Chapter 12

Mere art (Heaven save the "mere"!) is not, and has never been, enough to place a poet among the great spirits of the world. It has furnished a number of nimble mandolinists and exquisite dilettants for lazy moods. But great poetry must always be something more than sweetmeats; it must be food--temptingly cooked, winningly served, well spiced and well accompanied, but yet food to strengthen the blood and the sinews of the soul.

Therefore I make so bold as to insist that even in a lyrist there should be something more than the prosperity or the dirge of personal _amours_: there should be a sympathy with the world-joy, the world-suffering, and the world-kinship. It is this attitude toward lyric poetry that makes me think Mr. Riley a poet whose exquisite art is lavished on humanity so deep-sounding as to commend him to the acceptance of immortality among the highest lyrists.

Horace was an acute thinker and a frank speaker on the problems of life. This didacticism seems not to have harmed his artistic welfare, for he has undoubtedly been the most popular poet that ever wrote. Consider the magnitude and the enthusiasm of his audience! He has been the personal chum of everyone that ever read Latinity. But Horace, when not exalted with his inspired preachments on the art of life and the arts of poetry and love, was a bitter cynic redeemed by great self-depreciation and joviality. The son of a slave, he was too fond of court life to talk democracy.

Bobby Burns was a thorough child of the people, and is more like Mr. Riley in every way than any other poet. Yet he, too, had a vicious cynicism, and he never had the polished art that enriches some of Mr. Riley's non-dialectic poetry, as in parts of his fairy fancy, "The Flying Islands of the Night."

Burns never had the versatility of sympathy that enables Mr. Riley to write such unpastoral masterpieces as "Anselmo," "The Dead Lover," "A Scrawl," "The Home-going," some of his sonnets, and the noble verses beginning

"A monument for the soldiers! And what will ye build it of?"

Yet it must be owned that Burns is in general Mr. Riley's prototype. Mr. Riley admits it himself in his charming verses "To Robert Burns."

"Sweet singer, that I lo'e the maist O' ony, sin' wi' eager haste I smacket bairn lips ower the taste O' hinnied sang."

The classic pastoral poets, Theokritos, Vergandil, the others, sang with an exquisite art, indeed, yet their farm-folk were really Dresden-china shepherds and shepherdesses speaking with affected simplicity or with impossible elegance. Theokritos, like Burns and Riley, wrote partly in dialect and partly in the standard speech, and to those who are never reconciled to anything that can quote no "authority," there should be sufficient justification for dialect poetry in this divine Sicilian musician of whom his own Goatherd might have said:

"Full of fine honey thy beautiful mouth was, Thyrsis, created Full of the honeycomb; figs Ægilean, too, mayest thou nibble, Sweet as they are; for ev'n than the locust more bravely thou singest."

I have no room to argue the _pro's_ of dialect here, but it always seems strange that those lazy critics who are unwilling to take the trouble to translate the occasional hard words in a dialect form of their own tongue, should be so inconsistent as ever to study a foreign language. Then, too, dialect is necessary to truth, to local color, to intimacy with the character depicted. Besides, it is delicious. There is something mellow and soul-warming about a plebeian metathesis like "congergation." What orthoepy could replace lines like these?:

"Worter, shade and all so mixed, don't know which you'd orter Say, th' _worter_ in the shadder--_shadder_ in the _worter_!"

One thing about Mr. Riley's dialect that may puzzle those not familiar with the living speech of the Hoosiers, is his spelling, which is chiefly done as if by the illiterate speaker himself. Thus "rostneer-time" and "ornry" must be Æolic Greek to those barbarians who have never heard of "roasting-ears" of corn or of that contemptuous synonym for "vulgar," "common," which is smoothly elided, "or(di)n(a)ry." Both of these words could be spelled with a suggestive and helpful use of apostrophes: "roast'n'-ear," and or'n'ry.

Jumbles like "jevver" for "did you ever?" and the like can hardly be spelled otherwise than phonetically, but a glossary should be appended as in Lowell's "Biglow Papers," for the poems are eminently worth even lexicon-thumbing. Another frequent fault of dialect writers is the spelling phonetically of words pronounced everywhere alike. Thus "enough" is spelled "enuff," and "clamor," "clammer," though Dr. Johnson himself would never have pronounced them otherwise. In these misspellings, however, Mr. Riley excuses himself by impersonating an illiterate as well as a crude-speaking poet. But even then he is inconsistent, and "hollowing" becomes "hollerin'," with an apostrophe to mark the lost "g"--that abominable imported harshness that ought to be generally exiled from our none too smooth language. Mr. Riley has written a good essay in defense of dialect, which enemies of this form of literature might read with advantage.

But Mr. Riley has written a deal of most excellent verse that is not in dialect. One whole volume is devoted to a fairy extravaganza called "The Flying Islands of the Night," a good addition to that quaint literature of lace to which "The Midsummer Night's Dream," Herrick's "Oberon's Epithalamium," or whatever it is called, Drake's "Culprit Fay," and other bits of most exquisite foolery belong. While hardly a complete success, this diminutive drama contains some curiously delightful conceits like this "improvisation:"

"Her face--her brow--her hair unfurled!-- And O the oval chin below, Carved, like a cunning cameo, With one exquisite dimple, swirled With swimming shine and shade, and whirled The daintiest vortex poets know-- The sweetest whirlpool ever twirled By Cupid's finger-tip--and so, The deadliest maelstrom in the world!"

