Chapter 13
O then what soul was his, when on the top Of the high mountains he beheld the sun Rise up and bathe the world in light! He looked-- Ocean and earth, the solid frame of earth, And ocean's liquid mass, beneath him lay In gladness and deep joy. The clouds were touched, And in their silent faces did he read Unutterable love. Sound needed none Nor any voice of joy. His spirit drank The spectacle; sensation, soul and form All melted into him; they swallowed up His animal being; in them did he live, And by them did he live; they were his life.
There are people who find little satisfaction in Wordsworth. His reputation is a puzzle to them. They look for fine passages and too rarely discover them. They judge him by the test of mere brilliance of language, not by the higher and truer poetic gift, the power of seeing "into the life of things," the power and exquisite feeling whereby outward facts are brought to serve as inward forces.
And, quite apart from this function as the receiver of impressions and the communicator of them; quite apart from the function of the poet as moral and spiritual teacher working side by side with that teacher of facts, the man of science, there is room, and will always be room, for the artist-poet who simply refreshes and entertains. For poetry lies also in epics and romances, in "feigned history" and descriptions, when the poet, as Longinus says, "by a kind of enthusiasm or extraordinary emotion of the soul," makes it seem to us that we behold those things which he paints--a feat which he performs through his gift of imagination, whereby he bodies forth the shapes of things unknown and gives to airy nothings of beauty and delight and pathos a local habitation and a name. The world of the future will find refreshment in such creations no less than the world of the present. We know that romantic novels are unreal, but we read them with keen enjoyment none the less. So those romantic poems the _Idylls of the King_ and _The Earthly Paradise_, like _The Tempest_, or the _Faerie Queene_, though they cause us no real illusion as to fact, nevertheless absorb our interest, and charm us with their unliteral beauties. We know in our hearts that there is no magic and no fairyland. But it is a pitiably dull and mollusc mind which finds no delight in peering through those
Charm'd magic casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn.
There remains, then, this function too of the poet who gives "exquisite expression" to an "exquisite impression"--the function of entertaining us nobly with tender thought and touching story, embodied in words of beauty, and graced with melodious cadences. Of such sort is the writer of the _Earthly Paradise_, who confesses his own modest aims in words like these:--
Of heaven or hell I have no power to sing; I cannot ease the burden of your fears, Or make quick-coming death a little thing, Or bring again the pleasure of past years, Nor for my words shall ye forget your tears, Or hope again for aught that I can say, The idle singer of an empty day.
But rather, when aweary of your mirth, From full hearts still unsatisfied ye sigh, And, feeling kindly unto all the earth, Grudge every minute as it passes by, Made the more mindful that the sweet days die, Remember me a little then, I pray, The idle singer of an empty day.
Dreamer of dreams, born out of my due time, Why should I strive to set the crooked straight? Let it suffice me that my murmuring rhyme Beat with light wing against the ivory gate, Telling a tale not too importunate To those who in the sleepy region stay, Lulled by the singer of an empty day.
We have dealt with the poet's place in the world of growing scientific light. We might also treat of the poet's place in the world of social progress. But he is a bold man who will prophesy whither society is tending. To some of us, its evolution has no terrors. But, whatever be the course of institutions, whatever the changing shapes of the social organism, there is one conviction we may most firmly hold. It is that, as ecstasies of love and grief, hope and fear, joy and suffering, must still exist, so the poet will ever exist to give them utterance. The drama, the lyric, the elegy, can never be effete so long as men have hearts and feel with them.
