Vocal Expression Part 10

(Sweet-throat, come back! O liquid, mellow throat!) Ere May's soft minions hereward fly, Shame on ye, laggards, to deny The brooding breast, the sun-bright eye, The tawny, s.h.i.+ning coat!

--ALICE BROWN.

Mr. Gilbert Chesterton tells us that the real Robert Browning of literary history arrived with the _Dramatic Lyrics_. "In Dramatic Lyrics," says Mr. Chesterton, "Browning discovered the one thing that he could really do better than any one else--the dramatic lyric. The form is absolutely original; he had discovered a new field of poetry, and in the center of that field he had found himself." The form is new, but it obeys the fundamental law of lyric poetry, and so in our study belongs to this chapter. The new element which the word "dramatic" suggests makes a new and a somewhat broader demand upon the interpreter; therefore I have chosen this group of _Dramatic Lyrics_ from Browning as the material for your final study of this form:

MY STAR

All that I know Of a certain star Is, it can throw (Like the angled spar) Now a dart of red, Now a dart of blue; Till my friends have said They would fain see, too, My star that dartles the red and the blue!

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled: They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.

What matter to me if their star is a world?

Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

CAVALIER TUNES

MARCHING ALONG

Kentish Sir Byng stood for his King, Bidding the crop-headed Parliament swing.

And, pressing a troop unable to stoop And see the rogues flourish and honest folk droop, Marched them along, fifty-score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song.

G.o.d for King Charles! Pym and such carles To the Devil that prompts 'em their treasonous parles!

Cavaliers, up! Lips from the cup, Hands from the pasty, nor bite take nor sup Till you're-- _(Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song._

Hampden to h.e.l.l, and his obsequies' knell Serve Hazelrig, Fiennes, and young Harry as well!

England, good cheer! Rupert is near!

Kentish and loyalists, keep we not here, _(Chorus) Marching along, fifty-score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song?_

Then, G.o.d for King Charles! Pym and his snarls To the Devil that p.r.i.c.ks on such pestilent carles!

Hold by the right, you double your might; So, onward to Nottingham, fresh for the fight.

_(Chorus) March we along, fifty-score strong, Great-hearted gentlemen, singing this song!_

GARDEN FANCIES

THE FLOWER'S NAME

Here's the garden she walked across, Arm in my arm, such a short while since.

Hark, now I push its wicket, the moss Hinders the hinges and makes them wince!

She must have reached this shrub ere she turned, As back with that murmur the wicket swung; For she laid the poor snail, my chance foot spurned, To feed and forget it the leaves among.

Down this side of the gravel walk She went while her robe's edge brushed the box: And here she paused in her gracious talk To point me a moth on the milk-white phlox.

Roses, ranged in valiant row, I will never think that she pa.s.sed you by!

She loves you, n.o.ble roses, I know; But yonder, see, where the rock-plants lie!

This flower she stopped at, finger on lip, Stooped over, in doubt, as settling its claim; Till she gave me, with pride to make no slip, Its soft meandering Spanish name.

What a name! Was it love or praise?

Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?

I must learn Spanish, one of these days, Only for that slow sweet name's sake.

Roses, if I live and do well, I may bring her, one of these days, To fix you fast with as fine a spell, Fit you each with his Spanish phrase; But do not detain me now; for she lingers There, like suns.h.i.+ne over the ground, And ever I see her soft white fingers Searching after the bud she found.

Flower, you Spaniard, look that you grow not, Stay as you are and be loved forever!

Bud, if I kiss you 'tis that you blow not: Mind, the shut pink mouth opens never!

For while it pouts, her fingers wrestle, Twinkling the audacious leaves between, Till round they turn and down they nestle-- Is not the dear mark still to be seen?

Where I find her not, beauties vanish; Whither I follow her, beauties flee; Is there no method to tell her in Spanish June's twice June since she breathed it with me?

Come, bud, show me the least of her traces, Treasure my lady's lightest footfall!

--Ah, you may flout and turn up your faces-- Roses, you are not so fair after all!

--BROWNING.

That "the poet is born, not made," is more and more an undisputed fact in every literary age. But many a birthright of poetic power has been saved from sale for a mess of pottage by a wisely ordered meeting of the young bard, while his gift was still latent, with the masters of lyric expression.