It is a strange individuality that Mr. Riley has, suggesting numerous other masters--whose influence he acknowledges in special odes--and yet all digested and assimilated into a marked individuality of his own. He has studied the English poets profoundly and improved himself upon them, till one is chiefly impressed, in his non-dialectic verse, with his refinement, subtlety, and ease. He has a large vocabulary, and his felicity is at times startling. Thus he speaks of water "chuckling," which is as good as Horace's ripples that "gnaw" the shore. Note the mastery of such lines as

"And the dust of the road is like velvet."

"Nothin' but green woods and clear Skies and unwrit poetry By the acre!"

"Then God smiled and it was morning!"

Life is "A poor pale yesterday of Death."

"And O I wanted so To be felt sorry for!"

"Always suddenly they are gone, The friends we trusted and held secure."

"At utter loaf."

"Knee-deep in June."

--But I can not go on quoting forever.

Technically, Mr. Riley is a master of surpassing finish. His meters are perfect and varied. They flow as smoothly as his own Indiana streams. His rimes are almost never imperfect. To prove his own understanding he has written one _scherzo_ in technic that is a delightful example of bad rime, bad meter, and the other earmarks of the poor poet. It is "Ezra House," and begins:

"Come listen, good people, while a story I do tell Of the sad fate of one I knew so passing well!"

The "do" and the "so" are the unfailing index of crudity. Then we have rimes like "long" and "along" (it is curious that modern English is the only tongue that finds this repetition objectionable); "moon" and "tomb," "well" and "hill," and "said" and "denied" are others, and the whole thing is an enchanting lesson in How Poetry Should Not be Written.

Mr. Riley is fond of dividing words at the ends of lines, but always in a comic way, though Horace, you remember, was not unwilling to use it seriously, as in his

"----U- Xorius amnis."

Mr. Riley's animadversions on "Addeliney Bowersox" constitute a fascinating study in this effect. He is also devoted to dividing an adjective from its noun by a line-end. This is a trick of Poe's, whose influence Mr. Riley has greatly profited by. In his dialect poetry Mr. Riley gets just the effect of the jerky drawl of the Hoosier by using the end of a line as a knife, thus:

"The wood's Green again, and sun feels good's June!"

His masterly use of the cæsura is notable, too. See its charming despotism in "Griggsby Station."

But it is not his technic that makes him ambrosial, not the loving care _ad unguem_ that smooths the uncouthest dialect into lilting tunefulness without depriving it of its colloquial verisimilitude--it is none of these things of mechanical inspiration, but the spirit of the man, his democracy, his tenderness, the health and wealth of his sympathies. If he uses "memory" a little too often as a vehicle for his rural pictures, the utter charm of the pictures is atonement enough. He has caught the real American. He is the laureate of the bliss of laziness. His child poems are the next best thing to the child itself; they have all the infectious essence of gayety, and all the _naïveté_, and all the knife-like appeal. It could not reasonably be demanded that his prose should equal the perfection of his verse, but nothing more eerie has ever been done than the little story, "Where is Mary Alice Smith?" with its strange use of rime at the end.

Of all dialect writers he has been the most versatile. Think of the author of "The Raggedy Man" or "Orphant Annie" writing one of the finest sonnets in the language! this one which I must quote here as a noble ending to my halt praise:

"Being his mother, when he goes away I would not hold him overlong, and so Sometimes my yielding sight of him grows O So quick of tears, I joy he did not stay To catch the faintest rumor of them! Nay, Leave always his eyes clear and glad, although Mine own, dear Lord, do fill to overflow;

"Let his remembered features, as I pray, Smile ever on me. Ah! what stress of love Thou givest me to guard with Thee thiswise: Its fullest speech ever to be denied Mine own--being his mother! All thereof Thou knowest only, looking from the skies As when not Christ alone was crucified."

Life is the more tolerable, the more full of learned sympathy, and thereby of joy and value, for the very existence of such a man.

* * * * *

LIST OF MR. RILEY'S BOOKS.

A CHILD WORLD. (NEW.) Tales in verse of childhood days. Cloth, 12mo, $1.25. Half calf, $2.50. Hand-made Paper edition, bound uniform with "Old Fashioned Roses," $2.

NEGHBORLY POEMS, including "The Old Swimmin' Hole," by Benjamin F. Johnson, of Boone (James Whitcomb Riley.) Cloth, illustrated, 12mo, $1.25. Half calf, $2.50.

SKETCHES IN PROSE, and Occasional Verses. Cloth, $1.25. Half calf, $2.50.

AFTERWHILES. Sixtieth thousand. With Portrait. Cloth, $1.25. Half calf, $2.50.

PIPES O' PAN AT ZEKESBURY. Five Sketches and fifty Poems. Cloth, $1.25. Half calf, $2.50.

RHYMES OF CHILDHOOD. Dialect and other Verses. With Portrait. Cloth, $1.25. Half calf, $2.50.

THE FLYING ISLANDS OF THE NIGHT. A Fantastic Drama in Verse. Cloth, $1.25. Half calf, $2.50.

GREEN FIELDS AND RUNNING BROOKS. Dialect and Serious Poems. With Portrait. Cloth, Illustrated, $1.25. Half calf, $2.50.

ARMAZINDY. Hoosier Harvest Airs, Feigned Forms, and Child Rhymes. Cloth, $1.25. Half calf, $2.50.

OLD FASHIONED ROSES. A selection of popular Poems, from Mr. Riley's Works. Printed in England. 16mo, uncut, $1.75.

AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE. Illustrated in colors. Oblong 4to, $2.50.

A UNIFORM EDITION of Mr. Riley's Works in 9 volumes, 12mo, cloth, per set, $11.25. Half calf, 9 volumes, 12mo, per set, $22.50. Published by The Bowen-Merrill Co., Indianapolis and Kansas City. Sent post-paid to any address on receipt of the price.