But why, it may be asked, should all this exquisite expression of nature and man and life take shape in verse? Why should we not, with Carlyle, declare verse out of date, an artificial thing, which expresses under crippling encumbrances what could be expressed in prose more clearly and more truthfully? To this question we may reply that rhymes and recurrences of equal syllables are indeed no essentials of true poetry. Poetry has existed without them, and will exist without them. But, if not rhymes and equal syllables, yet rhythm and melody, moving concurrences of sounds, must for all time be elements of poetic utterance. The reason should be manifest. There is an indefinable sympathy between the spoken sound and the conceiving mood of the poet. The poet conceives in moments of unusual sensibility, his mental part is vibrating, and that sensibility lends a corresponding movement to his language. When a poet says of himself--
I do but sing because I must, And pipe but as the linnets sing,
he expresses the truth that rhythm and melody lend themselves spontaneously to an inspiring thought. Poetry, like good music, comes of the possession of the movement. The mood in which poetry is conceived is the same mood in which men burst forth without premeditation into song. The thoughts which come to the poet in his exaltation are, therefore, naturally wedded to melody and cadence.
Moreover, not only is a rhythmic music the natural utterance of impassioned thought for him who speaks. It is the necessary instrument for inducing the proper, the receptive, mood in him who hears. We know how it is with music, when all the air is vibrating and chanting with some vast organ-swell. We know how we are stirred to our inmost depths simply by mere harmony and sequence of sounds. We do not know why it is so, why our mood should be attuned to sorrow, gaiety, enthusiasm, heroism, meditation, by the hearing of music in its various kinds. We do not know, either, why the mere shapes of the sublime architecture of some great abbey or cathedral, or the blended colours of its deep-damasked window-stains, should fill our hearts with devout or poignant aspirations. Yet we know that the fact is so. And it is the same with poetry. The rhythm and melody which come spontaneously from the poet's mood dispose the hearer in the self-same way; they fit him to receive what the other brings. Verse, as we now understand that term, poetry need not be. But though it may look like prose because the lines stretch all across the page and cannot be measured by so many iambics or anapaests, yet, if it be real poetry, heart-felt and heart-moving, it will be but a delusive prose, a prose of infinitely subtle rhythms and harmonies. It will be as far removed as the Homeric hexameter from the pedestrian motion of cold argument.
Poetry will never fail us until nature fails. We may miss the transcendent voices now, but we have had during this century more than a century's usual share, and with the first widespread rise of some new moral fervour or lofty hope and aim the great poet cannot be wanting to give it shape in thrilling verse.
Poetry will never fail us. The poetry of nature will not fail us. So long as the sun shall each night and morning glorify the heavens with his inexhaustible splendours, or the majestic moon ride in her mysterious silence between the everchanging isles of cloud; so long as innumerable starry worlds shine down their unspeakable peace into human hearts; so long as the flower shall open out its loveliness, dance in the breeze, shed its perfumes, and then close its petals in sleep and drink in the refreshment of the unfailing dew; so long as the tree shall put forth its tender greenery of leaf in the spring, blossom into gold and fire in summer and in the autumn bow down with fruits; so long as water shall leap and foam and thunder in cataracts down the mountain-side, or ripple and smile over the pebble or under the fern--so long shall the heart of man respond to sun and moon and stars, to flower and tree and stream, and there shall be poetry.
And as man's vision, intensified by the lens of science, pierces deeper and deeper into the universe of the ineffably great and the illimitably small, and as his wonder and awe increase with what they feed upon, so will the finer souls of humankind be thrilled and thrilled again with rich new suggestions and exquisite emotions, and they shall express them in poetry.
The poetry of man will not fail us. So long as man has a heart wherewith to love another better than himself, to feel the joy of possession or the pang of loss, to glow with pride at a nation's glories or mourn in its dejection, so long shall the lyric and the elegy, in whatsoever shape, create themselves ever afresh.
Till all our life, its institutions, and its beliefs are perfect: till man has no doubts, no fears, no hopes: till he has analysed all his emotions and despises them: till the heavens above and the earth beneath can be read like a printed scroll: till nature has yielded up her last mystery: till that day poetry will exist among men.
And we may dare to assert that the future of poetry is destined to be greater than its past, that Tennyson's prayer will be fulfilled--
Let knowledge grow from more to more, But more of reverence in us dwell, That mind and soul, according well, May make one music as before But vaster,
And the expression of that music will be poetry.
