Chapter 4

THE SPARK FROM HEAVEN

Dare we venture into the holy of holies, where the gods are said to come upon the poet? Is there not danger that the divine spark which kindles his song may prove a bolt to annihilate us, because of our presumptuous intrusion? What voice is this, which meets us at the threshold?

Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes in holy dread--

It is Coleridge, warning us of our peril, if we remain open-eyed and curious, trying to surprise the secret of the poet's visitation.

Yet are we not tolerably safe? We are under the guidance of an initiate; the poet himself promises to unveil the mystery of his inspiration for us. As Vergil kept Dante unscathed by the flames of the divine vision, will not our poet protect us? Let us enter.

But another doubt, a less thrilling one, bids us pause. Is it indeed the heavenly mystery that we are bid gaze upon, or are we to be the dupe of self-deceived impostors? Our intimacy is with poets of the last two centuries,--not the most inspired period in the history of poetry. And in the ranks of our multitudinous verse-writers, it is not the most prepossessing who are loudest in promising us a fair spectacle. How harsh-voiced and stammering are some of these obscure apostles who are offering to exhibit the entire mystery of their gift of tongues! We see more impressive figures, to be sure. Here is the saturnine Poe, who with contemptuous smile assures us that we are welcome to all the secrets of his creative frenzies. Here is our exuberant Walt Whitman, crying, "Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems." [Footnote: _Song of Myself_.] But though we scan every face twice, we find here no Shakespeare promising us the key to creation of a _Hamlet_.

Still, is it not well to follow a forlorn hope? Among the less vociferous, here are singers whose faces are alight with a mysterious radiance. Though they promise us little, saying that they themselves are blinded by the transcendent vision, so that they appear as men groping in darkness, yet may they not unawares afford us some glimpse of their transfiguration?

If we refuse the poet's revelation, we have no better way of arriving at the truth. The scientist offers us little in this field; and his account of inspiration is as cold and comfortless as a chemical formula. Of course the scientist is amused by this objection to him, and asks, "What more do you expect from the effusions of poets? Will not whatever secret they reveal prove an open one? What will it profit you to learn that the milk of Paradise nourishes the poetic gift, since it is not handled by an earthly dairy?" But when he speaks thus, our scientific friend is merely betraying his ignorance regarding the nature of poetry. Longinus, [Footnote: _On the Sublime,_ I.] and after him, Sidney, [Footnote: _Apology for Poetry._] long ago pointed out its peculiar action, telling us that it is the poet's privilege to make us partakers of his ecstasy. So, if the poet describes his creative impulses, why should he not make us sharers of them?

This is not an idle question, for surely Plato, that involuntary poet, has had just this effect upon his readers. Have not his pictures, in the _Phaedrus_ and the _Ion_, of the artist's ecstasy touched Shelley and the lesser Platonic poets of our time with the enthusiasm he depicts? Incidentally, the figure of the magnet which Plato uses in the Ion may arouse hope in the breasts of us, the humblest readers of Shelley and Woodberry. For as one link gives power of suspension to another, so that a ring which is not touched by the magnet is yet thrilled with its force, so one who is out of touch with Plato's supernal melodies, may be sensitized by the virtue imparted to his nineteenth century disciples, who are able to "temper this planetary music for mortal ears."

Let us not lose heart, at the beginning of our investigation, though our greatest poets admit that they themselves have not been able to keep this creative ecstasy for long. To be sure this is disillusioning. We should prefer to think of their silent intervals as times of insight too deep for expression; as Anna Branch phrases it,

When they went Unto the fullness of their great content Like moths into the grass with folded wings. [Footnote: _The Silence of the Poets._]