Such an introduction is the object of this study, so far as it can embrace in its aim the ends of both forms of expression,--interpretation and composition. There is no thought of inducing even an aspirant to the _poetical purple_, much less a Sh.e.l.ley or a Keats or an Alice Brown, through this brief dwelling with their immortal songs; but if this intensive interpretative study of the highest lyric expression does not result in a new sense of word values, a new sensitiveness to the music of the English language, out of which the songs of America must be made, then the study will have failed in its purpose toward you. If from this suggestive a.n.a.lysis of Sh.e.l.ley's "Skylark" you receive no impulse to use words with a new delight in the fitting of sound to sense, a new reverence for their harmonious arrangement to suggest and sustain an atmosphere; if, in short, your vocabulary is not enriched and your choice of words clarified through this study, then your new acquaintance with lyric expression will have been in vain. And, finally, if some one of you at least is not impelled by these excursions into the world of song to use his enriched vocabulary in an attempt to create a bit of lyric description in prose or verse, then the author of this study, and the teacher under whose direction it is made, must admit a failure to reach with the pupil the ultimate aim of such interpretative effort.

Let us make the test. As a final problem of this study I shall ask you to let your emotion find expression--lyric expression--in a bit of prose description. Don't be afraid! Use your vocabulary! Take as a subject: the bit of earth and sky you have secretly wors.h.i.+ped; the bird song or flight which has charmed your day; the memory of some illumined moment; the effect of any one of these lyrics upon you. Don't be afraid! And remember it is to be literature of _feeling_ rather than thought; _description_, not exposition.

THIRD STUDY

TO DEVELOP THE WHIMSICAL SENSE

Addressing the _Gentle Reader_ in deliciously whimsical vein on the _Mission of Humor_, Mr. Samuel Arthur Crothers declares: "Were I appointed by the school board to consider the applicants for teachers'

certificates, after they had pa.s.sed the examinations in the arts and sciences, I should subject them to a more rigid test. I should hand each candidate Lamb's essays on 'The Old and New Schoolmaster' and on 'Imperfect Sympathies.' I should make him read them to himself, while I sat by and watched. If his countenance never relaxed, as if he were inwardly saying, 'That's so,' I should withhold the certificate. I should not consider him a fit person to have charge of innocent youth."

We can readily see from this extract that we need not go back to the early part of the last century to find material for our test of this sovereign quality, a sense of humor. Mr. Crothers himself, the Charles Lamb of our American Letters to-day, shall furnish our subject-matter.

Bring your _Gentle Reader_, or _The Pardoner's Wallet_, or the essays collected with the _Christmas Sermon_, to cla.s.s to-morrow. If these volumes are not in your personal library, your library is sadly lacking.

Read "The Honorable Points of Ignorance," "How to Know the Fallacies,"

or "Conscience Concerning Witchcraft." If any one of these fails to disclose in you the mental alertness and power of discrimination which their author considers to be requisite characteristics of a true sense of humor, then _you_ are sadly lacking in that coveted quality of mind and heart, and it behooves us to make an attempt to supply these deficiencies.

Can a sense of humor be cultivated, and if it can be cultivated, is it safe to do so? some one asks--some one who has suffered at the hands of a clever jester perhaps. By way of arriving at an answer, let us examine a little further the category of qualities which Mr. Crothers considers requisite to true humor.

We have already noted mental alertness and power of discrimination.

There can be no question as to the desirability or feasibility of developing these characteristics, since such development belongs to the fundamental effort of education. But these are but two characteristics of the quality we are considering, and not the distinguis.h.i.+ng ones.

