Select poems : being the literature prescribed for the junior matriculation and junior leaving examinations, 1905

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Copp, Clark Pitman Ltd.

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Introduction : The Study of Poetry -

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Introduction

perhaps prove, or at least show as very probable, that in the mental life of centuries far ahead of us, art and poetry will occupy but a very insignificant place. Psychology teaches us that the course of development is from instinct to knowledge, from emotion to judgment, from rambling to regulated association of ideas. Attention replaces fugitive ideation ; will, guided by reason, replaces caprice. Observation then triumphs ever more and more over imagination, and artistic symbolism, i.e., the introduction of erroneous personal interpretations of the universe, is more and more driven back by an understanding of the laws of nature. On the other hand, the march hitherto followed by civilization gives us an idea of the fate which may be reserved for art and poetry in a very distant future. That which originally was the most important occupation of men of full mental development, of the maturest, best and wisest members of society, becomes little by little a subordinate pastime, and finally a child’s amusement. Dancing was formerly an extremely important affair. It was performed on certain grand occasions as a state function of the first order, with solemn ceremonies, after sacrifices and invocations to the gods by the leading warriors of the tribe. To-day it is no more than a fleeting pastime for women and youths, and later on its last atavistic survival will be the dancing of children. The fable and the fairy tale were once the highest productions of the human mind. In them the most hidden wisdom of the tribe, and its most precious traditions, were expressed. To-day they represent a species of literature only cultivated for the nursery. The verse which by rhythm, figurative expression and rhyme trebly betrays its origin in the stimulations of rhythmically functioning subordinate organs, in association of ideas working according to external similitudes, and in that working according to consonance, was originally the only form of literature. To-day it is only employed for purely emotional portrayal ; for all other purposes it has been conquered by prose, and indeed has almost passed into the condition of an atavistic language. Under our very eyes the novel is being increasingly degraded, serious and highly cultivated men scarcely deeming it worthy of attention, and it appeals more and more exclusively to the young and to women. From all these examples it is fair to conclude that after some centuries, art and poetry will have become pure atavisms, and will no longer be cultivated except by the more emotional portion of humanity — by women, by the young, perhaps even by children.”

It is true that at the present moment poetry seems extinct, but is this more than a temporary eclipse ? Does it belong to the infancy of the

WHAT IS POETRY?

XI race? Is it an atavistic survival, an anachronism in our modern world? Must it be relegated to the nursery like the fable and the fairy tale and finally disappear like many another thing once beautiful, now antiquated and obsolescent ? Has the kingdom of science come and the kingdom of imagination passed away ? Will all color be merged in “the drab of the earnest, prosaic, practical, austerely literal future ? ”

Illustration of the difference between Science and Poetry. — In Literature and Dogma ,. Matthew Arnold defines religion as ‘morality touched by emotion” and illustrates the distinction as follows : “‘By the dispensation of Providence to mankind, ’ says Quintilian, ‘ goodness gives men most satisfaction.’ That is morality. ‘The path of the just is as the shining light which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.’ That is morality touched with emotion, or religion. ‘Hold off from sensuality,’ says Cicero, ‘for if you have given yourself up to it, you will find yourself unable to think of anything else.’ That is morality. ‘Blessed are the pure in heart,’ says Jesus Christ, ‘for they shall see God.’ That is religion. ‘ We all want to live honestly, but cannot,’ says the Greek maxim-maker. That is morality. ‘0 wretched man, who shall deliver me from the body of this death,’ says St. Paul. That is religion. ‘ W ould thou wert of as good conversation in deed as in word ’ is morality. ‘ Not every one that sayeth unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my father which is in heaven’ is religion. ‘Live as you were meant to live ’ is morality. ‘ Lay hold of eternal life ’ is religion.

“Or we may take the contrast within the bounds of the Bible itself. ‘Love not sleep, lest thou come to poverty,’ is morality; but ‘My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work ’ is religion. Or we may even observe a third stage between these two stages, which shows to us the transition from the one to the other. ‘ If thou givest thy soul the desires that please her, she will make thee a laughing-stock to thine enemies.’ That is morality. ‘He that resisteth pleasure crowneth his life.’ That is morality with the tone heightened, passing or trying to pass into religion. ‘ Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.’ There the passage is made and we have religion.”

Adopting Arnold’s simple and effective method, we may define poetry as thought, science, touched by emotion, and illustrate the difference as follows : —

The geographer calls the earth an oblate spheroid. That is science. Wordsworth calls it “the mighty mother of mankind.” That is poetry.

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INTRODUCTION.