This pleasing idea has been fostered in us by poems of appeal to silent singers. [Footnote: See Swinburne, _A Ballad of Appeal to Christina Rossetti_; and Francis Thompson, _To a Poet Breaking Silence_.] But we have manifold confessions that it is not commonly thus with the non-productive poet. Not merely do we possess many requiems sung by erst-while makers over their departed gift, [Footnote: See especially Scott, _Farewell to the Muse_; Kirke White, _Hushed is the Lyre_; Landor, _Dull is My Verse_, and _To Wordsworth_; James Thomson, B. V., _The Fire that Filled My Heart of Old_, and _The Poet and the Muse_; Joaquin Miller, _Vale_; Andrew Lang, _The Poet's Apology_; Francis Thompson, _The Cloud's Swan Song_.] but there is much verse indicating that, even in the poet's prime, his genius is subject to a mysterious ebb and flow. [Footnote: See Burns, _Second Epistle to Lapraik_; Keats, _To My Brother George_; Winthrop Mackworth Praed, _Letter from Eaton_; William Cullen Bryant, _The Poet_; Oliver Wendell Holmes, _Invita Minerva_; Emerson, _The Poet, Merlin_; James Gates Percival, _Awake My Lyre_, _Invocation_; J. H. West, _To the Muse_, _After Silence_; Robert Louis Stevenson, _The Laureate to an Academy Class Dinner_; Alice Meynell, _To one Poem in Silent Time_; Austin Dobson, _A Garden Idyl_; James Stevens, _A Reply_; Richard Middleton, _The Artist_; Franklin Henry Giddings, _Song_; Benjamin R. C. Low, _Inspiration_; Robert Haven Schauffler, _The Wonderful Hour_; Henry A. Beers, _The Thankless Muse_; Karl Wilson Baker, _Days_.] Though he has faith that he is not "widowed of his muse," [Footnote: See Francis Thompson, _The Cloud's Swan Song_.] she yet torments him with all the ways of a coquette, so that he sadly assures us his mistress "is sweet to win, but bitter to keep." [Footnote: C. G. Roberts, _Ballade of the Poet's Thought_.] The times when she solaces him may be pitifully infrequent. Rossetti, musing over Coleridge, says that his inspired moments were

Like desert pools that show the stars Once in long leagues. [Footnote: _Sonnet to Coleridge_.]

Yet, even so, upon such moments of insight rest all the poet's claims for his superior personality. It is the potential greatness enabling him at times to have speech with the gods that makes the rest of his life sacred. Emerson is more outspoken than most poets; he is not perhaps at variance with their secret convictions, when he describes himself:

I, who cower mean and small In the frequent interval When wisdom not with me resides. [Footnote: _The Poet_.]

However divine the singer considers himself in comparison with ordinary humanity, he must admit that at times

Discrowned and timid, thoughtless, worn, The child of genius sits forlorn, * * * * * A cripple of God, half-true, half-formed. [Footnote: Emerson, _The Poet_. See also George Meredith, _Pegasus_.]

Like Dante, we seem disposed to faint at every step in our revelation. Now a doubt crosses our minds whether the child of genius in his crippled moments is better fitted than the rest of us to point out the pathway to sacred enthusiasm. It appears that little verse describing the poet's afflatus is written when the gods are actually with him. In this field, the sower sows by night. Verse on inspiration is almost always retrospective or theoretical in character. It seems as if the intermittence of his inspiration filled the poet with a wistful curiosity as to his nature in moments of soaring. By continual introspection he is seeking the charm, so to speak, that will render his afflatus permanent. The rigidity in much of such verse surely betrays, not the white heat of genius, but a self-conscious attitude of readiness for the falling of the divine spark.

One wonders whether such preparation has been of much value in hastening the fire from heaven. Often the reader is impatient to inform the loud-voiced suppliant that Baal has gone a-hunting. Yet it is alleged that the most humble bribe has at times sufficed to capture the elusive divinity. Schiller's rotten apples are classic, and Emerson lists a number of tested expedients, from a pound of tea to a night in a strange hotel. [Footnote: See the essay on Inspiration. Hazlitt says Coleridge liked to compose walking over uneven ground or breaking through straggling branches.] This, however, is Emerson in a singularly flat-footed moment. The real poet scoffs at such suggestions. Instead, he feels that it is not for him to know the times and seasons of his powers. Indeed, it seems to him, sometimes, that pure contrariety marks the god's refusal to come when entreated. Thus we are told of the god of song,

Vainly, O burning poets! Ye wait for his inspiration. * * * * * Hasten back, he will say, hasten back To your provinces far away! There, at my own good time Will I send my answer to you. [Footnote: E. C. Stedman, _Apollo_. _The Hillside Door_ by the same author also expresses this idea. See also Browning, _Old Pictures in Florence_, in which he speaks "of a gift God gives me now and then." See also Longfellow, _L'Envoi_; Keats, _On Receiving a Laurel Crown_; Cale Young Rice, _New Dreams for Old_; Fiona Macleod, _The Founts of Song_.]

