for I well knew that all this would befall me, and I have been fool enough to love another more than my self, for I taught my mistress that whereby she hath imprisoned me in such manner that none can set mo free.' ' Certes, Merlin,' replied Sir Gawain, ' of that I am right sorrowful, and so will King Arthur, my uncle, be, when he shall know it, as one who is making search 56 POETKY AND IMAGINATION.
after you throughout all countries.' 'Well,' said Mer lin, ' it must be borne, for never will he see me, nor I him; neither will any one speak with me again after you, it would be vain to attempt it; for you yourself, when you have turned away, will never be able to iind the place: but salute for me the king and the queen, and all the barons, and tell them of my condition. You will find the king at Carduel in Wales; and when you arrive there you will find there all the companions who departed with you, and who at this day will return. Now then go in the jiame of God, who will protect and save the King Arthur, and the realm of Logres, and you also, as the best knights who are in the world.' With that Sir Gawain departed joyful and sorrowful; joyful because of what Merlin had assured him should happen to him, and sorrowful that Merlin had thus been lost."
Morals. — We are sometimes apprised that there is a mental power and creation more excellent than anything which is commonly called philosophy and literature; that the high poets, — that Homer, Mil ton, Shakspeare, do not fully content us. How rarely they offer us the heavenly bread! The most they have done is to intoxicate us once and again with its taste. They have touched this heaven and retain afterwards some sparkle of it: they betray their belief that such discourse is possible. There is something — our brothers on tins or that side of the sea do not know it or own it; the eminent scholars of England, historians and reviewers, ro- MORALS. 57 mancers and poets included, might deny and blas pheme it — which is setting us and them aside and the whole world also, and planting itself. To true poetry we shall sit down as the result and justifica tion of the age in which it appears, and think light ly of histories and statutes. None of your parlor or piano verse, — none of your carpet poets, who are content to amuse, will satisfy us. Power, new power, is the good which the soul seeks. The po etic gift we want, as the health and supremacy of man, — not rhymes and sonneteering, not book- making and bookselling; surely not cold spying and authorship.
Is not poetry the little chamber in the brain where is generated the explosive force which, by gentle shocks, sets in action the intellectual world? Bring us the bards who shall sing all our old ideas out of our heads, and new ones in; men-making poets; poetry which, like the verses inscribed on Balder's columns in Breidablik, is capable of restor ing the dead to life; — poetry like that verse of Saadi, which the angels testified " met the approba tion of Allah in Heaven "; — poetry which finds its rhymes and cadences in the rhymes and iterations of nature, and is the gift to men of new images and symbols, each the ensign and oracle of an age; that shall assimilate men to it, mould itself into re ligions and mythologies, and impart its quality to centuries; — poetry which tastes the world and re- 3* 58 rOETRY AND IMAGINATION.
ports of it, upbuilding the world again in the thought; " Not with tickling rhymes, But high and nohle matter, such as flies From brains entranced, and iilled with ecstasies."
Poetry must be affirmative. It is the piety of the intellect. "Thus saith the Lord," should begin the song. The poet who shall use nature as his hieroglyphic must have an adequate message to convey thereby. Therefore, when we speak of the Poet in any high sense, we are driven to such ex amples as Zoroaster and Plato, St. John and Menu, with their moral burdens. The Muse shall be the counterpart of Nature, and equally rich. I find her not often in books. We know Nature, and figure her exuberant, tranquil, magnificent in her fertility, coherent; so that every creation is omen of every other. She is not proud of the sea, of the stars, of space or time, or man or woman. All her kinds share the attributes of the selectest extremes. Hut in current literature I do not find her. Literature warps away from life, though at first it seems to bind it. In the world of letters how few command ing oracles! Homer did what he could, — Pindar, jEschylus, and the Greek Gnomic poets and the tragedians. Dante was faithful when not carried away by his fierce hatreds. P>ut in so many alcoves of English poetry I can count only nine or ten authors who are still inspirers and lawgivers to their race.
