Oratory, Poesy and Prophecy

ORATORY, POESY AND PROPHECY By Orson F. Whitney III Poesy is the power by which we appreciate and sympathize with all that is! good, pure, true, beautiful and sublime. That high sense of right which scorns all wrong; the sword and balance of Eternal Justice; the voice of Mercy pleading for the fallen; the tongue of Truth heralding salvation and reform; the oracle of Liberty pro- claiming freedom to the oppressed; the thunderbolt of retribution that lays the tyrant low; — poesy is the Spirit of these things. Beware, therefore, how you say that you do not like poetry, lest you paint your own portrait in uncanny colors, confessing your- self to be one of those of whom Shakespeare says1: The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus, — Let no such man be trusted. Poetry is music — the music of languages; but that is not all, nor most. It is the music of thought, the melody of senti- ment, the harmony of the human with the divine; deep answer- ing to deep, man's soul attuned to and in unison with the mind and heart of the melodious universe. "All inmost things are melodious," says Carlyle — "naturally utter themselves in song." "It is a man's sincerity and depth of vision that makes him a poet. See deep enough and you see musically, the heart of nature being every- where music, if you can only reach it." Yes, there is such a thing as silent music. Keats knew it when he wrote his- immortal "Ode to a Grecian Urn," and gave us these beautiful lines: Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter. Therefore, ye soft pipes, play on. "Speech is silvern; silence is golden." Silence we instinctively associate with profundity; not because the rule holds good in every case, but because it is a rule, notwithstanding the exceptions. Speech is on the surface; thought is in the depths. "The shallows murmur, but the deeps are dumb." The most powerful speakers — and all are not powerful that are so styled — are not the glib and fluent who generally have more words than ideas; but those who are deliberate, even halting, until aroused, when, like the cataract or the storm unchained, the impetuous

ORATORY, POESY AND PROPHECY 62 9 torrent of eloquence, breaking from its fastenings, sweeps past every barrier, carrying all before it. Not often is the great poet a, great orator, nor the great orator a great poet. Cicero wrote poems, but they were not equal to his orations. "Oh that so great a statesman should be so poor a poet!" Bulwer makes the monk Joseph say of Richelieu. Genius is* said to be "born of a disproportion in faculties." Where there are hills there must be hollows. Where there are summits there shall also be gulfs. Castelar, the eloquent Spaniard, gives us this* thought on oratory; "The grandest, the most intoxicating of human glories, is the glory of the orator, who, without shedding one drop of blood, without staining his laurels with the fatal trophies of the warrior, can from the tribune conquer the souls of his hearers, and force them to mingle with his own. No spectacle can compare with that of the orator, who should be at the same time a philosopher, a poet, an artist, a musician, a tactician, one who can draw from the depths of the intellect the hidden treasures of thought, clothe and shape them into beauty, * * * amid the deafening applause of the people." Grand, indeed, but not the grandest. Intoxicating, no doubt: a splendid spectacle. But surely there are grander things, though they may pass unnoticed by men, or awaken not the thunders of human applause. What of the glorious examples of unseen heroism, of patient pain, of silent suffering for the sake of principle, with which history abounds, but which only the heavens witness and after ages appreciate? There is nothing so grand, so splendid, so sublime, as the spectacle of a great soul struggling with adversity. Nevertheless, the calling of the orator is superior to that of the warrior, who, however, outshines him in the eyes of most men. What hear we of orators or of poets in France, while the star of Napoleon was in the ascendant? Three names only in all Europe — Goethe, Byron and Nelson — refused to be dimmed by that blazing meteor of military glory. What of Grant — not the greatest, but the most successful of American soldiers, Washington excepted? Could any name of poet, orator, statesman or sage compare with hisj in the mindj of the common people at the North, until the war clouds had rolled away and men had begun once more to see clearly and to think soberly? Even Lincoln's name required the halo of martyrdom to make it more illustrious than that of the Man of Appomattox. "The pen is mightier than the sword;" but the sword of Washington eclipsed the pen of Jefferson, not only because the Man of Mount Vernon was superior as a man to all his contemporaries, buc because he was a, successful general returning in triumph from battle. David, the warrior and poet king of Israel, was more lauded for having slain "his tens of thousands," than for creating poems of peerless beauty and imperishable fame. The glory of Cicero, the golden-tongued orator of Rome, was obscured by the glory of Caesar,