‘‘The sum total of matter in the universe is a constant quantity/’ is science.

The one remains, the many change and pass ;

Heaven’s light for ever shines, earth’s shadows fly,

is poetry.

“The slightest displacement of matter on the surface of the earth involves, on the theory of gravitation, a readjustment of forces throughout the solar system, ” is science.

There’s not the smallest orb which thou beholdest,

But in his motion like an angel sings,

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins,

is poetry.

“ The energy of the universe is a constant quantity,” is science.

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,

And the most ancient heavens Through thee are fresh and strong,

is poetry.

“ Change of season, and, consequently, vegetation, are owing to the earth’s annual movement about the sun, combined with her inclination to the plane of her orbit,” is science.

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds And fragance in thy footing treads,

is poetry.

“The earth was originally cast forth from the sun, a glowing mass unfit for human or other habitation. Cooling down, it at length reached a condition when human beings could appear, developed from lower organisms. The cooling process is still going on and must ultimately make the planet again unfit for human beings. The race will then disappear, the earth itself will drop into the sun or be otherwise broken up, to be again cast forth and re-embodied in new forms.” That is prose.

And like the baseless fabric of this vision,

The cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples and the great globe itself,

Yea all which it inherit shall dissolve,

And like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made of ; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

That is poetry.

“With what tenderly reminiscent feelings two old school-fellows meet after years of separation,” is prose.

WHAT IS POETRY]

Xlll

We twa hae paidl’t in the burn,

From morning sun till dine,

But oceans braid between us raired.

is poetry.

“ Had they never met they would have escaped much sorrow and anguish, but their latent possibilities of deepest affection would have remained dormant,” is prose.

’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

The thought has been partially suffused and illuminated with emotion.

Had we never loved so blindly,

Had we never loved so kindly,

Never met and never parted,

We had ne’er been broken-hearted.

Here the piercing plaintiveness of the tone will not let us forget either the lovers’ raptures, or the sadness of their separation. That is poetry.

“Honesty is the best policy,” is prose almost repellant in its bald philistinism. “There is a stream of tendency by which all things fulfil the law of their being ; ” in this we have a perceptible heightening of the tone. “ There is a moral order of the universe which it is a man’s happiness to go along with, and his misery to go counter to.” There is here a further access of emotion, an additional heightening of the tone, but the passage still falls short of genuine poetry. “ Clouds and darkness are round about him ; righteousness and judgment are the habitations of his seat.” The divine afflatus has breathed upon it, the passage has been made and we have poetry.

“It is a matter of common observation that mental energy is not a fixed quantity but varies from day to day, even from hour to hour,” is a plain statement of fact. “Facilities and felicities whence do they come ; suggestions and stimulations whither do they tend ? ” The tone is heightened, passing or trying to pass into poetry :

The awful shadow of some unseen power Floats though unseen among us ; visiting This various world with as inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.

Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,

It visits with inconstant glance Each human heart and countenance ;

Like hues and harmonies of evening,

Like clouds in starlight widely spread,

Like memory of music fled,

Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

There the passage has been made and we have poetry.

XIV

INTRODUCTION.

Definition of Poetry. — Poetry is thought “heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling.” When a thought has caught the poet’s fancy, and has been dwelt upon in his mind — and only a worthy thought can thus compel attention— until its full significance is revealed, and there has clustered about it a wealth of happy fancy and apt illustration, and when the thought thus touched, beautified and made effective by emotion, has been uttered with power to excite like emotion in reader or hearer, we have poetry. This power of staying the mind upon a thought till what at first appeared trivial or commonplace is revealed in a novel and interesting light, belongs in greater or less degree to all men. If it were otherwise, the enjoyment of poetry would be limited to its producers. A high degree of the power is, however, so rare a gift, that in the whole history of world literature, scarcely a dozen persons have displayed it pre-eminently and with these few, so incalculable were the moments of inspiration that the imagination of all peoples has ascribed them to the influence of a power, a muse, or a god, outside of the poet himself. The enthusiasm of the poet differs from fanaticism as radically as does the graceful and luminous flow of his thought from the movements of the ordinary understanding. The fanatic, the man of one idea, the crank, admits the value of nothing but his own pet notion. The ideas of the average 4 4 intelligent man ” are a miscellaneous collection of odds and ends, gathered without purpose, arranged in no order, and full of latent and undetected inconsistencies and contradictions. From long pondering his thoughts, the poet sees their many-sidedness, their various applications, their connections with one another, their relative importance and the modifications necessitated by changing circumstances of person, place, or time. Poetry is thus, in Shelley’s fine phrase, “the record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best minds ; ” and its beauty — the subject of so much learned mystification - is neither more nor less than its consummate justness, its perfect balance, its unerring felicity, its 44 sweet reasonableness.” It does not merely convince the intellect, but touches the heart. It procures acceptance for the otherwise bald and repellant truth, and wins a joyous obedience to the rule of life hitherto held arbitrary or irksome. What at any time we have ourselves feebly and intermittently felt of noble aspiration is here set in shining lines with perennial power of recalling those feelings so delightful, so elevating, but with us so evanescent. In the animation of mind, and the bracing of the will which it is thus the function of poetry to

WHAT IS POETRY?