MORALS. 59 MORALS. 59 The supreme value of poetry is to educate us to a height beyond itself, or which it rarely reaches; — the subduing mankind to order and virtue. He is the true Orpheus who writes his ode, not with syl lables, but men. " In poetry," said Goethe, " only the really great and pure advances us, and this ex ists as a second nature, either elevating us to itself, or rejecting us." The poet must let Humanity sit with the Muse in his head, as the charioteer sits with the hero in the Iliad. " Show me," said Sarona in the novel, "one wicked man who has written poetry, and I will show you where his poetry is not poetry; or rather, 1 will show you in his poetry no poetry at all." * I have heard that there is a hope which precedes and must precede all science of the visible or the invisible world; and that science is the realization of that hope in either region. I count the genius of Swedenborg and Wordsworth as the agents of a reform in philosophy, the bringing poetry back to nature, — to the marrying of nature and mind, un doing the old divorce in which poetry had been famished and false, and nature had been suspected and pagan. The philosophy which a nation re ceives, rules its religion, poetry, politics, arts, trades, and whole history. A good poem — say Shak- speare's " Macbeth," or " Hamlet," or the " Tempest " — goes about the world offering itself to reasonable 60 POETRY AND IMAGINATION.
men, who read it with joy and carry it to their reason able neighbors. Thus it draws to it the wise and generous souls, confirming their secret thoughts, and, through their sympathy, really publishing 'it self. It affects the characters of its readers by for mulating their opinions and feelings, and inevitably prompting their daily action. If they build ships, they write " Ariel " or " I'rospero " or " Ophelia " on the ship's stern, and impart a tenderness and mys tery to matters of fact. The ballad and romance work on the hearts of boys, who recite the rhymes to their hoops or their skates if alone, and these heroic songs or lines are remembered and determine many practical choices which they make later. Do you think Burns has had no influence on the life of men and women in Scotland, — has opened no eyes and ears to the face of nature and tlie dignity of man and the charm and excellence of woman?
We are a little civil, it must be owned, to Homer and yEschylus, to Dante and Shakspeare, and give them the benefit of the largest interpretation. We must be a little strict also, and ask whether, if we sit down at home, and do not go to Hamlet, Ham let will come to us? whether we shall find our tragedy written in his, — our hopes, wants, pains, disgraces, described to the life, — and the way opened to the paradise which ever in the best hour beckons us? But our overpraise and ideali/ation of famous masters is not in its origin a poor Bos- MORALS. 61 wellism, but an impatience of mediocrity. The praise we now give to our heroes we shall unsay when we make larger demands. How fast we out grow the books of the nursery, — then those that satisfied our youth. What we once admired as poetry has long since come to be 'a sound of tin pans; and many of our later books we have out grown. Perhaps Homer and Milton will be tin pans yet. Better not to be easily pleased. The poet should rejoice if he has taught us to despise his song; if he has so moved us as to lift us, — to open the eye of the intellect to see farther and better.
In proportion as a man's life comes into union with truth, his thoughts approach to a parallelism with the currents of natural laws, so that he easily expresses his meaning by natural symbols, or uses the ecstatic or poetic speech. By successive states of mind all the facts of nature are for the first time interpreted. In proportion as his life departs from this simplicity, he uses circumlocution, — by many words hoping to suggest what he cannot say. Vex atious to find poets, who are by excellence the thinking and feeling of the world, deficient in truth of intellect and of affection. Then is conscience unfaithful, and thought unwise. To know the merit of Shakspeare, read " Faust." I find " Faust " a little too modern and intelligible. "VYe can find such a fabric at several mills, though a little inferior. " Faust " abounds in the disagreeable. The vice is 62 POETRY AND IMAGINATION.
prurient, learned, Parisian. In the presence of Jove, Priapus may be allowed as an offset, but here he is an equal hero. The egotism, the wit, is cal culated. The book is undeniably written by a master, and stands unhappily related to the whole modern world; but it is a very disagreeable chap ter of literature, and accuses the author as well as the times. Shakspeare could, no doubt, have been disagreeable, had he less genius, and if ugliness had attracted him. In short, our English nature and genius has made us the worst critics of Goethe, " We, who speak the tongue ' That Shaks}>eare sjiake, the faith and manners hold Which Milton held."
It is not style or rhymes, or a new image more or less, that imports, but sanity; that life should not be mean; that life should 1>e an image in every part beautiful; that the old forgotten splendors of the universe should glow again for us; — that we should lose our wit, but gain our reason. And when life is true to the poles of nature, the streams of truth will roll through us in son".