630 IMPROVEMENT ERA the incarnate god of war. Augustus was greater than Horace to the generation that produced them. Alexander, as long as he lived, outshone Aristotle and Demosthenese. No, |Castelar, "the grandest, the most intoxicating of human glories" is the glory of the warrior. When Mars reigns Apollo and Minerva must "hide their diminished heads — hide them for a season at least, until men become weary of noise and show, and reason can reassert itself. But because of these eclipses1, these temporary obscurations, is the warrior greater than the orator or the poet? Verily I say untQ you, Nay. Oratory is diluted poetry, "the milk of the word," while poetry is the "meat," too strong for some minds to digest. A poet and an orator once entered into a contest to describe sunrise. The orator enlarged [upon the theme in glowing and gorgeous phrases, talked of golden beams and purple clouds, of receding shadows! and sparkling streamlets, painting the precise picture in every detail. The poet simply said: "The sun parleys with the mountain tops." How much finer this, than a long drawn out description, however eloquent and beautiful. It is almost equal to Shakespeare's: "Look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, walks o'er the dew of yon high eastern hill." And yet, many would think the orator's description superior to the poet's. It is for such that the orator has his being, his mission. Poetry is above and beyond them. They cannot appreciate its concen- trated light and heat. The wine must be mixed with water, weakened, suited to the taste of the comparatively unpoetic throng. It then becomes oratory, of which the thirsty masses, eager for poetry without knowing it, drink and are satisfied. If anyone doubts that oratory can be poetic, let him read the following tribute to science, uttered by Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, an almost peerless orator, and a poet withal, though with a harp partly unstrung: "Science took a handful of sand, constructed a telescope, and with it explored the starry depths of heaven. Science wrested from the gods their thunderbolts, and now the electric spark, freighted with thought and love, flashes under all the waves of the sea. Science took a tear from the cheek of unpaid labor, converted it into steam, and created a giant that turns with tireless arm the countless wheels of toil." And if anyone questions the prophetic nature of poetry, this from the writings of Tennyson, given to the world long before the coming of the airplane, ought to banish all doubt upon that point: For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales;

ORATORY, POESY AND PROPHECY 631 Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nation's airy navies, grappling, in the central blue: Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind rushing warm, And the standards of the peoples plunging through the thunderstorm. Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle flags were furled In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. There the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law. Many poets have never written. They may have felt the divine fire burning within them, but were powerless to pour out upon "the palpitating air" the song resounding through all the secret caverns of the soul. The most eloquent poets1 have felt the painful inadequacy of language to express their thoughts. Even Byron cries out amidst the overwhelming grandeur of the Alps, whose towering tops, glistening in their caps of snow, silvered by the moonbeams or frowning darkly amid the lurid gleams and mutterings of the storm, swept as with Titanic fingers the harp-strings of h;s soul: Could I embody and unbosom now That which is most within me, — could I wreak My thoughts upon expression, and thus throw Soul, heart, mind, passions, feelings strong or weak, All that I would have sought and all I seek, Bear, know, feel and yet breathe — into one word, And that one word were lightning, I would speak; But as it is, I live and die unheard, With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword. Yet what could be more voiceful, more expressive, than this beautiful stanza in the same poem (Childe Harold) ? Ye stars, which are the poetry of Heaven! If in your bright leaves we would read the fate Of men and empires, 'tis to be forgiven That in our aspirations to be great, Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state And claim a kindred with you; for ye are A beauty and a mystery, and create In us such love and reverence from afar, That fortune, fame, power, life, have named themselves a star.