Poetry and Its Mission

Improvement Era

Vol. XVI SEPTEMBER, 1913 No. 11

Poetry and its Mission

BY ORSON F. WHITNEY.

I have never seen nor heard an adequate definition of poetry. There are some things that cannot be defined in full. They are infinite, while human speech is finite, and the lesser cannot bound the greater. Setting at naught our terminologies, they refuse to be measured by our tape-lines or sounded by our plummets. "What fools these mortals be !" — one can imagine them saying among themselves — these mighty themes or ideas — as they ob- serve our futile attempts to circumscribe and interpret them, merrily laughing all the while at our discomfiture. The human mind, infinite in potentialities, is walled in by mortal metes and bounds. Man must develop to infinitude before he will be able to comprehend and express the whole truth concerning poetry and its mission.

Dryden says : "A poet is a maker, as the word signifies, and he who cannot make, that is, invent, hath his name for nothing." In other words, a poem is a creation, and the poet a creator. But what does this tell? The word "opera" is the Latin plural of opus — a work. But how much wiser are we, after hearing such definitions, than we were before ? A wheel-barrow is a work— an automobile is a creation. But they bear no particular resem- blance to a lyric drama or an epic poem. The case is a little dif- ferent with the aeroplane, which does have the ability to soar. It is our highest work, our loftiest creation — in a mechanical way.

Poetry is defined in the dictionaries as metrical composition, or the art of making verses. Many people get no farther than that in their comprehension of the subject. To them all verse is poetry, and all other writings prose. But the terms poetry and verse, though synonymous, are not identical in meaning. One is much bigger than the other. Poetry means far more than verse. Poetry may include verse, but verse does not necessarily include

*An address delivered at the third annual session of the Utah Chautauqua assembly, Glenwood Park, Ogden, Utah, July 20, 1913.

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poetry, the essence of which, I need hardly inform this audience, is in thoughl and sentiment, more than in rhythm and rhyme. These hold the same relation to poetry as a man's clothing does to his body; it is no part of his physical frame, hut is necessary to make him presentable. A piece of furniture may serve its main purpose without paint, polish, or gilding; but these are generally desirable, in order to make it attractive. A poetic thought, well dressed, is all the more pleasing to the mind, and consequently all the more capable of good.

There is, however, a subtle and essential relation between poetic sentiment and rhythmical expression. The spirit must have a body, a fitting one ; and the two combined constitute the soul. This is just as true of a poem as it is of a man or woman. Let it not be overlooked, either, that the sentiment is the spirit, the most important part ; while the language — rhyme, rhythm and all — is only the body of the poem, necessary, not to its exis- tence, but to its perfection, as a finished product of inspired art. Nor be it forgotten that the body without the spirit is dead, being alone. This is the case with much that is called poetry. It is all body and no spirit. Tons upon tons of verses contain little or no poetry, while prose is ofttimes replete with it. All poetry is song. Tf it does not sing it is not poetry, however grammatical or rhetor- ical it may be. All birds are not larks and nightingales.

Poetry, as a literary product, has three grand divisions — lyric, epic, and dramatic. The lyric is so called because it signifies, in general, poetry adapted to the lyre, or to be sung with a musical accompaniment. The distinguishing characteristic of the lyric is its subjectivity. The poet is singing of himself, expressing his own thoughts and emotions, as distinct from those of other=. These individual expressions, however, may voice the sentiments of the multitude. The poet is the representative of his race and time — ego speaking for alter ego or the cosmos, and his inspired song, however original, is "what oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed." For instance, what heart fails to echo that ten- der plaint in Tennyson's "In Memoriam :"

"I hold it true wliate'er befall, I feel it when I sorrow most: 'Tis better to have loved and lost. Than never to have loved at all."

In the epic poem the object, in lieu of the subject, predom- inates. There the poet is outside of himself, singing of externals. A narrative of heroic adventure, in verse or its equivalent, is the standard of the epic, the greatest examples of which are Homer's "Iliad," Virgil's "^neid," and Milton's "Paradise Lost." The enic may have lyric features, and vice versa, as in the case of Dante's "Divine Comedy" — a Ivric-epic from beginning to end.

At the mention of dramatic poetry, the Greek tragedies and

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Shakespeare's plays come before the mind's eye as the noblest specimens of the remaining grand division of song. Here also the poet deals with exter- nals. The drama is a story put into action — a representation, by ac- tual persons, of men and women historical or fanciful, with imitations of language, voice, ges- ture, dress, and other accessories.