Transcendency. — In a cotillon some persons dance and others await their turn when the music and the figure come to them. In the dance of God there is not one of the chorus but can and will begin to spin, monumental as he now looks, when ever the music and figure reach his place ami duty.
TRANSCENDENCY. 63 0 celestial Bacchus! drive them mad, — this multi tude of vagabonds, hungry for eloquence, hungry for poetry, starving for symbols, perishing for want of electricity to vitalize this too much pasture, and in the long delay indemnifying themselves with the false wine of alcohol, of politics, or of money.
Every man may be, and at some time a man is, lifted to a platform whence he looks beyond sense to moral and spiritual truth; and in that mood deals sovereignly with matter, and strings worlds like beads upon his thought. The success with which this is done can alone determine how genuine is the inspiration. The poet is rare because he must be exquisitely vital and sympathetic, and, at the same time, immovably centred. In good society; nay, among the angels in heaven, is not everything spoken in fine parable, and not so servilely as it befell to the sense? All is symbolized. Facts are not foreign, as they seem, but related. Wait a little and we see the return of the remote hyperbolic curve. The solid men complain that the idealist leaves out the fundamental facts; the poet com plains that the solid men leave out the sky. To every plant there are two powers; one shoots down as rootlet, and one upward as tree. You must have eyes of science to see in the seed its nodes; you must have the vivacity of the poet to perceive in the thought its futurities. The poet is represent ative, — whole man, diamond-merchant, symbolizer, 64 POETEY AND IMAGINATION.
emancipator; in him the world projects a scribe's hand and writes the adequate genesis. The nature of things is flowing, a metamorphosis. The free spirit sympathizes not only with the actual form, but with the power or possible forms; but for obvious muni cipal or parietal uses, God has given us a bias or a rest on to-day's forms. Hence the shudder of joy with which in each clear moment we recognize the metamorphosis, because it is always a conquest, a surprise from the heart of things. One would say of the force in the works of nature, all depends on the battery. If it give one shock, we shall get to the fish form, and stop; if two shocks, to the bird; if three, to the quadruped; if four, to the man. Power of generalizing differences men. The num ber of successive saltations the nimble thought can make, measures the difference between the highest and lowest of mankind. The habit of saliency, of not pausing but going on, is a sort of importation or domestication of the Divine effort in a man. After the largest circle has been drawn, a larger can be drawn around it. The problem of the poet is to unite freedom with precision; to give the pleasure of color, and be not less the most powerful of sculp tors. Music seems to you sufficient, or the subtle and delicate scent of lavender; but Dante was free imagination, — all wings, — yet he wrote like Euclid. And mark the equality of Shakspeare to the comic, the tender and sweet, and to the grand and terrible.
TRANSCENDENCY. 65 A little more or less skill in whistling is of no account. See those weary pentameter tales of Dry- den and others. Turnpike is one thing and blue sky another. Let the poet, of all men, stop with his inspiration. The inexorable rule in the muses' court, either inspiration or silence, compels the bard to report only his supreme moments. It teaches the enormous force of a few words and in proportion to the inspiration checks loquacity. Much that we call poetry is but polite verse. The high poetry which shall thrill and agitate mankind, restore youth and health, dissipate the dreams under which men reel and stagger, and bring in the new thoughts, the sanity and heroic aims of nations, is deeper hid and longer postponed than was America or Austra lia, or the finding of steam or of the galvanic bat tery. We must not conclude against poetry from the defects of poets. They are, in our experience, men of every degree of skill, — some of them only once or twice receivers of an inspiration, and pres ently falling back on a low life. The drop of ichor that tingles in their veins has not yet refined their blood, and cannot lift the whole man to the diges tion and function of ichor, — that is, to godlike na ture. Time will be when ichor shall be their blood, when what are now glimpses and aspirations shall be the routine of the day. Yet even partial ascents to poetry and ideas are forerunners, and announce the dawn. In the mire of the sensual 66 POETRY AND IMAGINATION.
life, their religion, their poets, their admiration of heroes and benefactors, even their novel and newspaper, nay, their superstitions also, are hosts of ideals, — a cordage of ropes that hold them up out of the slough. Poetry is inestimable as a lonely faith, a lonely protest in the uproar of atheism.
