No More Learning

To recapitulate then:--I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as
_The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. _Its sole arbiter is Taste. With
the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral relations.
Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with Duty or with
Truth.

A few words, however, in explanation. _That _pleasure which is at once
the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I
maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation
of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable
elevation, or excitement _of the soul, _which we recognize as the Poetic
Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the
satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of
the heart. I make Beauty, therefore--using the word as inclusive of the
sublime--I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because it is an
obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as directly
as possible from their causes:--no one as yet having been weak enough to
deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least _most readily
_attainable in the poem. It by no means follows, however, that the
incitements of Passion' or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of
Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they
may subserve incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of
the work: but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in
proper subjection to that _Beauty _which is the atmosphere and the real
essence of the poem.

I cannot better introduce the few poems which I shall present for
your consideration, than by the citation of the Proem to Longfellow's
"Waif":--

The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an Eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me,
That my soul cannot resist;

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares that infest the day
Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly admired
for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are very effective.
Nothing can be better than--

---------------the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Down the corridors of Time.

The idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. The poem on the
whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful _insouciance
_of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the
sentiments, and especially for the _ease _of the general manner. This
"ease" or naturalness, in a literary style, it has long been the fashion
to regard as ease in appearance alone--as a point of really difficult
attainment. But not so:--a natural manner is difficult only to him who
should never meddle with it--to the unnatural. It is but the result of
writing with the understanding, or with the instinct, that _the tone,
_in composition, should always be that which the mass of mankind would
adopt--and must perpetually vary, of course, with the occasion. The
author who, after the fashion of "The North American Review," should
be upon _all _occasions merely "quiet," must necessarily upon _many
_occasions be simply silly, or stupid; and has no more right to be
considered "easy" or "natural" than a Cockney exquisite, or than the
sleeping Beauty in the waxworks.

Among the minor poems of Bryant, none has so much impressed me as the
one which he entitles "June. " I quote only a portion of it:--

There, through the long, long summer hours,
The golden light should lie,
And thick young herbs and groups of flowers
Stand in their beauty by.
The oriole should build and tell
His love-tale, close beside my cell;
The idle butterfly
Should rest him there, and there be heard
The housewife-bee and humming bird.

And what, if cheerful shouts at noon,
Come, from the village sent,
Or songs of maids, beneath the moon,
With fairy laughter blent?