The Last Harvest Part 12

Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a pettiness?--is the good old cause in it?

Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians, literates of enemies, lands?

Does it not a.s.sume that what is notoriously gone is still here?

Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners?

Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside?

Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my strength, gait, face?

Have real employments contributed to it?

Original makers, not mere amanuenses?"

Speaking of criticism, it occurs to me how important it is that a poet, or any other writer, should be a critic of himself. Wordsworth, who was a really great poet, was great only at rare intervals. His habitual mood was dull and prosy. His sin was that he kept on writing during those moods, grinding out sonnets by the hundred--one hundred and thirty-two ecclesiastical sonnets, and over half as many on liberty, all very dull and wooden. His mill kept on grinding whether it had any grist of the G.o.ds to grind or not. He told Emerson he was never in haste to publish, but he seems to have been in haste to write, and wrote on all occasions, producing much dull and trivial work. We speak of a man's work as being heavy. Let us apply the test literally to Wordsworth and weigh his verse. The complete edition of his poems, edited by Henry Reed and published in Philadelphia in 1851, weighs fifty-five ounces; the selection which Matthew Arnold made from his complete works, and which is supposed to contain all that is worth preserving, weighs ten ounces. The difference represents the dead wood. That Wordsworth was a poor judge of his own work is seen in the remark he made to Emerson that he did not regard his "Tintern Abbey"

as highly as some of the sonnets and parts of "The Excursion." I believe the Abbey poem is the one by which he will longest be remembered. "The Excursion" is a long, dull sermon. Its didacticism lies so heavily upon it that it has nearly crushed its poetry--like a stone on a flower.

All poetry is true, but all truth is not poetry. When Burns treats a natural-history theme, as in his verses on the mouse and the daisy, and even on the louse, how much more there is in them than mere natural history! With what a broad and tender philosophy he clothes them! how he identifies himself with the mouse and regards himself as its fellow mortal! So have Emerson's "t.i.tmouse" and "Humble-Bee" a better excuse for being than their natural history. So have McCarthy's "For a Bunny" and "The Snake," and "To a Worm."

THE SNAKE

Poor unpardonable length, All belly to the mouth, Writhe then and wriggle, If there's joy in it!

_My_ heel, at least, shall spare you.

A little sun on a stone, A mouse or two, And all that unreasonable belly Is happy.

No wonder G.o.d wasn't satisfied-- And went on creating.

TO A WORM

Do you know you are green, little worm, Like the leaf you feed on?

Perhaps it is on account of the birds, who would like to eat you.

But is there any reason why they shouldn't eat you, little worm?

Do you know you are comical, little worm?

How you double yourself up and wave your head, And then stretch out and double up again, All after a little food.

Do you know you have a long, strange name, little worm?

I will not tell you what it is.

That is for men of learning.

You--and G.o.d--do not care about such things.

WHAT MAKES A POEM?

You would wave about and double up just as much, and be just as futile, with it as without it.

Why do you crawl about on the top of that post, little worm?

It should have been a tree, eh? with green leaves for eating.

But it isn't, and you have crawled about it all day, looking for a new brown branch, or a green leaf.

Do you know anything about tears, little worm?

Or take McCarthy's lines to the honey bee:

"Poor desolate betrayer of Pan's trust, Who turned from mating and the sweets thereof, To make of labor an eternal l.u.s.t, And with pale thrift destroy the red of love, The curse of Pan has sworn your destiny.

Unloving, unbeloved, you go your way Toiling forever, and unwittingly You bear love's precious burden every day From flower to flower (for your blasphemy), Poor eunuch, making flower lovers gay."

Or this:

G.o.dLINESS

I know a man who says That he gets G.o.dliness out of a book.

He told me this as we sought arbutus On the April hills-- Little color-poems of G.o.d Lilted to us from the ground, Lyric blues and whites and pinks.

We climbed great rocks, Eternally chanting their gray elegies, And all about, the cadenced hills Were proud With the stately green epic of the Almighty.

And then we walked home under the stars, While he kept telling me about his book And the G.o.dliness in it.

There are many great lyrics in our literature which have no palpable or deducible philosophy; but they are the utterance of deep, serious, imaginative natures, and they reach our minds and hearts. Wordsworth's "Daffodils," his "Cuckoo," his "Skylark," and scores of others, live because they have the freshness and spontaneity of birds and flowers themselves.

Such a poem as Gray's "Elegy" holds its own, and will continue to hold it, because it puts in pleasing verse form the universal human emotion which all persons feel more or less when gazing upon graves.

The intellectual content of Scott's poems is not great but the human and emotional content in them is great. A great minstrel of the border speaks in them. The best that Emerson could say of Scott was that "he is the delight of generous boys," but the spirit of romance offers as legitimate a field for the poet as does the spirit of transcendentalism, though yielding, of course, different human values.

Every poet of a high order has a deep moral nature, and yet the poet is far from being a mere moralist--

"A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, An intellectual all-in-all."

Every true poem is an offering upon the altar of art; it exists to no other end; it teaches as nature teaches; it is good as nature is good; its art is the art of nature; it brings our spirits in closer and more loving contact with the universe; it is for the edification of the soul.

VI

SHORT STUDIES IN CONTRASTS

THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT

The clouds are transient, but the sky is permanent. The petals of a flowering plant are transient, the leaves and fruit are less so, and the roots the least transient of all. The dew on the gra.s.s is transient, as is the frost of an autumn morning. The snows and the rains abide longer. The splendors of summer and sunrise and sunset soon pa.s.s, but the glory of the day lasts. The rainbow vanishes in a few moments, but the prismatic effect of the drops of rain is a law of optics. Colors fade while texture is unimpaired.

Of course change marks everything, living or dead. Even the pole star in astronomic time will vanish. But consider things mundane only. How the rocks on the seacoast seem to defy and withstand the waves that beat against them! "Weak as is a breaking wave" is a line of Wordsworth's. Yet the waves remain after the rocks are gone. The sea knows no change as the land does. It and the sky are the two unchanging earth features.

In our own lives how transient are our moments of inspiration, our morning joy, our ecstasies of the spirit! Upon how much in the world of art, literature, invention, modes, may be written the word "perishable"! "All flesh is gra.s.s," says the old Book. Individuals, species, races, pa.s.s. Life alone remains and is immortal.

POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE

Positive and negative go hand in hand through the world. Victory and defeat, hope and despair, pleasure and pain. Man is positive, woman is negative in comparison. The day is positive, the night is negative.

But it is a pleasure to remember that it is always day in the universe.

The shadow of the earth does not extend very far, nor the shadow of any other planet. Day is the great cosmic fact. The ma.s.ses of men are negative to the few master and compelling minds. Cold is negative, heat is positive, though the difference is only one of degree. The negative side of life, the side of meditation, reflection, and reverie, is no less important than the side of action and performance.

Youth is positive, age is negative. Age says No where it used to say Yes. It takes in sail. Life's hurry and heat are over, the judgment is calm, the pa.s.sions subdued, the stress of effort relaxed. Our temper is less aggressive, events seem less imminent.

The morning is positive; in the evening we muse and dream and take our ease, we see our friends, we unstring the bow, we indulge our social instincts.