"Humor," continues the category, "is the frank enjoyment of the imperfect." Now we scent a danger! For if, as Mr. Crothers admits, "artistic sensibility finds satisfaction only in the perfect," and since, as we all admit, artistic sensibility is an end in education devoutly to be desired, then is not a cultivation of the "frank enjoyment of the imperfect," oh dear and gentle humorist, a dangerous indulgence? The conclusive answer comes: "One may have learned to enjoy the sublime, the beautiful, the useful, the orderly, but he has missed something if he has not also learned to enjoy the incongruous, the illusive, and the unexpected." It is a conclusive reply, because we know that it is just as essential to achievement in the finest of the Fine Arts,--the art of living, as in every other form of Art, to recognize that the inrush of discord is for the final issue of harmony; that only through our ability to recognize illusion shall we come to know reality; that only through sensitiveness to the incongruous shall we develop a true sense of the fitness of things; that only frank enjoyment can disarm imperfection and find satisfaction in the perfect. So let us not hesitate to do all we can to cultivate a quality which Thackeray defines as a mixture of love and wit; to which Erasmus ascribes such desirable characteristics as good temper and insight into human nature; and for one grade of which, in addition to all its other qualities, Mr. Crothers claims "that it can proceed only from a mind free from any taint of morbidness."

If then we conclude that it is not only safe, but possible and desirable, to cultivate a sense of humor, how shall we set about it? To answer you, as to one way at least, and that a way of interpretation, Mr. Crothers "is left alive," not only to furnish new material for the exercise of the sense, but to point a gently reminding finger toward the immortal sources of good humor,--"Chaucer and Cervantes and Montaigne; Shakespeare and Bacon and Fielding and Addison; Goldsmith, Charles Lamb, and Walter Scott, and in our own country, Irving and Dr. Holmes and James Russell Lowell." Whatever period of time your schedule grants to this phase of the work should be dedicated to a closer acquaintance with the flavor and atmosphere of these great-hearted humorists in their most genial moments. Let us also heed Mr. Crothers' warning against the humor of the Dean Swifts which "would be so irresistible were it not bad humor." Let us avoid more intimate acquaintance with the broad variety furnished by the Mark Twains and Mr. Dooleys, which may be legitimately cla.s.sed as "good humor," but which is so obvious as to be little conducive to that mental alertness and power of discrimination which we aim to acquire through this study. Instead, let us seek the gracious company of William Dean Howells in the whimsical mood he so often induces.

Accepting, then, as a distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of the humor we desire to cultivate, ability to enjoy the incongruous, the illusive, and the unexpected, let us look to a master maker of these conditions for cla.s.s-room guidance in this effort. I suppose Mr. Lewis Carroll has done more to develop this distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic than any other contributor to our Letters. So we shall go on an excursion with his _Alice_ into the _Wonderland_ he made for her. If her frank enjoyment and free acceptance of the incongruous and the unexpected does not prove infectious, we must be forever written down among those who could not understand _Peter Pan_. We shall read and enjoy a chapter or two of _Alice_ together in cla.s.s, but for suggestive a.n.a.lysis along interpretative lines Heaven forbid that I should lay violent hands on her text. No one can teach you to interpret your _Alice_ save Alice herself. You may walk with her, talk with her, dwindle and grow with her, join her adventures in any way she will permit, but you may not a.n.a.lyze nor dissect her. You may learn to interpret her only by living with her and loving her.

Now _aesop_ is another matter. However long you may live with him, however much you may love his fables, there is a trick of interpretation to be learned in voicing his philosophy which will develop the whimsical side of your sense of humor and counteract the insistent moral tone attached to every fable.

SUGGESTIVE a.n.a.lYSIS

The danger in handling a fable does not lie, as the interpreter seems so often to think, in adopting too serious a tone. All the literature of pure fancy, from the humorous essays of Bacon through the _Arabian Nights_ to the nonsensical rhymes of Lear, must be treated with great gravity of tone and temper by the interpreter. It is not levity, but only whimsicality of temperament, I demand from one who would read from this particular lore to me. I want my whimsical friend to interpret my Chaucer and Crothers, _Peter Pan_ and the _Pied Piper_, Hans Christian Andersen, Carroll, and Lear, and all the rest of the genial host who minister to my most precious sense of nonsense. And, perhaps, most of all, it is he (the whimsical friend) who must read fables to me, for a fable, the dictionary tells us, is "a story in which, by the imagined dealings of men with animals or mere things, or by the supposed doings of these alone, useful lessons are taught." Now a moral "rubbed in" is like an overdose of certain kinds of medicine, where a little cures, too much kills. It is the presence of the _lesson_ which the whimsical tone alone can offset. The whimsical tone never falls into the monotone.

Whimsicality always seeks variety of emphasis and movement. Let us apply this to the reading of the fable called