Then, at the least expected moment, the fire may fall, so that the poet is often filled with naive wonder at his own ability. Thus Alice Meynell greets one of her poems,

Who looked for thee, thou little song of mine? This winter of a silent poet's heart Is suddenly sweet with thee, but what thou art, Mid-winter flower, I would I could divine.

But if the poet cannot predict the time of his afflatus, he indicates that he does know the attitude of mind which will induce it. In certain quarters there is a truly Biblical reliance upon faith as bringer of the gift. A minor writer assures us, "Ah, if we trust, comes the song!" [Footnote: Richard Burton, _Singing Faith_.] Emerson says,

The muses' hill by fear is guarded; A bolder foot is still rewarded. [Footnote: _The Poet_.]

And more extreme is the counsel of Owen Meredith to the aspiring artist:

The genius on thy daily walks Shall meet, and take thee by the hand; But serve him not as who obeys; He is thy slave if thou command. [Footnote: _The Artist_.]

The average artist is probably inclined to quarrel with this last high-handed treatment of the muse. Reverent humility rather than arrogance characterizes the most effectual appeals for inspiration. The faith of the typical poet is not the result of boldness, but of an aspiration so intense that it entails forgetfulness of self. Thus one poet accounts for his inspired hour:

Purged with high thoughts and infinite desire I entered fearless the most holy place; Received between my lips the sacred fire, The breath of inspiration on my face. [Footnote: C. G. Roberts, _Ave_.]

Another writer stresses the efficacy of longing no less strongly; speaking of

The unsatiated, insatiable desire Which at once mocks and makes all poesy. [Footnote: William Alexander, _The Finding of the Book_. See also Edward Dowden, _The Artist's Waiting_.]

There is nothing new in this. It is only what the poet has implied in all his confessions. Was he inspired by love? It was because thwarted love filled him with intensest longing. So with his thirst for purity, for religion, for worldly vanities. Any desire, be it fierce enough, and hindered from immediate satisfaction, may engender poetry. As Joyce Kilmer phrases it,

Nothing keeps a poet In his high singing mood, Like unappeasable hunger For unattainable food. [Footnote: _Apology_.]

But the poet would not have us imagine that we have here sounded the depths of the mystery. Aspiration may call down inspiration, but it is not synonymous with it. Mrs. Browning is fond of pointing out this distinction. In _Aurora Leigh_ she reminds us, "Many a fervid man writes books as cold and flat as gravestones." In the same poem she indicates that desire is merely preliminary to inspiration. There are, she says,

Two states of the recipient artist-soul; One forward, personal, wanting reverence, Because aspiring only. We'll be calm, And know that when indeed our Joves come down, We all turn stiller than we have ever been.

What is this mysterious increment, that must be added to aspiration before it becomes poetically creative? So far as a mere layman can understand it, it is a sudden arrest, rather than a satisfaction, of the poet's longing, for genuine satisfaction would kill the aspiration, and leave the poet heavy and phlegmatic. Inspiration, on the contrary, seems to give him a fictitious satisfaction; it is an arrest of his desire that affords him a delicate poise and repose, on tiptoe, so to speak. [Footnote: Compare Coleridge's statement that poetry is "a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order." _Biographia Literaria_, Vol. II, Chap. I, p. 14, ed. Henry Nelson Coleridge.]

Does not the fact that inspiration works in this manner account for the immemorial connection of poetic creativeness with Bacchic frenzy? To the aspiring poet wine does not bring his mistress, nor virtue, nor communion with God, nor any object of his longing. Yet it does bring a sudden ease to his craving. So, wherever there is a romantic conception of poetry, one is apt to find inspiration compared to intoxication.