XV produce, there is, of course, joy, and this is the modicum of truth in the pleasure theory of poetry ; but the former and not the incidental pleasure is the true end of all art.

Imagination is just this power of vivid realization. It cannot, as often defined, be the picture-making faculty. That is rather an affair of memory or fancy. Do we not feel that Scott has sacrificed to the picturesque many of the higher and more essential qualities of poetry, and that Wordsworth, with much less command of the resources which Scott employs so abundantly, is a far truer poet ? Imagination shows itself in two principal ways. Like Wordsworth, the poet may point out beauties in actual scenes and characters, which the careless eye would have never seen ; like Shakespeare, he may delight us with a world whose incidents, characters, and places even, may be wholly imaginary.

Style is the individual element in poetry. All true poets possess imagination, and therefore power and charm, but these vary infinitely with the training, experience and circumstances of the poet himself. The style is thus the man — with the same sort of charm for us that an interesting personality possesses. We all know people in ordinary life of magnetic personality, as we say. In the tones of their voices, their smile, their very gestures and actions, there is something unique and exquisitely attractive. Similarly with the poets ; so finely individualistic are their modes of utterance that it is quite possible for the trained literary student, by certain well-marked peculiarities of expression, to tell whether a passage previously unseen is Carlyle’s or Browning’s or Tennyson’s. It is true that this may be done quite mechanically and with little feeling for the more elusive but more valuable qualities of the poet’s style. Just as many people are able to “ spot” an Alma- Tadema by his marble, without any real appreciation of his power, so they are able to spot a passage from Browning or Tennyson. The ease with which the superficial manner may be parodied, while what is essential in the poet’s work is entirely missed, shows the worthlessness of all external study of style. Time spent on niceties of diction, rhythm and imagery is time wasted if it does not bring us in contact with genius itself, and enable us to obtain the incentive and stimulus which it is the power of a great and dominant personality to impart.

Poetry the complement of Science. — Poetry is not, therefore, antagonistic to science, but complementary. In Wordsworth’s fine phrase it is “the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science, the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge.” Science xvi

INTRODUCTION.

appeals to the intellect ; poetry, to the reason vitalized by emotion. Science formulates, poetry suggests. Science is abstract ; poetry, concrete. Science analyzes, poetry combines. Science presents fractions ; poetry, wholes. Science deals with facts, as facts, while for poetry the ideal is the fact. Science bids us see, in particular things, not ideals, but merely examples of general classes. Poetry is constantly striving to give

To one brief moment caught from fleeting time,

The appropriate calm of blest eternity ;

and to get us to see and to reverence beauty and goodness, as facts of life, as truly as baseness and vulgarity. Poetry, in short, gives us more of life than prose ; gives it with less distortion, and gives it more attractively. Though the present dearth of even tenth-rate poets would seem to make for their theories, the truth, we feel, is not with Macaulay or Nordau. Scientific ?d vance is constant and regular. Literary revivals cannot be predicted, but return, in its own good time, poetry certainly will — changed, perhaps, in form, but with all its pristine power of bringing joy to man and calming “ the weary strife of frail humanity.”

II. — Poetry in the Schools.

Our lack of culture. — The object of putting poetry on the school curriculum is that the civilization of the future may be higher than that of the present. Matthew Arnold has deplored the Englishman’s inability, as compared with the German, to find enjoyment in anything but business. In an address delivered to the New England Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools, last October, and published in the School Review for December, Professor George Harris, of the Andover Theological Seminary, made a similar comparison between the German and the American. “Think now,” he said, “of the men you meet, professional and business men. . . . Few of them have acquaint-

ance with literature, music or art ; their principal reading is the newspapers. . . . They nearly all talk shop — the dullest kind of

talk. . . . How many men know or care anything about music.

. . . In comparison with the Germans we suffer in this respect.

