Part 5 (2/2)
”And the stars move along the edges of the hills.”
Walter Pater finds in Wordsworth's poetry an extraordinary number of these short pa.s.sage poems, which he called 'delicious morsels.'
Coleridge says of Wordsworth: ”Since Milton, I know of no poet with so many felicitous and unforgetable lines.” Many critics have found these suggestive lines in the poets, and I find Wordsworth full of them.
The lines of this kind that I find in the poetry of John Burroughs are rather numerous for the amount of poetry he gave to the world, and some of them are as fine as the language has.
[Ill.u.s.tration: LOOKING ACROSS THE PASTURE WALL IN THE DIRECTION OF THE NATHAN CHASE FARM]
”Like mellow thunder leagues away,”
”I hear the wild bee's mellow chord, In airs that swim above,”
”Once more the tranquil days brood o'er the hills, And sooth earth's toiling breast,”
”The dome of day o'erbrims with sound From humming wings on errands bound,”
”Pausing in the twilight dim, Hear him lift his evening hymn,”
”Again from out the garden hives The exodus of frenzied bees; The humming cyclone onward drives, Or finds repose amid the trees.”
”Then waiting long hath recompense, And all the world is glad with May.”
”Oh, skater in the fields of air,” he says of the swallow. How well this expresses the flight of the swallow!
”The robin perched on treetop tall Heavenward lifts his evening call.”
”Forth from the hive go voyaging bees, Cruising far each sunny hour.”
There are many pa.s.sages of this kind in his poems and they express the moods of Nature, perhaps as well as it is possible for them to be put in words. In _Arbutus Days_, he uses the following figure to paint a spring day:
”Like mother bird upon her nest The day broods o'er the earth.”
To him the common things are all beautiful and if we only have the eyes to see with, they are made beautiful for us by him. Recognizing the fate of every insincere book, he declares: ”Only an honest book can live; only absolute sincerity can stand the test of time. Any selfish or secondary motive vitiates a work of art, as it vitiates a religious life. Indeed, I doubt if we fully appreciate the literary value of staple, fundamental human virtues and qualities--probity, directness, simplicity, sincerity, love.” He is probably not an inspired poet, but I shall claim for him that he is an honest singer, a sincere interpreter of Nature, and every virtue referred to in the above quotation he has woven into _Bird and Bough_. What he says of another we can appropriately say of him: ”This poet sees the earth as one of the orbs, and has sought to adjust his imagination to the modern problems and conditions, always taking care, however, to preserve an outlook into the highest regions.”
JOHN BURROUGHS AND WALT WHITMAN
A certain publisher, who honored very much Walt Whitman, could have paid him no higher tribute than to have closed the preface to Whitman's Poems as follows: ”To have met Whitman was a privilege, to have been his friend was an honor. The latter was mine; and among the many reminiscences of my life, none are to me more pleasing than those which gather about the name of 'The Good Grey Poet'.”
John Burroughs was for thirty years the intimate friend and constant a.s.sociate of Walt Whitman, and I have heard him say that those were among the most pleasant years of his life. All who ever knew Whitman, and became in any way intimate with him, have practically the same to say of him. No writer ever unfolded himself and his greatness more completely than Whitman, and yet we have a great many excellent critics who are pretty harsh on him. This we believe is so, because the critics have not read the poet aright. They have failed to get out of the poems what was put in them. Whitman is not a poet according to cla.s.sical standards, but as a ”Creator” he is.
Emerson says of his poetry: ”I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed.” Julian Hawthorne says of it: ”Original and forceful, Whitman cannot be judged by ordinary literary standards. His scornful trampling upon all metrical rules, and his freedom in treating of matters, usually pa.s.sed in silence, have so far been a decided barrier to the approval of his work.”
Professor Underwood of the California University has the following good word for the poet: ”Pupils who are accustomed to a.s.sociate the idea of poetry with regular cla.s.sic measure in rhyme, or in ten-syllabled blank verse or elastic hexameter, will commence these short and simple prose sentences with surprise, and will wonder how any number of them can form a poem. But let them read aloud with a mind in sympathy with the picture as it is displayed, and they will find by Nature's unmistakable response, that the author is a poet, and possesses the poets'
incommunicable power to touch the heart.”
Professor Pattee of the Pennsylvania State College, on the other hand says: ”It is certainly true that to the majority of readers, 'Leaves of Gra.s.s', contains a few good things amid a disgusting ma.s.s of rubbish.
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