The highest quality that any poem can pos- sess — be it dramatic, epic or lyric — is sugges- tiveness, the power to call up in the mind of the reader or auditor something beyond itself, something in advance of his or her surroundings. The proof of a great poem or a great play is its power to suggest more than the printed word tells, more than the scene and the action

present. Most of the song is sung in the listener's soul ; most of the dramatic action takes place in the mind, the imagination, of the auditor — not in that small section of space visible across the footlights.

One of the most poetic of poems is Richard Realf's "Indi- rection." Realf was said to be "the nnhappiest of men," but he certainly was happy, in a literary sense, when he gave to the world this beautiful song:

Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is

fairer; Rare is the roseburst of dawn, but the secret that clasps it is rarer; Sweet the exultance of song, but the strain that precedes it ij sweeter; And never was poem yet writ, but the meaning outmastered the meter.

Never a daisy that grows, but a mystery guideth the growing; Never a river that flows, but a majesty scepters the flowing; Never a Shakespeare that soared, but a stronger than he did enfold him. Nor ever a prophet foretells, but a mightier seer hath foretold him.

Back of the canvas that throbs, the painter is hinted and hidden; Into the statue that breathes, the soul of the sculptor is bidden; Under the joy that is felt lie the infinite issues of feeling; Crowning the glory revealed is the glory that crowns the revealing.

ORSON F. WHITNEY

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( irc.it arc the symbols of being, bui thai which is symboled is greater; Vas1 the create and beheld, bui vaster the inward creator; Back of the sound broods the silence, back of the gift stands the giving; Back of the hand thai receives thrill the sensitive nerves of receiving.

Space is as nothing to spirit, the <lec<l is outdone by the doing;

The heart of the wooer is warm, but warmer the heart of the wooing:

And up from the pits where these shiver, and up from the heights

where those shine. Twin voices and shadows swim starward, and the essence of life is

divine.

The highest poetry is essentially prophetic — having to do with the ideal. The prophet is a poet, whether or not he he a verse-builder ; and the poet must be prophetic, or he will "have his name for nothing." A fine delineation of the poet and his mission is that given by Dr. J. G. Holland: "The poets of the world are the prophets of humanity ; they forever reach after and foresee the ultimate good. They are evermore building the Paradise that is to be, painting the Millennium that is to come. When the world shall reach the poet's ideal, it will arrive at perfection ; and much good will it do the world to measure itself by this ideal, and strug- gle to lift the real to its lofty level."

Anything is poetic that stands for something greater than itself. "Man," says Carlyle, "is a symbol of God." Why not, if the affirmation in Genesis be true, that God created man in his own image? Man's likeness to his Maker, and his possession, in the potential, of divine attributes, is recognized by Shakespeare when he says of "the paragon of animals :" "In apprehension how like a God !" Man suggests God, and is therefore poetic — a poem incarnate.

The Gospel of the Christ is a poetic, because prophetic, scheme for human progress and exaltation. Its principles an 1 ordinances are fraught with symbolism — the very essence of poetry. Bantism, for instance, signifies a birth — the beginning of a new life ; hence it is made the doorway to God's kingdom. Bap- tism is poetic because it stands for something greater — namely, the resurrection. To be baptized, or to undergo resurrection, is to be "born again." This is poetry.

The Sacrament of the Lord's Supper derives its sacredness and sublimity from the fact that it is emblematic and symbolical. Tt is not the bread and wine (or water) that signifies; but the fact that they represent the body and blood of the world's Re- deemer. Some Christians believe that the elements of the Eucharist arc converted into the actual flesh and blood of Christ. We don't all hold to that, but we may all believe, without impiety, th-'t they are converted into pcetry by their typical and represen- tative character.

The parables of Jesus a-e poems, and there is nothing more

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beautiful in the whole realm of literature than that simple, sublime, prose-poem of the Master's : "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they toil not, neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these."

If I were asked to define poesy, I would say: "It is a key to the symbolism of the universe. Or, to make it more clear : Poetry itself is that symbolism, and the poetic faculty is the key. God has built his universe upon symbols — the lesser representing the greater, and leading up to its comprehension ; and he or she who possesses to the full this God-given and divine faculty, is or will yet be able to interpret all mysteries. By means of this power, inherent in humanity, possessed in some degree by all men, the mind can be led step by step "from wisdom on to higher wisdom," the lesser pointing out the greater, the type or promise suggest- ing the fulfilment, and merging into the performance, until even- tually all things are known.

