonder! As the spider began moving, another one, somewhat smaller than the first, and more dimly seen, with even a finer thread of light (attached, too, to the first spider’s thread), made its appearance on another pile of paper. Could it be that a whole army of spiders had convened to work my destruction, and that these two were only the picket-guards? Yet it did seem that this one was not present, but only the vision of a spider, existing somewhere in reality, but present only to my mind. This, too, I am persuaded to believe, was really the case. But the other one, the larger one, I swear was there moving on my paper; and I still have the paper in my possession as proof. As this one began to move, the visionary one also began to move; as if each, unconscious of the acts of the other, was nevertheless controlled by the action of the other, and the influence upon each other was mutual. As they both moved, I noticed they left their shining, filmy thread upon the paper. But I was so intent upon every motion that I paid no attention to the web left behind, until each spider, having almost reached the right-hand side of the paper, cut his thread, went to the left, and began again to go through similar motions.

What could be the meaning of this mystic spider-dance? Such, indeed, it now seemed to be; for my first impression of irregularity and clumsiness had now[156] worn away, and their motions now seemed to be in perfect unison, and measured with the grace and harmony of rhythm. The room was but dimly lighted by the rays of moon that slipped in under the curtains, yet I could see the spiders and their work plainly. I glanced at the glowing web the first spider had left, and—wonderful to relate!—as true as the sun shines above us, there at the top of the page in writing that, had it been in ink, I would have sworn was my own, the glowing web had been woven in and out so as to read, Happy Days of Yore!

Could it be possible?—was I not dreaming? I looked and read and read and looked again and again. But there it was, plain as day, in a style of writing, too, I say, that I would have sworn was my own had it been in ink instead of woven in a glowing web. But why those words? Could there be something in my life, past or present, that those words were to taunt me about? My whole life’s history trailed before my eyes, a galaxy of pleasant memories. No, nothing there that these words could make regretful. Could it then portend something of a dark future? God alone knows!

Thus meditating, my eye caught the less distinct glow of the web of the other spider. Heavens! what next! There, as distinct as if written by the hand of my old chum, were the words, Memories of the Past. Here was a mystery growing deeper and deeper each moment. I would willingly have taken my oath, and will to this day, that the handwriting was that of my boyhood chum and present dear old friend.

Happy Days of Yore,—Memories of the Past. How was I to solve the mystery of the weaving of these[157] words and fathom their intended meaning? Both suggested to my mind a similar train of thought. But why this mysterious writing?

As I sat thus meditating, I again became conscious of that weird sound of which I have previously spoken, but which (my mind being so preoccupied with what was before it) I had not again noticed until I fell into this meditation.

It sounded like the sweet, sad blending of mournful voices singing, or chanting, rather, to the deep tones of a distant organ. I recalled myself and looked at the large spider, when I discovered that—mystery of mysteries!—the echo-like organ voice and solemn chanting music came from the spider alone as he moved across the paper, weaving his golden web into rhythmic words! There, as the music went on, I read in illuminated characters of the weaving spider’s web.—

Most wonderful!—wonderful not in the words so much, for they were simple, plain, and as they moved to the music, graceful withal, seeming to be words that might come from a sincere and true but untutored poetic heart; wonderful, therefore, rather, that they should be woven by a spider, and that, too, with a web of light.

As in eager wonder I leaned my ear closer, the vision[158] of the second and more delicate spider, likewise weaving, passed before my eyes, and I caught the distant strains of a deeper, sadder, sweeter melody, with these words woven in the finer, more delicate thread of light.—

Still more wonderful and remarkable than anything before was the similarity of music as well as of thought: more wonderful and more remarkable because neither spider seemed conscious of the other’s action or presence. Indeed, as I have already said, only one really was present; the other existing in another place, and only psychologically present to me. This latter fact, shown in all that follows, I tell you, is the most remarkable psychological problem I have ever met—except one!—nor have I ever yet found sage or savant able to solve it. Many have tried it, wondered at it more and more as they got more and more into its depths and subtle intricacies, and finally in their weakness have given it up. Herbert Spencer, McCosh, and other lesser philosophers cannot satisfy themselves upon it.