But so many men are ill-born or ill-bred, — the brains are so marred, so imperfectly formed, uuhe- roically, — brains of the sons of fallen men, — that the doctrine is imperfectly received. One man sees a spark or shimmer of the truth, and reports it, and his saying becomes a legend or golden proverb for ages, and other men report as much, but none wholly and well. Poems, — we have no poem. Whenever that angel shall be organized and appear on earth, the Iliad will be reckoned a poor ballad- grinding. I doubt never the riches of nature, the gifts of the future, the immense wealth of the mind. O yes, poets we shall have, mythology, symbols, religion, of our own. We, too, shall know how to take up all this industry and empire, this Western civilization, into thought, as easily as men did when arts were few; but not by holding it high, but by holding it low. The intellect uses and is not used, — uses London and Paris and Berlin, east and west, to its end. The only heart that can help us is one that draws, not from our society, but from itself, a counterpoise to society. What if we find partiality and meanness in us? The trrandeur of our life TRANSCENDENCY. 67 TRANSCENDENCY. 67 exists in spite of us, — all over and under and with in us, in what of us is inevitable and above our control. Men are facts as well as persons, and the involuntary part of their life so much as to fill the mind and leave them no countenance to say aught of what is so trivial as their selfish thinking and doing. Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
SOCIAL AIMS.
SOCIAL AIMS.
MUCH ill-natured criticism has "been directed on American manners. I do not think it is to be re sented. Rather, if we are wise, we shall listen and mend. Our critics will then be our best friends, though they did not mean it. But in every sense the subject of manners has a constant interest to thoughtful persons. Who does not delight in fine manners? Their charm cannot be predicted or overstated. 'T is perpetual promise of more than can be fulfilled. It is music and sculpture and picture to many who do not pretend to apprecia tion of those arts. It is even true that grace is more beautiful than beauty. Yet how impossible to overcome the obstacle of an unlucky tempera ment, and acquire good manners, unless by living with the well-bred from the start; and this makes the value of wise forethought to give ourselves and our children as much as possible the habit of culti vated society.
'T is an inestimable hint that I owe to a few per sons of fine manners, that they make behavior the very first sign of force, — behavior, and not perform- 72 SOCIAL AIMS.
ance, or talent, or, much less, wealth. Whilst al most everybody has a supplicating eye turned on events and things and other persons, a few natures are central and forever unfold, and these alone charm us. He whose word or deed you cannot predict, who answers you without any supplication in his eye, who draws his determination from within, and draws it instantly, — that man rules.
The staple figure in novels is the man of aplomb, who sits, among the young aspirants and desperates, quite sure and compact, and, never sharing their affections or debilities, hurls his word like a bullet when occasion requires, knows his way, and carries his points. They may scream or applaud, he is never engaged or heated. Napoleon is the type of this class in modern history; Byron's heroes in poetry. But we, for the most part, are all drawn into the charivari; we chide, lament, cavil, and re criminate.
I think Hans Andersen's story of the cobweb cloth woven so fine that it was invisible, — woven for the king's garment, — must mean manners, which do really clothe a princely nature. Such a one can well go in a blanket, if he would. In the gym nasium or on the sea-beach his superiority does not leave him. But he who has not this fine garment of behavior is studious of dress, and then not less of house and furniture and pictures and gardens, in all which he hopes to lie perdu, and not be exposed.
SOCIAL AIMS. 73 " Manners are stronger than laws." Their vast convenience I must always admire. The perfect defence and isolation which they effect makes an insuperable protection. Though the person so clothed wrestle with you, or swim with you, lodge in the same chamber, eat at the same table, he is yet a thousand miles off, and can at any moment finish with you. Manners seem to say, You are you, ami I am I. In the most delicate natures, fine temperament and culture build this impassable wall. Balzac finely said: " Kings themselves can not force the exquisite politeness of distance to capitulate, hid behind its shield of bronze."