Herein is the greatness of the prophet — he is essentially a poet, and to him "the Gods reveal their secrets." He alone "un- derstandeth among all the sons of men." Shakespeare is not the greatest of poets — though it may seem heresy to so declare, the world having canonized him as such. That is because of his won- derful worldly wisdom — which the world can appreciate — and his no less marvelous art of portrayal, the power of presentation. But Shakespeare is not to be compared with Christ, the model Prophet and Poet. Shakespeare tells us of this world and of the human heart — tells it incomparably ; but that is as far as he can go. To all that went before, or that lies beyond, the immortal Bard of Avon is blind and deaf and dumb. There is but One — and he the mightiest of the Sons of God — who hath prevailed to open the sealed book, the poem of Eternal Life, of which he is the Author.

Some people think that the poet has no mission, that the world no longer needs him, and that poetry is obsolete, out of date. Hear what a Chicago University professor said upon this subject :

"There is no great thought, no worthy emotion, which may not be better exoressecl in prose than in verse today. Verse was the primitive expression of man's thought. Rhythm was the characteristic of his first crude literary efforts. Homer, Dante and Shakespeare cast their thoughts and emotions in verse because the metrical form was the only adequate method of expression invented in their day. English prose has been developed to the point, however, where it is a finer, more subtle instrument of wider scope than English verse, and poetry's chief excuse for being has been destroyed.

"Literary truth is truth to nature. Poetrv is artificial and bears the deadly brand of insincerity in its form. The passing of the verse form is strikingly shown by the grip which Kipling has on the English- speaking world. His poetry is the nearest approximation to ideal prose which I know, and I think this truth is the secret of his grip.

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Wall Whitman is a greal literary power for the same reason. He evolved a style of verse which defied convention and sacrificed form to truth and effect. I would nol decry the great singers of the centuries, hut the poets of the twentieth century will follow Ruskin, Newman and Pater, instead of Milton, Wordsworth or Keats."

The best answer to the affirmation that poetry has no mis- sion, is the. fact that God continues to send poets into the world. To say that they have no business here is to charge the All-wise Sender with incompetence, if not imbecility. Poetry may be out of date with some people — so is God, so is the Gospel; but that does not prove that they are no longer needed. The inference is quite in the opposite direction.

Certain forms of verse may be out of date, and others may pass, in their turn, as words and phrases perish; but the spirit of poetry will live on, must live, no matter how often it changes its garb or varies the style of its apparel. The spirit of poesy is eternal. Like the spirit of man, it does not die when the bo;ly perishes, and like the human form, it changes not with the com- ing and going of the fashions. It is essentially creative, and will make for itself in the future, as it has in the past, new and varied forms of expression, in which, however, there will always be sim- ilarities, resemblances, as in the bodies of men, and in the cos- tumes worn by them from age to age. Poetic forms, true and genuine, with the ring of inspiration in them, proclaim their divine origin more surely and more strikingly than "the apparel proclaims the man."

The reason some people have no taste for poetry, is because they can't eat it, nor wear it as a hat or coat. They are forever thinking of the body and its needs — its food and apparel. Thev forget that they have minds, hearts, and spirits, that must be clothed and fed lest they starve and perish. Poetry is supposed by them to represent the ideal exclusively — something imprac- tical, or of no particular use ; while commerce, politics, and such like factors and forces, stand for the practical or real.

But the poetic and the practical are not necessarilv at vari- ance ; they are close kin, and ought to be firm friends. The poetic must have the practical — particularly on rent day ; and the prac- tical needs the poetic — "needs it every hour." It is the spirit- and-body argument over again. Poetry has inspired inventive thought, stimulated research, and led to practical discoveries in all ages. One of the Wright Brothers, famous in American aviation, was asked the question : "What is the chief requisite of an avi- ator?" He promptly replied, "Imagination," giving as his rea- son that the air-ship sails on an unknown sea, an untried element, and the bird man must be ready for any emergencv that may arise - — for anv fact that fancy can suggest, that experience could pos- sibly realize. Tn other words, the aviator must be a poet — or at least poetic, to insure his success and safety. The poet is imagina-

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tion personified. Poesy is the air-ship of literature, and the poet — the true bird-man — who sits at the wheel as the pilot of its des- tinies, would be absolutely helpless without imagination — -would be nil — would not and could not be a poet.