My interest was now, if possible, even greater than before. Again I turned my attention to the present spider as in melody it wove.—

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Both were weaving rapidly, as if their very lives were an ephemeral inspiration, and they were thus weaving it away in illuminated letters, that at least that inspiration might live, though the very weaving should cost both their lives. So I hastened again to look, and to listen to the other richer and deeper melody.—

Could it be that those two spiders were endowed with human faculties, and that those faculties were now working in unison, inspired by the same thought, the same feeling? I had little time to meditate this, for both wrote (I can’t help saying they wrote) as rapidly as slow music goes, or about as rapidly as I am writing this; and the first spider had already begun the third stanza.—

I then involuntarily turned to the other; but finding that it had completed a page, as indeed both had done, I removed the finished sheet of the visible one and at the same instant and by the same act removed that of the psychologically visible one; though how this latter was accomplished even psychologists are at their wits’ end to explain. Even to the close I continued thus to remove the finished sheets as soon as they were completed. And now from the second I heard.—

While I listened to this, the first spider, apparently conscious of my abstraction, had waited; but on again bending my eyes in that direction, again the sad melody floated upwards and away to the heart-felt words.—

What strange tale could this be I was listening to? I turned to the second weaver of words to mournful melody, and caught the same spirit in these similar words.—

So! what a train of unutterable sadness the last words of each called up, suggesting some strange sorrow that must force itself into expression of sorrowing strains of music, tuned to even sadder words. Ah yes! to the first, listen!—

Breathlessly I turned to the cadence of the other.—

Ah, ’tis the old, old story that ever sings itself in the human heart, the story of love. But can it be these spiders are human that they should thus weave their gold-enlighted words to silver chords of harmony?

Once more!—To the first rhythmic weaver, a pleasing recollection.—

And then to the second, the same image, lifting upward and away, above the clover-blooms and forest-flowers of sweet memory, comes like the peace of a benediction; and the words weave to quicker though to still sad notes.—

The first one had now finished two pages; the second, three. How much more they would weave I neither knew nor thought. I was too much fascinated by the weirdness and reality of it all to think of anything but the two stories that were being thus wonderfully—thus psychologically though not supernaturally—revealed to me in beauty by ugly spiders that wrought together; each, I knew, unconscious of the other. This fact of each being unconscious of the words, thoughts, and music of the other, and the fact that the web of one was woven into characters to represent my handwriting, while that of the other was the illuminated work of my old chum, gave the two songs an interest that no one else can even approach. No, not even if the same situation should present itself to him, and the spiders should be actually before him, as their work, robbed of all these fascinating features, now is.

Both now wove more and more rapidly, and it was only when the first had woven the following whole page of manuscript that I turned to the other.—

Here the sad-voiced dreamer paused a moment, then glided to the top of the page and waited for me to remove the leaf, while I read and half aloud chanted from the illuminated page of the other this master-melody:—

So pleasing was this recollection that I could not yet turn away, but listened rather than read, as the musician continued on the next page; for he had finished this, and the harmony continued unbroken.

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Just here a sharp pain in my right forefinger interrupted the music, and reminded me that I had not removed the completed page of the first harmony-breathing minstrel. I immediately did so, and at once the billows of subdued music swept through the room to the perfect time of the weaver’s words in portentous minstrelsy.—

Here I noticed the striking difference (the only difference throughout the two poems) between the wishes of the two, both passionately and beautifully put, and paused a moment to grasp the full meaning. But only[167] a moment, for I was too interested in this enchanting symphony to wait longer. Already the poet in spider’s form that was the more delicate, beautiful, and pathetic was continuing.—

I found myself so in sympathy with the two spiders—or poets and musicians, rather, in spider form—that I pitied them deeply, and—shall I say?—loved them. The first melodist continued more mournfully, and to slower, sad, and muffled music.—

I am not a man who easily gives way to feeling; but the plaintiveness of the music and the mournfulness of the simple words made me forget the mysterious bard that was weaving this tale of pathos, and I bowed my head in sorrow, with my heart full of pity and love for both the afflicted and the noble-hearted sweet departed. As I did so, the threnodic notes, as if dying away in the echoing distance of the blue dome above, thus came from the heart of the other minne-singer.—

Surely, surely, I thought, these breathers of harmony cannot be ugly spiders. They are too human—or shall I say too divine?—for that. I had been so absorbed in the two songs that, strange perhaps to say, though I think not, I had scarcely noticed the spiders themselves nor their illuminated web-woven words. I felt now that the songs were nearly ended; and through tear-dimmed eyes, I looked once more at the page on my desk. How strangely brighter the light seemed to be, yet so softer!