Nature values manners. See how she has pre pared for them. Who teaches manners of majesty, of frankness, of grace, of humility, — who but the adoring aunts and cousins that surround a young child? The babe meets such courting and flattery as only kings receive when adult; and, trying ex periments, and at perfect leisure with these pos ture-masters and flatterers all day, he throws him self into all the attitudes that correspond to theirs. Are they humble? he is composed. Are they eager? he is nonchalant. Are they encroaching? he is dignified and inexorable. And this scene is daily repeated in hovels as well as in high houses. ' Nature is the best posture-master. An awk ward man is graceful when asleep, or when hard at work, or agreeably amused. The attitudes of chil- 4 74 SOCIAL AIMS.
dren are gentle, persuasive, royal, in their games and in their house-talk and in the street, before they have learned to cringe. 'T is impossible but thought disposes the limbs and the walk, and is masterly or secondary. No art can contravene it, or conceal it. Give me a thought, and my hands and legs and voice and face will all go right. And we are awkward for want of thought. The inspiration is scanty, and does not arrive at the extremities.
It is a commonplace of romances to show the ungainly manners of the pedant wlio has lived too long in college. Intellectual men pass for vulgar, and are timid and heavy with the elegant. But, if the elegant are also intellectual, instantly the hesi tating scholar is inspired, transformed, and exhibits the best style of manners. An intellectual man, though of feeble spirit, is instantly reinforced by being put into the company of scholars, and, to the surprise of everybody, becomes a lawgiver. We think a man unable ami desponding. It is only that he is misplaced. Put him with new com panions, and they will find in him excellent quali ties, unsuspected accomplishments, and the joy of life. 'T is a great point in a gallery, how you hang pictures; and not less in society, how you seat your party. The circumstance of circumstance is timing and placing. When a man meets his accu rate mate, society begins, and life is delicious.
What happiness they give, — what ties they SOCIAL AIMS. 75 form! Whilst one man by his manners pins me to the wall, with another I walk among the stars. One man can, by his voice, lead the cheer of a regiment; another will have no following. Na ture made us all intelligent of these signs, for our safety and our happiness. Whilst certain faces are illumined with intelligence, decorated with in vitation, others are marked with warnings: certain voices are hoarse and truculent; sometimes they even bark. There is the same difference between • heavy and genial manners as between the percep tions of octogenarians and those of young girls who se'e everything in the twinkling of an eye.
Manners are the revealers of secrets, the betrayers of any disproportion or want of symmetry in mind and character. It is the law of our constitution that every change in our experience instantly indicates itself on our countenance and carriage, as the lapse of time tells itself on the face of a clock We may be too obtuse to read it, but the record is there. Some men may be obtuse to read it, but some men are not obtuse and do read it. In Borrow's " Laven- gro," the gypsy instantly detects, by his companion's face and behavior, that some good fortune has be fallen him, and that he has money. We say, in these days, that credit is to be abolished in trade: is it? When a stranger comes to buy goods of you, do you not look in his face and answer according to what you read there? Credit is to be abolished?
76 SOCIAL AIMS.
76 SOCIAL AIMS.
Can't you abolish faces and character, of which credit is the reflection? As long as men are horn bal>es they will live on credit for the first fourteen or eigh teen years of their life. Every innocent man has in his countenance a promise to pay, and hence credit. Less credit will there be? You are mistaken. There will always be more and more. Character must be trusted; and, just in proportion to the morality of a people, will be the expansion of the credit system.
There is even a little rule of prudence for the young experimenter which Dr. Franklin omitted to set down, yet which the youth may find useful, — Do not go to ask your debtor the payment of a debt on the day when you have no other resource. He will learn by your air and tone how it is witli you, and will treat you as a beggar. But work and starve a little longer. Wait till your affairs go better, and you have other means at hand; you will then ask in a different tone, and he will treat your claim with entire respect.
Now, we all wish to be graceful, and do justice to ourselves by our manners; but youth in America is wont to 1*3 poor and hurried, not at ease, or not in society where high behavior could be taught. But the sentiment of honor and the wish to serve make all our pains superfluous. Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy. Self-command is the main elegance. " Keep cool, and you command everybody," said St. Just; and SOCIAL AIMS. 77 the wily old Talleyrand would still gay, Surtout, messieurs, pas de zele, — " Above all, gentlemen, no heat."
Why have you statues in your hall, but to teach you that, when the door-bell rings, you shall sit like them. " Eat at your table as you would eat at the table of the king," said Confucius. It is an excellent custom of the Quakers, if only for a school of manners, — the silent prayer before meals. It has the effect to stop mirth, and introduce a moment of reflection. After the pause, all resume their usual intercourse from a vantage-ground. What a check to the violent manners which some times come to the table, — of wrath, and whin ing, and heat in trifles!