Such an idea did not, of course, find favor among typical eighteenth century writers. Indeed, they would have seen more reason in ascribing their clear-witted verse to an ice-pack, than to the bibulous hours preceding its application to the fevered brow. We must wait for William Blake before we can expect Bacchus to be reinstated among the gods of song. Blake does not disappoint us, for we find his point of view expressed, elegantly enough, in his comment on artists, "And when they are drunk, they always paint best." [Footnote: _Artist Madmen: On the Great Encouragement Given by the English Nobility and Gentry to Correggio, etc_.]

As the romantic movement progresses, one meets with more lyrical expositions of the power in strong drink. Burns, especially, is never tired of sounding its praise. He exclaims,

There's naething like the honest nappy. * * * * * I've seen me daist upon a time I scarce could wink or see a styme; Just ae half mutchkin does me prime; Aught less is little, Then back I rattle with the rhyme As gleg's a whittle. [Footnote: _The First Epistle to Lapraik_.]

Again he assures us,

But browster wives and whiskey stills, They are my muses. [Footnote: _The Third Epistle to Lapraik_.]

Then, in more exalted mood:

O thou, my Muse, guid auld Scotch drink! Whether through wimplin' worms thou jink, Or, richly brown, ream o'er the brink In glorious faem, Inspire me, till I lisp and wink To sing thy name. [Footnote: _Scotch Drink_.]

Keats enthusiastically concurs in Burns' statements. [Footnote: See the _Sonnet on the Cottage Where Burns Was Born_, and _Lines on the Mermaid Tavern_.]

Landor, also, tells us meaningly,

Songmen, grasshoppers and nightingales Sing cheerily but when the throat is moist. [Footnote: _Homer_; _Laertes_; _Agatha_.]

James Russell Lowell, in _The Temptation of Hassan Khaled_, presents the argument of the poet's tempters with charming sympathy:

The vine is nature's poet: from his bloom The air goes reeling, typsy with perfume, And when the sun is warm within his blood It mounts and sparkles in a crimson flood, Rich with dumb songs he speaks not, till they find Interpretation in the poet's mind. If wine be evil, song is evil too.

His _Bacchic Ode_ is full of the same enthusiasm. Bacchus received his highest honors at the end of the last century from the decadents in England. Swinburne, [Footnote: See _Burns_.] Lionel Johnson,[Footnote: See _Vinum Daemonum_.] Ernest Dowson, [Footnote: See _A Villanelle of the Poet's Road_.] and Arthur Symonds, [Footnote: See _A Sequence to Wine_.] vied with one another in praising inebriety as a lyrical agent. Even the sober Watts-Dunton [Footnote: See _A Toast to Omar Khayyam_.] was drawn into the contest, and warmed to the theme.

Poetry about the Mermaid Inn is bound to take this tone. From Keats [Footnote: See _Lines on the Mermaid Inn_.] to Josephine Preston Peabody [Footnote: See _Marlowe_.] writers on the Elizabethan dramatists have dwelt upon their conviviality. This aspect is especially stressed by Alfred Noyes, who imagines himself carried back across the centuries to become the Ganymede of the great poets. All of the group keep him busy. In particular he mentions Jonson:

And Ben was there, Humming a song upon the old black settle, "Or leave a kiss within the cup And I'll not ask for wine," But meanwhile, he drank malmsey. [Footnote: _Tales of the Mermaid Inn_.]

Fortunately for the future of American verse, there is another side to the picture. The teetotaler poet is by no means non-existent in the last century. Wordsworth takes pains to refer to himself as "a simple, water-drinking bard," [Footnote: See _The Waggoner_.] and in lines _To the Sons of Burns_ he delivers a very fine prohibition lecture. Tennyson offers us _Will Waterproof's Lyrical Monologue, a reductio ad absurdum_ of the claims of the bibulous bard. Then, lest the temperance cause lack the support of great names, Longfellow causes the title character of _Michael Angelo_ to inform us that he "loves not wine," while, more recently, E. A. Robinson pictures Shakespeare's inability to effervesce with his comrades, because, Ben Jonson confides to us,

Whatso he drinks that has an antic in it, He's wondering what's to pay on his insides. [Footnote: _Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford_. See also Poe's letter, April 1, 1841, to Snodgrass, on the unfortunate results of his intemperance.]