Could it be possible! Wasn’t this, after all, some dream?—I dashed the tears from my eyes with my left hand.—No, I was wide awake. No doubt about that. There, too, that light from the words was even brighter than when it was seen through my tears.

Surely, surely, these were not spiders; but spirits, rather, in this disguise. As this thought flew through my brain, I removed the fifth finished page of manuscript, when lo! I almost screamed for mercy that no more revelations be made to me. For the spider glided to the top of the new page, and as he did so, I saw and marveled how much smaller he had grown, as if he had spun his whole body away in his glowing web. But still stranger transformation: All about him, like a spirit embodying the body, was a dim halo of light, such as a star often forms of the mists, that doubtless had[170] been forming from the first although I had not noticed it, having been too absorbed in the songs themselves.

As I looked steadily, transfixed by this new revelation, I saw that haloing light, as true as I live, shape itself in a half human form; and like a light-enhaloed star moving across the scroll of the Almighty in spheric music set to angel words, this transformed being of light trembled across the page before me and trailed these gold-enlighted words through the solemn rhythm of the olden melody.—

Thoughts of the dead always affect me beyond expression. The thought of the death of this darling girl, glorious in her own true heart, I can but feel, and glorified even more by the unfailing constancy and eternal love of him who, grown old and gray, still keeps her ever in his heart, so affected me that my own heart seemed almost broken. I could endure no more, and turned away. But as I did so,—O sweet angels of[171] mercy! was there no escape?—there the other heaven-gifted musician, spirit-embodied, halo-enshrouded like the first, met my eyes, and I was forced against my will to listen to the most plaintive, most pathetic melody that had yet grieved my heart.—

Bowed with unutterable grief,—grief that was so severe that it choked back every tear into my heart,—I buried my head in my arms to shut out both sight and sound, and wept as tearless grief alone can weep. The angel-images of the two that had gone Home, forever to await the happier marriage in eternal union there, I[172] saw looking down compassionately, while the two mourners left behind were constantly reaching upwards toward those loved ones beyond their ken in the dim unknown, and sometimes almost touching the finger-tips of the hands unseen! Yes; and the music! I heard it over, and over, and over again, sometimes near, sometimes far, always sweet and tremulous, sometimes sounding in my ear, sometimes dying away and echoing back from the dome of that Home above.

When again my fevered eyes looked upon the page, I wondered if it could be that these embodiments of both verse and music could be changing so rapidly, or if the change had been going on constantly without my notice. Both transformed—I know not now what to call them—had now become so small that I could scarcely distinguish their bodies through the spirit-like halo. And that halo every moment grew more and more human—no, not human; but, though an embodying spirit, it grew more and more like a disembodied human soul. Less and less visible became the body of each, more and more like a human soul became the halo of each as the first wove itself away into the final web.—

The two spirits, thus transforming, were passing away, slipping, slipping away from me back into the mysteriousness whence they came, I felt, as both moved across the page to dirge-like yet a kind of happy and hope-inspiring music. The music of each was so blended with that of the other that I could scarcely distinguish the words of the two as the second soul-dreamer mused through the melody.—

But look—look!—there, there just before you. See! see it struggling to rise away. Oh, what wonderful transformation can this be!

As both neared the close, their bodies grew imperceptible, the web-woven words more and more brightly illuminated, and the haloing spirit larger, and larger, more and more distinct, yet more and more attenuated, until—no, no! it—but yes! I must believe it, must believe my eyes!—each took on the form of an angel! As the last word of each was woven, simultaneously, and as the low, faint, plaintive echoes of the music went[174] trembling through the blue distance that still trembles in unison with the hearts of millions, the two meistersingers, perfect in angel form with a rarer beauty than I ever saw before, the rarest beauty I ever expect to see, shone radiantly in the night for a moment, like a glory struck out of darkness by a beam from heaven, and vanished like that glory passing out of darkness into heaven again. With my eyes following these disembodied embodiments of Beauty, and my palms out-reaching toward them, thus I sat until, when their passing glory at the same time closed the portals through which they vanished and gave the keys to memory, my nerves relaxed, the intense mingled pain and rapture, which had never ceased, seemed to snap my very heart-chords, and consciousness slid like lead into the lethean flow of the river of oblivion.

