Robinson, Edwin Arlington: The Dark Hills Robinson, Edwin Arlington: Monadnock Through the Trees Lindsay, Vachel: The Eagle That Is Forgotten Masters, Edgar Lee: George Gray PAGE 462 463 464 466 467 469 471 472 474 475 476 478 Masters, Edgar Lee: John Hancock Otis Mordaunt, Major Thomas O.: Sound, Sound the Kipling, Rudyard: Recessional Seeger, Alan: I Have a Rendezvous with Death Ledwidge, Francis: Soliloquy (in part) INTRODUCTION TO POETRY CHAPTER I THE STUDY OF POETRY The seasons change, the winds they shift and veer; Is dead; the birds depart, the groves decay: Captains and conquerors leave a little dust, William Watson: "Lachrimæ Musarum" "THE future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay." We can think of no better way of beginning a poetic anthology than by quoting this opening sentence of Matthew Arnold's Introduction to Ward's English Poets. These words are as true today as they were half a century ago when they were written. For "Poetry," as Wordsworth said, "is as immortal as the heart of man." If poetry is not immortal, it is at any rate more nearly so than anything else made by man. No one, in fine, can afford to remain indifferent to this great and imperishable possession of the race. We are, however, living in a rapidly changing age which has little patience with anything belonging to the past. Old ideas, old conventions, old standards seem to be passing away. Although, strangely enough, no one suggests that poetry is something we have outgrown, there are nevertheless many who assert that we have outgrown much of the poetry which preceding generations thought great. This is natural and inevitable, and no one need regret it. We do not look for exactly the same things in poetry that our Victorian grandparents sought, for our view of life is different from theirs. Each age must give its own answer to the recurring question, Why read poetry? Although the answer which we give today is not essentially different from that given long ago by Aristotle or by Sir Philip Sidney, it is indispensable that we answer the question for ourselves, even though we may merely translate into modern terms what older apologists have said. Throughout this chapter and, to a less degree, throughout the entire book, we shall quote extensively from what the poets themselves have had to say about their aims and methods. The best interpreter is the poet himself, particularly if he be, like Arnold, Coleridge, Poe, or Amy Lowell, a gifted critic as well. Many are the motives which induce men to read books. In the preface to his novel, Pierre et Jean, Guy de Maupassant wrote: "The public is composed of numerous groups who say to us [writers]: 'Console me,―amuse me, make me sad,-make me sentimental,—make me dream,—make me laugh, make me tremble,-make me weep,—make me think.' But there are some chosen spirits who demand of the artist: 'Make for me something fine, in the form which suits you best, following your own temperament." In other words, the reasons why men turn to fiction and poetry are almost endless in their variety, but the reader whom every novelist and every poet most desires is he who first ascertains what the writer is trying to do and then judges his success or failure by that aim. Lord Dunsany, the Irish dramatist, has said: “Of pure poetry there are two kinds, that which mirrors the beauty of the world in which our bodies are, and that which builds the more mysterious kingdoms where geography ends and fairyland begins, with gods and heroes at war, and the sirens singing still, and Alph going down to the darkness from Xanadu." Borrowing the terminology of prose fiction, we shall call these two kinds of poetry realistic and romantic. There are times when we turn to poetry as a means of escape from prosaic surroundings. In this mood poetry offers a pleasing means of beguiling an otherwise tedious hour. Poetry, said Keats, should be a friend To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man. In this mood we turn from what Wordsworth called the "familiar matter of to-day" to old, unhappy far-off things And battles long ago. We lose ourselves in Camelot with Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere, or roam the Scottish Highlands with James Fitz-James and Ellen Douglas, or we turn to the age of chivalry which Keats magically resurrected in "The Eve |