No, the poet will not allow us to take his words too seriously, lest we drag down Apollo to the level of Bacchus. In spite of the convincing realism in certain eulogies, it is clear that to the poet, as to the convert at the eucharist, wine is only a symbol of a purely spiritual ecstasy. But if intoxication is only a figure of speech, it is a significant one, and perhaps some of the other myths describing the poet's sensations during inspiration may put us on the trail of its meaning. Of course, in making such an assumption, we are precisely like the expounder of Plato's myths, who is likely to say, "Here Plato was attempting to shadow forth the inexpressible. Now listen, and I will explain exactly what he meant." Notwithstanding, we must proceed.

The device of Chaucer's _House of Fame_, wherein the poet is carried to celestial realms by an eagle, occasionally occurs to the modern poet as an account of his _Aufschwung_. Thus Keats, in _Lines to Apollo_, avers,

Aye, when the soul is fled Too high above our head, Affrighted do we gaze After its airy maze As doth a mother wild When her young infant child Is in an eagle's claws.

"Poetry, my life, my eagle!" [Footnote: _Aurora Leigh_.] cries Mrs. Browning, likening herself to Ganymede, ravished from his sheep to the summit of Olympus. The same attitude is apparent in most of her poems, for Mrs. Browning, in singing mood, is precisely like a child in a swing, shouting with delight at every fresh sensation of soaring. [Footnote: See J. G. Percival, _Genius Awaking_, for the same figure.]

Again, the crash of the poet's inspiration upon his ordinary modes of thought is compared to "fearful claps of thunder," by Keats [Footnote: See _Sleep and Poetry_.] and others. [Footnote: See _The Master_, A. E. Cheney.] Or, more often, his moment of sudden insight seems a lightning flash upon the dark ways in which he is ordinarily groping. Keats says that his early visions were seen as through a rift of sheet lightning. [Footnote: See _The Epistle to George Keats_.] Emerson's impression is the same; visions come "as if life were a thunderstorm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand." [Footnote: _Essay on Inspiration_.] Likewise Alexander Smith declares,

Across the midnight sea of mind A thought comes streaming like a blazing ship Upon a mighty wind, A terror and a glory! Shocked with light, His boundless being glares aghast. [Footnote: _A Life Drama_.]

Perhaps this is a true expression of the poet's feelings during the deepest inspiration, yet we are minded of Elijah's experience with the wind and the fire and the still small voice. So we cannot help sympathizing with Browning's protest against "friend Naddo's" view that genius is a matter of bizarre and grandiose sensations. [Footnote: _Sordello_.] At least it is pleasant to find verse, by minor writers though it be, describing the quietude and naturalness of the poet's best moments. Thus Holmes tells us of his inspiration:

Soft as the moonbeams when they sought Endymion's fragrant bower, She parts the whispering leaves of thought To show her full-leaved flower. [Footnote: _Invita Minerva_.]

Edwin Markham says,

She comes like the hush and beauty of the night. [Footnote: _Poetry_.]

And Richard Watson Gilder's mood is the same:

How to the singer comes his song? How to the summer fields Come flowers? How yields Darkness to happy dawn? How doth the night Bring stars? [Footnote: _How to the Singer Comes His Song?_]

Various as are these accounts which poets give of their inspired moments, all have one point in common, since they indicate that in such moments the poet is wholly passive. His thought is literally given to him. Edward Dowden, in a sonnet, _Wise Passiveness_, says this plainly:

Think you I choose or that or this to sing? I lie as patient as yon wealthy stream Dreaming among green fields its summer dream, Which takes whate'er the gracious hours will bring Into its quiet bosom.

To the same effect is a somewhat prosaic poem, _Accident in Art_, by Richard Hovey. He inquires,

What poet has not found his spirit kneeling A sudden at the sound of such or such Strange verses staring from his manuscript, Written, he knows not how, but which will sound Like trumpets down the years.

Doubtless it is a very natural result of his resignation to this creative force that one of the poet's profoundest sensations during his afflatus should be that of reverence for his gift. Longfellow and Wordsworth sometimes speak as if the composition of their poems were a ceremony comparable to high mass. At times one must admit that verse describing such an attitude has a charm of its own. [Footnote: Compare Browning's characterization of the afflatus of Eglamor in _Sordello_,