* * * * *
A SELECTION FROM THE CATALOGUE OF BOOKS
PUBLISHED BY
Thomas C. Lothian,
100, FLINDERS STREET,
MELBOURNE.
INDEX OF TITLES.
PAGE
Australians Yet 9
Bush, The 7
Bushland Ballads 9
Dark Tower, The 12
Dawnward 7
Dominions of the Boundary 7
Eating for Health 8
Ginger Talks on Business 6
Guide to the Study of Australian Butterflies 9
House of Broken Dreams, The 5
Keeyuga Cookery Book, The 11
Later Litanies 5
Litanies of Life 5
Mateship 9
Mosquitoes: Their Habits and Distribution 9
No Breakfast; or, the Secret of Life 12
Peradventure 12
Poems by Jennings Carmichael 9
Poems by Hubert Church 10
Poems by Bernard O'Dowd 9
Poems by William Gay 9
Poems of Henry C. Kendall 9
Poems by Jessie Mackay 9
Poetical Works of William Gay 10
Poetry Militant 7
Rosemary 6
Satyrs and Sunlight 10
Sea and Sky 10
Sea Spray and Smoke Drift 9
Seven Deadly Sins, The 7
Silent Land and Other Verses, The 7
Stranger's Friend, The 9
Spirit of the Child 3
Things Worth Thinking About 4
Told in the Dormitory 6
Woman's Work 11
* * * * *
THE SPIRIT OF THE CHILD
BY TULLIE WOLLASTON.
_Pott 4th._ _224 pages._ _Price_, 5/-; _posted_, 5/4
_Every Home in Australia_ should possess a copy of "_The Spirit of the Child_"--and, in fact, _every teacher and child lover everywhere_.
This is a distinctly original book, with quaint gleams of humour and a spiritual atmosphere, impossible to describe, but the very thing to rejoice the hearts of fathers and mothers who know how to give good gifts to their children. Also it is even more valuable for the parents themselves.
A father, ordered abroad for his health, and realizing how precarious life is, feels impelled to gather up in some interesting way the vital points of his varied experience for the children he loves so well. He feels, as so many fathers do, the veil of shyness between parent and child, and recognizes how few are the opportunities, in the rough and tumble of life, for the fitly spoken word to confirm "what has been silently indrawn by contact of love." A passionate Nature lover himself, he takes for unique treasures of Australia--a flower, a bird, a tree, and a precious stone--and treats them in a way to quicken every earnest heart, and foster the child spirit of bright interest and loving humility.
Two of these subjects are illustrated by six fine three-colour pictures--those of the _Black Opals_, probably being finer reproductions of _Gems of Colour_ than any ever previously made anywhere.
A quaint love story linked to the rest of the subject matter by the same mystic touch, lends variety to the Book and strengthens the one golden thread of purpose, which is briefly summed up in the title.
* * * * *
THINGS WORTH THINKING ABOUT
BY T. G. TUCKER, Litt. D.
PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL LITERATURE IN UNIVERSITY, MELBOURNE.
_Crown 8vo. 288 pages. Bound in full cloth. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9._
In this volume, Education, Science, Literature, Culture and Cant and other kindred subjects are treated in a manner that is full of vitality and attracts. This is a reprint of a book that has been out of print and quite unprocurable for many years.
CONTENTS.--Our Earliest Ancestors and their Beliefs. The Nature and Province of Poetry. Literature, Science and Education. Culture and Cant. The Teachings of History. The Teachings of Travel. Literary Judgment.
"This book is singularly well named. The last lecture of literary judgment is particularly interesting and valuable. It is full of suggestion as to young journalists, and all persons interested in the study of 'that literature which maketh a full man,' and which must spring from the real blood of the heart, and the real flame of the thought."--_Otago Daily Times._
"These seven essays are distinctively worth while. We especially commend his essay on the Teachings of History, which is packed with wisdom, to every one who is seriously interested in the science of politics."
