POETS AND POETRY.
THE POETIC PROCESSION.•
MR Roman-Roll's delightful essay is intended as a beginner's introduction to English poetry, and in writing it he has dealt with a subject which is to my mind extraordinarily interesting. His whole pamphlet consists of about fifty pages of fairly large printing, and not only does he have to give in it a sort of lightning impression of half a dozen individual poets and as many epochs, but from the method he has employed he is obliged to set out very briefly what are the qualities which we look for in poetry. This is not only a thing which it is im- possible to do completely, but which it is difficult to do even partially without recourse to talk of over and upper meaning and the hypnotic effects of recurring rhythms and of double rhymes, and of the metaphorical basis of language. All these " aids to reflection " were denied him by the nature of the audience to which he was addressing himself ; but he does remarkably well with what is left to him, saying very simply that " what poetry does for us is to give us new ideas, clearer visions, stronger emotions, and also to express as we could not have done for ourselves what we have already thought and seen and felt." I wish he had included in his preliminary remarks what he puts very well later on, that poetry is perhaps inci- dentally—though of its incidentalness I am not quite sure— a sort of sublime Telegraphese.' He gives the instance from Keats' " Ode to a Nightingale," in which the beaker is full, not of wine, but of " the warm South," full of the song of the men who trod the grapes and of their " sunburnt mirth." This compression would be odious in prose, but if we read Keats' passage in its entirety there is, of course, no effect of crabbed- ness, but rather of the most melodious amplitude.
Mr. Roxburgh's wise limitations of space have obliged him to be exceedingly epigrammatic with regard to many poets and periods. Milton is, he says, the poet of black and white. Wordsworth appealed to the heart and the senses ; Coleridge to the imagination. With Wordsworth it is always Sunday : with Byron it is never Sunday. He is " that preposterous nobleman." The pamphlet is a brilliant tour de force. Only those who have weekly to cramp themselves within the " column's narrow plot of ground " can appreciate to the full the small degree in which Mr. Roxburgh's brevity has been allowed to interfere with his subtlety.
His treatment of the moderns—for he deals very briefly with Rupert Brooke, Masefield, and Robert Nichols—is exceedingly interesting. Though he seems to range himself as among those to whom the older methods seem the more natural and obvious ones, he yet sees the moderns with sympathy and even admiration, and, so far as one can judge, seems to have a very just idea of a great deal, though not all, of what they are driving at. For example, he does not make it quite clear -whether he realizes how much modern poetic effort is spent in the attempt by means of poetry to express a part of that great hinterland of the inexpressible which, like the two ends of the spectrum that are invisible to the eye, lies beyond what we can ordinarily express with tongue or pen. A little anecdote which he tells of Byron and Trinity reveals the exact counterpart in action of the spirit of much modem satirical and comic poetry :-
"When Byron was at Trinity, Cambridge, it is said that he bought a large black bear, dressed it in cap and gown, and introduced it to the Dean."
Imagine the miserable crudeness of an attempt to express this piece of satire by direct statement.
Another question upon which Mr. Roxburgh's opinion would be valuable is whether it might not be easier to develop a poetic taste in beginners by nursing them only on modern poetry ? For, as Mr. Roxburgh says, the modem movement is, among other things, " a movement which is bringing poetry continuously closer to everyday life." At any rate, an adult beginner would probably start in what we might call a utilitarian frame of mind; the attitude that asks, "What will poetry do for me 7 " This nearness to everyday life might be a very valuable quality in our " didactic material." In the case of children I have a theory that poetry can hardly be too fantastic or too ornate. I believe that "Lycidas," Wordsworth's " wandered lonely as a cloud," his " Ode to the Lesser Celandine," • The Poetic Pro:cation. By J. r. Roxburgh. Oxford Basil Blackwell. UM. Od-I
" L'Allegro," " II Penseroso," all poems on which the un- fortunate of my generation were invariably brought np, are the least appropriate poems imaginable with which to begin a poetic education. Their severity and restraint are for the jaded palate of the adept. I, at an early age, and a little boy of seven, whose poetic mentor I was, had, I remember, for our favourites " The Lady of Shalott," " When We Two Part in Silence and Tears," some of the songs from " The Faithful Shepherdess," " The Isles of Greece," passages from Milton such as " Whom the Almighty Power," and " Tears, Idle Tears." I think our choice showed that what we wanted were insistent rhythms, melodramatic or slightly sugary sentiment, and the greatest possible gorgeousness of language.
Wn AMS-ELLIS.
Previous page
