THE FREEMASONRY OF POETRY.
IT is a problem with many as to what shall really bind men together. What is it that makes us feel at once that we are akin, that we have a common origin, a common destiny, the same inner affiliations ? It is not race, it is not language, it is not even Church or family. How easily a man glides away from fellowship with his brother after the flesh to find in some stranger a spiritual relationship not afforded by his own family ! For how many years one may sit under the same roof in church, listening to the same psalms and sermons with others whose inner thoughts move in an orb quite other than one's own ! It is true that every mortal, in a sense, dwells alone ; that an invisible circle surrounds his soul beyond which none but the Supreme Soul penetrates. But while this is the case with all of us, there are some influences which bring souls en rapport with an immediate and irre- sistible power; chief of these influences being music and poetry. Religion does this, it is true, and it has thus been defined as the power which binds; but from our point of view poetry is religion. It is so as being a glimpse into the ideal world of the soul, the world where the heavenly patterns are laid up ; and therefore it is that Shelley calls the poet the "unacknowledged legislator of the world," for he sees not only that which is, but that which is to come.
We think first that all poets have a spiritual kinship. They differ greatly in form, each is moulded by the pressure of his age, by the form and body of the time, but they are united far more than they are divided. We take up successively Shake- speare, Pope, Wordsworth, and Browning, and superficially, perhaps, we see little in common, for we are in an analytic frame of mind and on the look-out for differences. But in the first place we find, if we look more closely, that all are interested in man and in the higher aspects of man's life. "What a wonderful piece of work is man," exclaims Hamlet, and Pope follows with an "Essay on Man," while Wordsworth discourses on "man, on nature, and on human life," and Browning devotes himself entirely to a portrayal of the human soul The poet in every case is engaged on the same theme. In the second place, differing in many ways in treat- ment, the poet always views man, as the philosophers say, "under the form of eternity." He is not cheated by appear- ances, he looks beneath and beyond the secular fact, the momentary spectacle. With Shirley be sees that-
" Tbe glories of our birth and state Are enadows, not substantial things."
He is not to be put off by the talk of the hour, his vision can- not be dimmed by the mists of every-day existence. Every poet is a poet in virtue not only of his gift of song, but also of that direct vision which enables him to penetrate to the centre and see things more or less as the Creator sees them. Even while the empurpled victor rides in triumph through the applause of the throng, the poet's gaze sees on him the pale
shadow of death, and his voice whispers in his ear, "Thou, too, art but a man." It is idle to discuss the question whether poetry is ethical; of course it is, and no poetry more so than English. From Ciedmon to Tennyson, our poetry breathes a moral influence which unites all our poets, sundered though they be in time, metre, manner, or special feeling. They are all seers, for they are all exponents of deep moral power, and this fact gives to English poetry a grandeur of moral unity. This unity, too, is organic, for the influence of one age has been transmitted to the next or the next after, so that we cannot dissociate Dryden from Milton, or Pope from Dryden, or Cowper from Pope, or Wordsworth from Cowper, or Keats from Wordsworth, or Tennyson from Keats. The relation is not formal but vital, the spiritual unity is not only ideal but very real,
It is remarkable, too, how close is the relation of poets in different lands to one another. The essential motives of inspiration are of course the same, and perhaps there is an added joy in finding a response to one's inner thought from a writer in another land and clime whose face one has never seen. One can neva forget the impulse given by Italy to the English poetry of the fourteenth century, so joyously received, so ennobled in the borrowing. One feels the inherent value of the poetry of Scott, Burns, and Byron the more because it appealed to Goethe. How finely the German genius assimilated the Shakespearian drama, thus revealing the unity of the higher mind of England and Germany. It is, indeed, a fact that the truth seems to 1113 the more true when it is seized on and ap- propriated by another soul The new truth becomes an organic bond cementing those whom no other tie could bind. When the Germans perceived the immense spiritual value of the Shakespearian drama, a firmer common tissue was evolved between German and Englishman than could ever have been constructed by the diplomacy of Chatham or of Frederick. If Homer was a common bond for the Greeks, if Virgil was a rallying centre for the citizens of the Roman Empire, the great literature of the modern world will have its effect in evolving a certain world-harmony. Wordsworth in his noble language appealed to Englishmen as "speaking the tongue that Shakespeare spake," and as holding the "faith and morals that Milton held." It is the essential spiritual unity underlying not only Shakespeare and Milton, but all great poets—the faith in justice, truth, humanity, and God—which will make all elect souls akin.
For consider bow a common interest in some great poet unites individuate who have never even met before. To indicate one's interest in a mathematical problem may bring two men together in a special way, but it has no effect on their inner nature. Even a common interest in theology has not,—nay, it often unhappily has a tendency to produce quarrel and separation. But let a man quote Dante's "In sea voluntade e nostra pace," or Wordsworth's " One impulse from a vernal wood." or Shakespeare's " Ripeness is all," and his neighbour, whom he knows not, instantly feels as though, in the midst of the roaring sea of life, a line were thrown out to him amid the billows, and a friendly hand stretched forth. A tie has been formed, a new relationship knit, ii. spiritual unity found, a new zest imparted to life. Nothing is more real than this potent influence of poetry in binding together souls, in introducing us, so to speak, to one another, and making us glad in one another's companionship. Eating, living, talking, even worshipping together, will not accomplish this, but the one divine line of genius will. It unlocks the fountains of each heart, and the streams commingle; each knows im- mediately the common source and destiny of both. The poet is not only the world's legislator, he provides the world's strongest spiritual bond. A freemasonry exists the world over between ail who love and-reVeit nee the great poets,
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