"In Australia he should be known as a public benefactor. The volume before us being nothing less than a contribution to the Commonwealth."--_The Athenaeum._
* * * * *
LATER LITANIES
BY KATHLEEN WATSON.
AUTHOR OF "LITANIES OF LIFE."
_Bound in full cloth. Artistically blocked in gold. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/8._
This new book by Kathleen Watson is sure to receive a friendly welcome from the hundreds of friends which she made with her previous books. This volume is, perhaps, more mature, and will give greater pleasure than any of her former books. All readers should secure a copy of this new book.
* * * * *
LITANIES OF LIFE
BY KATHLEEN WATSON.
AUTHOR OF "THE HOUSE OF BROKEN DREAMS," "THE GAIETY OF FATMA."
_Crown 8vo. Bound in full blue cloth, gold blocked. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/8._
This is the fifth edition of a remarkable volume. Already over 20,000 copies have been sold--and little wonder, for it is a book to read and re-read. It will rivet the attention of the reader, and hold it right through. It pulsates with human interest, with human feeling, love and joy and sorrow.
"I read a few pages, and after that there was no laying down the book. Fancy a woman with a powerful, perhaps somewhat morbid imagination, with intense emotions, with a tendency to brood over all that is sad in the human lot; and finally, with the power to concentrate a whole panorama of suffering into a phrase--fancy a woman so gifted sitting down with the resolve to crush into a few words the infinite tale of all the whole race of her sex can suffer, and you have an idea of what this remarkable book is like."--_T.P.'s Weekly._
"The reader will lay down the book as I did, with a feeling of profound sympathy and gratitude to the unknown writer, in whose pages they can hear the tremulous throb of an intense emotion, which, however, does not obscure the finer and strongest note of heroic resolve."--_The late W. T. Stead._
* * * * *
THE HOUSE OF BROKEN DREAMS. A MEMORY
BY KATHLEEN WATSON.
_Second Edition, Crown 8vo, bound in full cloth. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/8._
_A Review_: "She who gave us the well-loved 'Litanies of Life' clothes beautiful thoughts in beautiful language.... As a picture of idyllic love and sympathy between mother and son, even unto death--and beyond--it has rarely been surpassed, and helps us to realize the wondrous truth that 'love is heaven, and heaven is love.'"--_The Register._
* * * * *
THE BEST BOYS' BOOK OF STORIES.
TOLD IN THE DORMITORY
BY R. G. JENNINGS.
_In Handsome Cloth Cover, and with Frontispiece in Colour. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9._
Mr. R. G. Jennings is one of the best-known teachers in Melbourne. Hundreds of boys belonging to the Church of England Grammar School have listened with breathless interest to these stories, told them by their master after lessons, "In the Dormitory." The boys all voted the stories so good that the best twelve were collected and are now published.
The stories are clean, wholesome and exciting, and many an elder brother, as well as the father, of a family, has picked up the volume to give it a rapid glance, and has had to read story after story, only putting the book reluctantly down when the last page was reached.
If you want to read a good school-boy book of adventuresome yarns, or make some small youth happy, then get a copy of "Told in the Dormitory." Just look at what the papers have said about it:--
"Entertaining yarns, well told, without a hint of padding or affectation."--_The Athenaeum_.
"The sort of yarns boys love."--_The New Age._
"They are tersely presented, direct, and pointed.... The book will be read with delight by boys at school and with interest by older folk."--_Adelaide Register_.
"These wholesome and terse stories, 'Told in the Dormitory,' are just what will delight elder boys--and such of their parents as still remember school days."--_Geelong Advertiser._
* * * * *
ROSEMARY
THAT'S FOR REMEMBRANCE.
BY ELEANOR MORDAUNT.
Author of "The Garden of Contentment," "A Ship of Solace," etc., etc.