So far from being converted to the view that prose is a bet- ter medium of expression than poetry, I am firmly of the opinion that it is the inadequacy of prose to express some thoughts and emotions that renders poetry essential ; and that its "chief excuse for being" has not been destroyed by the development of prose to its present state of perfection. As well might it be contended that the manufacture of business suits by some merchant tailor at the head of his craft, has been perfected to such a degree that the full dress, the army or navy uniform, the stage or court cos- tume, is no longer essential, having been superseded by the every- day apparel of the hustling man of affairs. This would be dem- ocracy— verbal democracy — with a vengeance, equal to the whole- sale abolition of titles proposed by the reverend author of the Declaration of Independence.

Language is the clothing of thought, the apparel of ideas, and varied forms and styles of expression are as necessary as dif- ferent suits of dress to men and women in society — kitchen, par- lor, cabinet, field, or workshop. The chit-chat of the street, the talk of the shop, may find its way into the drawing room, but it is out of place there. Nor is the polite conversation of the draw- ing room usually equal to the diction of a magazine article or newspaper editorial, the language of a lecture, or the impassioned periods of an oration — though one mind, pen or tongue be the source of all. As thought and feeling become more intense and more elevated, they create for themselves better and higher forms of expression ; and this is what produces poetry and oratory. Poetry is condensed oratory, and oratory diluted poetry. Poetry is inherent in great thoughts and worthy emcf;ons ; it springs from them as Minerva from the brow of Jove. It is the climax of verbal expression — the ne plus ultra of eloquence. "All in- most things are melodious," says Carlyle. The higher the thought, the deeper the emotion, the more apt is it to break forth in poetry. There is no loftier Spirit than that which brooded over the old Hebrew prophets, tuning their sublime harps to the music of the spheres and sending their great songs rolling like thunder peals down the centuries.

While it is true that primitive man, unsophisticated, uncom- mercialized, in close touch with nature and with the infinite, is poetic, it is equally true that th? highest poetrv is the product of culture and refinement. Whatever his natural gifts and inspira- tion, the poet must have a pen, a vocabulary, and the skill and tiste to use them. The inhabitants of the stcne age, though they had their rhythmic chants and dances, did not converse in tropes,

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ballads ;m<l sonnets. Purple and fine linen were not the original materials for man's apparel. Adam's "rout of skins" came before Joseph's "coat of many colors." No untutored American Indian.

African savage, or South Sea Islander, could have written the Hook of Job, the Psalms of David, or the Prophecies of Isaiah. The authors of those sublime poems were not barbarians; neither

were Homer, Shakespeare and Dante.

\or do I believe that the productions of these great masters would read hotter if rendered into modern English by some prose writer of equal genius with themselves. I cannot believe that the songs of the future will be written in prose. To me there is still force in Fletcher's wise saying, "Let me write the ballads of a people, and I care not who makes their laws."

I find no fault with the proposition that literary truth is truth to nature, and that artificiality and insincerity are passing. Lot them pass. "Ring out the false, ring in the true." But no real poetry is false. Nor can T conceive that all that is old, even in verse forms, is unworthy of preservation or present use, and that the experience, art, and methods of the world's immortal song- makers count for nothing in the presence of Ruskin, Pater and Newman's "ideal prose."

Kipling's near approximation thereto, our University friend thinks, is to he credited with the grip which that poet has on the English-sneaking world. Why is it not just as reasonahle to be- lieve that ideal prose owes its excellence and popularity to its near approximation to poetry? Read Kipling's masterpiece — the "Re- cessional"— and ask yourselves if those insoiring stanzas, so clean cut and precise, so perfect in rhythm and rhyme, would sound hotter, be more impressive, or convey a clearer meaning, if recast and rendered into prose. I do not hesitate to affirm that the noble thoughts embodied in the "Recessional" owe much of their power and effect to their expression in verse form.