They have their defects and limitations, but they have aesthetic appreciation and enjoyment. They love good music. They are constant attendants on concerts and operas. Small towns have good orchestras that render classical compositions, which, not only to university men, but to the people generally, are a delightful and indispensable part

POETRY IN THE SCHOOLS.

XY11 of life. ... A similar contrast exists in respect to art and literature. The Germans have something we have not. They are more aesthetic, more ideal than we. An American is a practical man ; a shrewd man ; an enterprising man. Many a German is a man of culture. . . .

They have more interests which are above the utilitarian. ” What is true of England and the United States, is far more deplorably true of Canada. As a people, our one conception of blessedness is that of making money. Impervious to ideas, in spite of our boasted modernity, — mainly imitative, by the way, of the United States, — medievalism, economic and social, is rampant among us. With all the hard unintelligence with which even friendly foreigners have charged our race, we seem to be losing its moral earnestness, if our public life be any criterion. With little or no appreciation of literature, art or music, our spare time is given to the newspapers and the trashy magazines, dinners and suppers, whist parties and balls, the lodge and the farce or salacious play. Nor is the life of the feminine half of our people much more attractive. Practically divorced from her husband’s society, through his engagements at the lodge or the club, and thrown back upon the companionship of women as badly trained as herself, the average woman occupies her leisure in gossip about her neighbors, more or less ungenerous ; in receiving and returning the calls of a list of acquaintances, carefully selected with reference to their social position ; in reading the society columns of the newspapers and noting the doings of the social big ones ; in shopping and conferences with the dressmaker ; and in fussy and unprofitable church work. It is to save the future generations from the hard unintelligence, the crude materialism, the false estimates, the conventional standards and the immense ennui of the present, that poetry is prescribed.

Poetry as a Mental Discipline. — As a mere intellectual training the study of literature will compare favorably with any other subject on the school curriculum. Mathematics tends to make the mind exact. The classics, in addition, give a knowledge of human nature. Science cultivates and strengthens the powers of balancing probabilities and of observation. Literature combines with the exactness of mathematics, the observation of science and the knowledge of human nature fostered by the classics, a flexibility of intelligence not otherwise so readily obtainable. A pupil, for example, once gave “sovereign nun” as an equivalent for “ imperial votaress ” in Shakespeare V “the imperial votaress passed on in maiden meditation fancy free.” Is the tact that tells one that “ sovereign nun ” for “ imperial votaress ” is absurd, not

INTRODUCTION.

worth acquiring? Might one not be a fair mathematician and not have it ? Would not a very slight acquaintance with the way men have expressed themselves in literature prevent such a blunder ? Indeed for practical life, more than anything else are required the animation of mind, the multiplying of ideas, the promptness to connect in the thoughts one thing with another and to illustrate one thing by another, to know when an author is at his best and when he is not to be trusted, what to keep and what to reject, which it is the function of literature to give and which the man of one book or no book never obtains.

Poetry as F ormative of Character. — Far more important however is the influence of poetry on the spirit and character of man. Familiarity wi$h poetry tends to make us feel that anything harsh, false, distorted or violent must be contrary to man’s true life and thus makes possible a self-correction and readjustment of the highest possible value. Shelley, speaking of the influence of poetry, says : “ These and corresponding

conditions of being are experienced principally by those of the most delicate sensibility and the most enlarged imagination ; and the state of mind produced by them is at war with every base desire. The enthusiasm of virtue, love, patriotism, and friendship, is essentially linked with such emotions, and whilst they last self appears as what it is, an atom to a universe.” “Good poetry,” says Matthew Arnold, “does undoubtedly tend to form the soul and character ; it tends to beget a love of beauty and truth in alliance together ; it suggests, however indirectly, high and noble principles of action, and it inspires the emotion so helpful in making principles operative.” “ To be incapable,” says Wordsworth, <e of a feeling of poetry, in my sense of the word, is to be without love of human nature and reverence for God.”

III. — The Teaching of Poetry.

The constant aim of the teacher of literature should be to communicate to his class not the bare thought, but as much as possible of the author’s spirit. Any method that interferes with this is a false method. In Ontario, indeed, we have had an exaltation of method over matter, and a little simplification would not be out of place. Don’t employ too learned a jargon. Don’t talk about the “intellectual analysis,” the ‘spiritual interpretation,’ “the intensive study of literature,” and what not. Don’t lose yourself and your pupils’ interest at once, by too minute an examination of words and phrases ; it is the author’s spirit, not his words, that you are to rest your mind upon. Teach the substantial meaning of the poem, but do not give your pupils the impression,

THE TEACHING OF POETRY.