How long I sat there, drowned in unrefreshing forgetfulness allied to sleep, I have no recollection, and no possible means of knowing. When again I opened my eyes, the morning was far spent. There was a dull pain in my head, but the circumstances I have just related were all so vivid that the whole scene instantly flashed across my mind. I thought surely it must be a dream. Could it be? I was sitting in my night-dress. I got up from my chair and went to my bed-room. There was my bed, just as I had left it when I rose to follow the strange spirit that controlled me. I went to the wall where I had seen the spider. True enough, there was the thread, but no longer illuminated, just where I had seen it. I put my hand to my forehead as one often does in wondering. When I removed it, there, clinging to my forefinger, was the web that had clung to my[175] forehead. No, I had not been asleep and dreamed all this; that was plain enough. I returned to my chair. There on my desk, as I involuntarily glanced at the well-remembered spot, I saw a still more remarkable confirmation of my having been awake; for there lay the whole poem that I had seen woven by the first spirit, as perfect in every way as if it had been written by human hand. But the characters were no longer illuminated. They had burnt into the paper, and were as black as my own ink. They were all made out, too, in my own style of handwriting, though I declare and affirm to all the world that never before this occurrence had I written one line of poetry. Perhaps it would have been better for me and for you if I had stopped with this—palmed it off as my own on account of the similarity of handwriting; and if I had never trifled with the tricks of the muses thereafter.

I looked on my desk for the other poem, but alas! it could not be found; for, as I have said before, it was only psychologically present to me, while it was really present to some one else. In a few days I had the most remarkable confirmation of this—even more remarkable than what I have related in the preceding.

By the very next mail (I was teaching in the country and got my mail but once a week, on Saturday) I received a letter from my old chum, dated May 8, 1885. As I opened it, behold! that identical poem that I had in my mind seen wrought by the second spirit of beauty fell on my table. In a letter of sixteen quarto pages, he told one substantially the same experience of himself with two spirit-singers—one of them present, the other psychologically present, each unconscious of the other,[176] yet each influencing the other in some indefinable way—as I have here related.

In speaking of the vanishing of the two spirit-forms, he wrote:—

“I firmly believe those two spirits were none other than the angel-forms of the two maidens the poems celebrate; that they have woven their spirits of beauty into these two embodiments of verse that we mortals may be the better for it; and that, when they vanished, they entered these two poems, where they still abide.”

Strange, but this is the same thought that I had had, and still do have. I most sincerely believe it is the only correct conclusion, though I cannot solve the mysteries that are connected with it. Indeed, it would be sacrilege to attempt it.

I still have these original manuscripts that were thus mysteriously wrought. They are lying here on the desk before me as I write; and as I glance across this page at them, the whole scene of that memorable night, more vivid, far, far more vivid than my pen has delineated it for you, comes flashing across my brain. In this quick, bright light of memory, reason marshals the long line of causes that produced this psychological phenomenon; I follow the approaching lines with my mind’s eye, until I am lost in the dim distance of their vanishing perspective, then return, follow again, only to lose myself in the same unfathomable mystery, and so again and again. Though I know some of the causes that produced it, I cannot reach the hidden ones. I could almost fancy still that I had dreamed all this did not these original manuscripts before me constantly remind me of the reality of what I have here set down. They[177] are free for the inspection of all who wish to verify the facts I have related.

I challenge the world to produce two such similar poems, good, bad, or indifferent, written under such remarkable circumstances.

The events I have here recorded are the events of my boyhood, or early manhood, rather, faithfully told. I have long hesitated to publish them for fear that there might be a few in these days of fiction who would doubt their reality. But what makes them a hundredfold more wonderful to me is the truth of all their seemingly impossible facts.

My friend, you think this a strange, strange story, I know. Indeed, I think so too; far more strange to me than to you, for I have felt the truth of it and you have only read it. As true as these two poems exist, the circumstances under which they were written are far, far more strange to me than I can possibly make the story; far, far more strange to me than the weirdest, most wonderful story pen can write.

I have therefore published this account of an incident of my life that it may please some with the strange facts that they will take for mere fancy; that it may waken some to the knowledge that in our most rational moments we are by no means independent, our minds are by no means our own, but are influenced by circumstances, by the psychological action of the minds of our most intimate friends, and by the spiritual power within us and at the same time above us; that it may teach others that out of the most despised creatures of God’s making and care, the Soul of Beauty may come and wed itself to Use by weaving its life into an angel-image of Love that shall dwell in the human heart forever.

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Transcriber’s Notes:
1. Obvious spelling, punctuation and printers’ errors haven been silently corrected.
2. Where appropriate, original spelling has been retained.
3. Hyphenated and non-hyphenated words have been kept as in the original.