As to Walt Whitman, who, according to our critic, "evolve 1 a stvle of verse which defied convention and sacrificed form to truth and effect," is it not a fact that he most shocks the reader by this very sacrifice of poetic form? — a sacrifice not necessary to truth, and barren of effect, except of a disagreeable kind. Whit- man's crudities and commonplaces are what mar his work and prevent much of it from being poetry. We can all admire his lofty clarion note: "I, solitary and alone, singing in the West, strike up for a new world !" Rut who can accept as poetry this line : "1 tucked my trousers in my boot-tops and went and had a good time?" Such a barbarism might pass in an eccentric ballad of lirct Harte's or Will Carleton's. hut would hardly be tolerated by Whitman's warmest admirer in a serious poet of less genius and repute. It is not poetry, it is prose — whether ideal or common- place I leave my hearers to determine.

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Whitman, like Shakespeare, is great, not because of his vul- garities, but in spite of them. When he defies conventionality, he leaves the plane of poesy and descends to prose. "The Good Gray Poet's" most serious fault, however, is not in "calling a spade a spade." It is in his defiant assumption that American Democracy — American ideas and institutions — have no ancestry; that they are indigenous to the soil. Every student of history knows better. History is the whole past, the entire procession of human events, and Americanism is but one phase of it — prepared for by what went before, and making ready for what will follow. American literature is the legitimate descendant of English lit- erature, with such modifications as have come to it by reason of its birth and rearing in new environs and under fresh influences.

The distaste for poetry, like the distaste for religion, is one of the signs of the times. Both are neglected for the same rea- sons, only cue of which is the false and dead forms in which they are sometimes clothed. The fault is not with the thing itself, but with the hackneyed, worn-out, method and manner of presenta- tion. Poetry and religion are mainly unpopular because they have nothing in common with the sordid and the sensual, though they take account of and utilize to their true end and purpose, temporal things. "Among them but not of them," is the true posi- tion of this divine twain in the midst of money-worship, political chicanery, and the innumerable tom-fooleries of society. Their mission is to correct such evils, and lead the human mind and life up to loftier planes. We need not fear for poesy, nor doubt the utility of its mission, so long as we have a Maeterlinck, a "Blue Bird" of happiness, singing hopefully of "The Kingdom of the Future ;" so long as we have in Rostand a silver-throated "Chan- tecler," to protest against the vulgar commonplace, to dispel the night of ignorance, and help with a cry of cheer the coming up of the ideal Dawn.

True poetry cannot pass. There is a virility in verse that will perpetuate it. Before poetry can die, the human heart must change —must lose its innate love of rhythm and cadence — the human heart, that pedestal of Homer's fame, that immovable basis of Shakespeare's overmastering triumph. "Our very hearts keep time," says Walter Rice. Rhythmical language is not neces- sarily artificial and insincere. When the great sea, with its con- stant surge and swing of poetic sound and motion, shall no longer chant its solemn harmonies to the answering winds and the choir- ing stars ; when the soul of man shall cease to yearn for the infi- nite— satisfied with, because smothered beneath, the sordid time- servings of a greedy, godless, pleasure-loving, money-worshiping generation ; when the real can make progress and attain perfec- tion without the ideal as an incentive to righteous endeavor, then,

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nor till then, will poetry be out of date, and Have no mission

ami >ne the s< ms '»f men.

ELDERS OF THE BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, CONFERENCE.

"The elders in this conference represent Canada on the north and Mexico on the south, rind five of the states intervening which connect the two countries. We labored in the Massachusetts conference against organized opposition during last winter. This opposition went to such extreme that liberal-thinking people are now disgusted with its unfairness, and many are inquiring into the gospel truths taught by the elders. We feel that a better future is now before us than for some time past. Elders, top row, left to right: Leland F. Scarborough, Franklin, Idaho; Heber C. Williams, Greenville, I 'tah : Claude A. Ellis, North Ogden, Utah; A. Wesley Millett, Mesa, Ariz.; M. C. Tanner, Ogden, Utah; second row: L. W. Richards, Ogden, Utah; Ben E. Rich, Pres- ident Eastern States Mission; William T. Van Orden, Blackfoot, Idaho, Conference President; third row: Heber J. Randall, North Ogden, Utah; George F. Burton, Afton, Wyo.; Fred J. Clark, Colonia Dublan, Mexico; John E. Aagard, Fountain Green, Utah: fourth row: Cecil E. Mason, Shelley, Idaho; C. LeRoy Richens, Vernal, Utah; J. Willis Turner, Faton, Colorado; Delbert H. Ellison, Aetna, Canada."*