XIX by laying too much stress on the central idea, that the concrete fulness of the poet’s thought may be boiled down to a formula, dried, labelled and pigeon-holed. Study the order and connection of ideas, but do not set up a logical guillotine, and imagine that when you have sliced a poem up you have communicated its spirit to your pupils. The most important part of method is the teacher’s own preparation. Scudder, Longfellow’s biographer, tells a pretty story about the poet’s Maidenhood, , which well illustrates the point : “ Once when it ( Maidenhood) was printed in an illustrated paper, it fell into the hands of a poor woman living in a sterile portion of the North-West. She had papered the walls of her cabin with the journals which a friend had sent her, and the poem with its picture was upon the wall by her table. Here, as she stood at her bread-making or ironing, day after day, she gazed at the picture and read the poem, until by long brooding over it she understood it and absorbed it as people rarely possess the words they read. The friend who sent her the paper was himself a man of letters, and coming afterwards to see her in her loneliness, stood amazed and humbled as she talked artlessly to him about the poem, and disclosed the depths of her intelligence of its beauty and thought.” There is the true method suggested. Ponder what you are about to teach until you nave absorbed it, and then artlessly disclose its beauty to your class. Saturated with the feeling and thought of the poem, and keeping clear the communication of that thought and feeling to your class as your main object, your intelligence and experience will readily suggest a method. It is not, of course, to be expected that what you have yourself won by long meditation reinforced by the accumulated reading of years, can be communicated in one or in many lessons, but an impetus can certainly be given to the better pupils that they will never afterwards lose. It is a common experience that the pieces of literature learned in youth are those to which we return with greatest pleasure in after-life, and the teacher who does not allow his own enthusiasm to die out need not despair of opening for his pupils a fountain to which in after-life they may again and again return for fresh draughts of joy and strength.

EVANGELINE.

A TALE OF ACADIE. 1847.

Prefatory Note

The story of “Evangeline” is founded on a painful occurrence which took place in the early period of British colonization in the northern part of America.

In the year 1713, Acadia, or, as it is now named, Nova Scotia, was ceded to Great Britain by the French. The wishes of the inhabitants seem to have been little consulted in the change, and they with great difficulty were induced to take the oaths of allegiance to the British Government. Some time after this, war having again broken ouf between the French and British in Canada, the Acadians were accused of having assisted the French, from whom they were descended, and connected by many ties of friendship, with provisions and ammunition, at the siege of Beau S&jour. Whether the accusation was founded on fact or not, has not been satisfactorily ascertained ; the result, however, was most disastrous to the primitive, simple-minded Acadians. The British Government ordered them to be removed from their homes, and dispersed throughout the other colonies, at a distance from their much-loved land. This resolution was not communicated to the inhabitants till measures had been matured to carry it into immediate effect ; when the Governor of the colony, having issued a summons calling the whole people to a meeting, informed them that their lands, tenements, and cattle of all kinds were forfeited to the British crown, that he had orders to remove them in vessels to distant colonies, and they must remain in custody till their embarkation.

The poem is descriptive of the fate of some of the persons involved in these calamitous proceedings.

This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

EVANGELINE.

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean. 5

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

This is the forest primeval ; but where are the hearts that beneath it

Leaped like the roe, when he hears in the woodland the voice of the huntsman ?

Where is the thatch-roofed village, the home of Acadian farmers, —

Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, 10

Darkened by shadows of earth, but reflecting an image of heaven ?

Waste are those pleasant farms, and the farmers forever departed !

Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October

Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o’er the ocean.

Naught but tradition remains of the beautiful village of Grand- Pre. 15

Ye who believe in affection that hopes, and endures, and is patient,

Ye who believe in the beauty and strength of woman’s devotion,

List to the mournful tradition still sung by the pines of the forest ;

List to a Tale of Love in Acadie, home of the happy.

EVANGELINE.

I

In the Acadian land, on the shores of the Basin of Minas, 20

Distant, secluded, still, the little village of Grand-Pre

Lay in the fruitful valley. Vast meadows stretched to the eastward,

Giving the village its name, and pasture to flocks without number.

Dikes, that the hands of the farmers had raised with labor incessant,

Shut out the turbulent tides ; but at stated seasons the flood-gates 25

Opened, and welcomed the sea to wander at will o’er the meadows.

West and south there were fields of flax, and orchards and cornfields

Spreading afar and unfenced o’er the plain ; and away to the northward

Blomidon rose, and the forests old, and aloft on the mountains

Sea-fogs pitched their tents, and mists from the mighty Atlantic 30

Looked on the happy valley, but ne’er from their station descended.

There, in the midst of its farms, reposed the Acadian village.