Diffusion of the commonplace.

Technical

do not greatly af

faith with the Muse have found themselves perplexed and out of time. Nevertheless, I repeat that, up to a certain grade, our people have required their poetry, -just as they will have their votes, their seats in church, their county papers, and the piano or melodeon in every house. A throng of minor singers have answered to the demand with very natural and unaffected voices. The select few, whose efforts placed them above their comrades, often have suffered from the undue favor awarded their minor and ordinary productions.

These adverse influences, belonging to the soil and air, perhaps have not been so directly comprehended by the American poet as the obvious and technical impediments which had force when he essayed a sustained and novel work.

Their

In considering these, let us acknowledge that they difficulties; do not greatly concern the emotional and lyric poet. which, however, He is at no loss for a method or a theme; the latter is at once the cause and modulator of his song. Perfect the lyr-sonal joys and griefs, special occurrences in history ic poet. or related to the individual life, — these have inspired, and do inspire, the briefer poems, the lyrics which still make up the choicest portion of our verse. range is wide, from the simple fireside ballad to the impassioned ode, and my estimate of their remarkable freshness and variety will be given more fully hereafter. At present I would say that among them are many admirable of their kind, and that the relative number of these is not less than can be found in the popular verse of other lands. An American critic fails in discernment or independence who does not see this and avow it.

To what 1xtent the

But, while the lyrical songster need not cast about for a subject, and does not even look into his heart

PRIMITIVE ABSENCE OF THEME.

to write,

for his heart has already moved him, the ambitious poet is best equipped for a larger effort by some adequate theme awaiting his hand. The moment arrives when poets of the upper cast desire to forego their studies and brief lyrical flights, and to produce the composite and heroic works that rank as masterpieces. These leaders often have been arrested, with respect to romantic or inventive structures, by a scarcity of home-themes, no less than by the lack of sharp dramatic contrast in our equable American life. I am aware that this statement frequently is derided, and that many poets, while realizing that their product is too meagre, will not acknowledge its force. Others, and these among our foremost, who have thought to analyze their experience, confess that it is true in no small measure, and have stated this over their own hands.

19

more amTM

bitious have felt

their

weight.

theme.

Art."

Up to a recent date, absence of theme for a na- Primitive absence of tional masterpiece, for a work belonging to our own atmosphere and history, has been a result of the condition under which we started. Original art is long deferred among a people cultured at the outset. A writer has well said that "the cause of the ab- Otis, in "Sacred sence of the legendary and poetic in our early his- and Contory may be attributed to the mental development structive of the colonists, who had already passed through that historic stage." They started at once with both church and school-house. The imagination was controlled by precedent, and "Art was cheated of its birthright." They made little history in a dramatic sense. What there was of the poetic or wondrous in their arduous compelling life had a local range, such as the trials for witchcraft, finely utilized by New England's great romancer, and too inadequately, it must be owned, by her most famous poet. In Park

line."

man's elegant survey of certain picturesque epochs in colonial history, the feminine element, essential to complete dramatic quality, is usually wanting; in other annals, like those of Spanish-American adventure, it scarcely appears at all. American antiquity. is a rude settler's antiquity; a homely fashion that palls, because not long out of date; a story everywhere the same, furnishing at times the basis of "Evange- some exquisite idyl, like " Evangeline," but for none too many of the class. "Evangeline" still remains the most notable of the longer American poems; and how much of that is otherwise than scenic and idyllic, and how much of it does not fit the story to the landscape, rather than the landscape to the story? No material, no stirring theme, with all your freedom, your conquest, your noble woods and waters, your westward spread of men! These are motives, accessories, atmosphere, often grander in magnitude than elsewhere to be found, but not perforce more new. The poetic instinct does not always hold the macrocosm superior to the microcosm, the prairie to the plain of Marathon, the Hudson to the Cephisus or the Tweed. As for latter-day history, this is not far enough removed. From the Revolution to the Civil War, the incidents of our life and passion are so recent and so plainly recorded as to gather no luminous halo from the too slight distance at which we observe them. The true poet will profit by them to the uttermost; the limits are to be overcome, but still are limits and in his way. He is thrown upon the necessity of inventing dramatic themes for the broader range of poetic venture. This the great poets always have avoided, for the product of such invention usually has seemed artificial and remote from human concern.

Indistinct

background.

LACK OF BACKGROUND.

chant

ments.

Bear in mind, alsó, that our wide-awake people are Disenremoved, not only from the superstitions that were a religion to our forefathers, but from the wondercraft and simple faith prevailing among the common folk of other lands than our own. The beautifying lens of fancy has dropped from our eyes. Where are our forest and river legends, our Lorelei, our Venusberg, our elves and kobolds ? We have old-time customs and traditions, and they are quaint and dear to us, but their atmosphere is not one in which we freely move. Just so with our heroism. No national changes and struggles have been of more worth than our own, but critics are not far wrong who point out that, however lofty the action and spirit of our latest crisis, heroism is not with us so much the chief business

cess.

21

that one must be always "enthusiastic and on guard." One of our poets aims to be especially national. He The forsings, upon theory, as the American bard must sing cing prowhen the years have died away. The result is a striking assumption of what can only come of itself, and after long time be past; a disjointed series of kaleidoscopic pieces, not constituting a master-work, but, with all their strength and weakness, as unsatisfactory as the ill-assorted elements which he strives to represent. Yet, even in this effort, he is representative and a personage of mark, if not precisely in the direction of his own choice and assurance.

More clearly to understand how far, and in what way, our poets have felt the lack of background, of social contrasts, and of legendary and specific incident, we may observe the literature of some region where different conditions exist. In an isolated country of established growth and quality, a native genius soon discovers his tendency and proper field.

Look at Scotland. Her national melodies were

An illus tration by

contrast.

The poet's food and fame.

ready and waiting for Burns; her legends, history, traditions, for Walter Scott. The popular tongue, costumes, manners, all distinctively and picturesquely her own, affect the entire outcome of her song and art. Embraced in English literature, her literature is so unEnglish that it affords the paradigm we need. Enter the cathedral in Glasgow. Within the last thirty years that edifice has been refitted throughout with stained glass, contributed by the ancient families and clans. What associations are called up by the devices upon the windows in the chancel and nave, and in the impressive crypt below! Among all the shields and names, those of Sterling, Hay, Douglas, Montrose, Campbell, Montgomerie, Lawrie, Buccleuch, Hamilton, not one that is not utterly, purely Scottish. Even in our oldest and most characteristic sections in Virginia or New England, influences like these are discovered to no such extent. In a certain sense, they are not only influences, but aids : they move, they stimulate, they belong to the life and memory of the native poet, and he avails himself of them without effort or consciousness. Not that they are the essential, the imperative aids. But to be without them is a restriction, and one which our first genuine school of poets has had more or less to endure.

Strange, indeed, if the material wants of New World life, its utilitarian test of values, and the general conditions of a primitive democracy had not forced our early idealists into a struggle for existence which even the sturdiest found it hard to prolong. Two things are essential to the poetic aspiration that results in fine achievement: the sympathetic applause which ministers to the last infirmity of noble minds, and the common wage that enables a laborer to do