_Crown 8vo. 204 Pages. Bound in Cloth. Gold Blocked. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/9._
More and more is Eleanor Mordaunt claiming the attention of the reading public, but it is doubtful whether any of her other books have surpassed "Rosemary" for sheer charm and attractiveness. It is a blue sky book, full of cheerfulness and good nature. It tells of an Englishwoman who spends a quiet year in Australia, and who describes the procession of the seasons and how they appeal to her. The chapters are all interesting, and cannot be exhausted by a single reading. This is a book that is always fresh. Open it anywhere and it arrests you at once.
"It is a delightful book, written in a most refreshing style. It is so full of sunny and happy thoughts, so suggestive of all that is best in life that one lingers over its pages."--_Birmingham Daily Post._
* * * * *
GINGER TALKS ON BUSINESS
BY W. C. HOLMAN.
_Price, 5/-; posted, 5/4._
Crown 8vo, extra cloth gilt, 235 pages, with 15 full-page cartoons, illustrating the principles of Salesmanship, which the "Talks" explain. In these days of commercial activity, business is becoming such a profession that it needs preparation and study to cope successfully with the problems of success.
"Ginger Talks" is as helpful a text-book as one could possibly get, but it differs from many text-books in that it is fascinating reading. It abounds in good humour, hopefulness and brilliant interesting talk; talk that is practical, helpful and human.
* * * * *
BERNARD O'DOWD'S WORKS.
This writer is quietly but surely coming to his own place, which is in the forefront of Australian authors. Those competent to judge are unanimous in their opinion regarding the unique and high quality of Mr. O'Dowd's work.
* * * * *
DAWNWARD
_Price, 2/6; posted, 2/7._
A few copies of the original limited First Edition, published by the _Bulletin Company_, are still available. Price on application.
"The best book of verses yet produced in Australia."--T. G. Tucker, Litt. D., Prof. of Classical Literature, University of Melbourne.
* * * * *
THE SILENT LAND AND OTHER VERSES
_Price, 2/6; posted, 2/7. Bound in Half-cloth Boards, Gilt Tops. A few copies of an Edition-de-Luxe (limited to 25), signed by the author, are still available. Price, 7/6._
"The most arresting work of the younger generation is that of Mr. Bernard O'Dowd."--_The Times_, London.
* * * * *
DOMINIONS OF THE BOUNDARY
_64 Pages. Art Cover. Price, 1/-; posted, 1/1._
"Mr. Bernard O'Dowd stands alone among modern Australian poets."--_The Spectator_ (London).
* * * * *
POETRY MILITANT
An Australian plea for the Poetry of Purpose. An exceedingly fine, sincere literary essay.
_Paper Cover, 1/1; postage, 1d._
* * * * *
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS
A Sonnet Series.
_Small 4to. 56pp., Deckle-edged, Antique Paper. Price, 3/6; postage, 1d._
"It is full of thought and vision. It embodies such a bold and luminous re-valuation of the universe, as we have every right to expect from the true poet."--_The Herald._
* * * * *
THE BUSH
_Small Quarto. Art Paper Cover. Price, 2/6; posted, 2/7._
"It is the most significant of all the poems, of any considerable length, that Australia has yet produced."--_The Argus._
"It takes rank at once as a great national poem. It should be bought and read, and re-read, by every thoughtful Australian."--_A. T. Strong in The Herald._
* * * * *
EATING FOR HEALTH
BY O. L. M. ABRAMOWSKI, M.D., Ch.D. (Berlin).
_Cloth Bound. Price, 3/6; posted, 3/9. Third Edition, greatly increased and edited by J. T. Huston._
This book is written from actual personal knowledge and experience. It is as interesting as a novel. It is the evolution of a common sense idea of disease, and a natural system for its prevention and cure.
"It is the most complete work on dietary experiment that we have seen."--_T.P.'s Weekly._
"The value of this book lies in its perfect frankness."--_Stock and Station Journal_, Sydney.