"THE FORD OF POETRY."

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19180, 10 December 1927, Page 13

"THE FORD OF POETRY."

Matthew Arnold was once chided for the freedom he was accustomed to take with sacred themes. "Bantering the Trinity," he was told, was "not n recognised English pastime." Something short of his offence seems to have taken possession of our modern critics and biographers. They send every idol of the nineteenth eentury crashing down, and dance like Indians around the remains. Longfellow could not escape being one of the victims, and as his poetry was, at one time, read as much in England as iu America, it is natural that the chorus was joined over there. Mr Leonard Wolfe, literary editor of the London "Xation," has gone Mr Herbert Gorman, Longfellow's latest American biographer, one better in challenging the "Nation's" readers to unearth from Longfellow's verse a single line of poetry. The challenge is taken up by the editor of the "Sunday Express" (London), Mr James Douglas—who quotes the first stanza of Longfellow's "Divina Commedia," naming it "undoubtedly and unquestionably poetry," and defying Mr Leonard Wolfe to prove the contrary. Here it is as Mr Douglas submits it for judgment: IS THIS POETRY.' Oft have I seen at some cathtdriil door A labourer, pausing in the dust and heat, Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet Enter, and cro9s himself, nnd on the floor Kneel to repeat his paternostfir o'er; Far off the noises of the world retreat, The load vociferations of the street Become an undistingnishable roar. So, B3 I enter here irom day to clay, And leave my burden at this ruinater gute, Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away, Whilo the eternal ages watch and wait."

Mr Douglas's defence of Longfellow, appearing in the "Daily Express," may seem a little condescending unless there is alleviation in tho epithet he uses to link the poet with one whom the masses of two continents look upon as the greatest man of the modern world — Henry Ford. "The truth is that Longfellow wroto simple verses for simple people. He never wrote a line for the expert, for the critic, or for the connoisseur. Ho lacked the magic of the consummate artist. He was not a poet's poet." In what follows this it would seem that the name of Wordsworth might slip out naturally, but that is hitting nearer home: "All great poets have written yards of hopelessly bad verse, because all poets write too much and burn too little. The pedants and the parasites preserve and publish their worst work together with their best. It is not surprising that the masses of counterfeit coin drive the good coin out of circulation. The ordinary reader shirks the drudgery of sifting and separating the gold from the lead, the Bilyer from the nickel.

"I think this is the explanation of the reluctance of many indolent readers to toil through the great poets. They dread the dreariness of their vast unvitalised deserts and wildernesses. They shudder at the boredom of waste places and barren heaths. In their nausea they turn to anthologies and selections. They browse on purple patches. They toy with jewels five words long. "For my part I hate anthologies and anthologists. They remind me of museums and mummies and their curators. I like to dig out my own nuggets and wash out my old gold dußt, for I enjoy the sting of the unexpected, the stab of the unforeseen. "But most of us aro born with a thoroughly bad taste for bad poetry, an,d we seldom take tho trouble to acquire a good taste for good poetry. Qur imagination remains undeveloped by adventure and experiment. We are incapable of enjoying what the poets call pure poetry, of which there is very little in literature.

"Longfellow moved tho heart of the common people, and they read him gladly because Ihey understood his simple common tales and songs. His tasto was terrible, but so is theirs. His moralisings were pathetic, hut so aro theirs. We may laugh and jeer at 'Excelsior' and 'Tho Psalm of Life,' 'Evangeline,' and 'Hiawatha,' but that is because our taste has been educated and his stylo is out-moded. Wo forget that he wrote for a primitive ago that loved tho didactic, the rhetorical, and the pseudopicturesque. «

"There arc still millions of simple souls who are not beyond the uaive stage reached by Longfellow. In our jargon we call them lowbrows. But tlie real defence of Longfellow is that he provided lowbrow poetry for tho multitude of lowbrows. Ho was the common poet of the common people, whose cars cannot catch the higher harmonies. He thought as they think. He felt as they feel. He was tho Ford of Poetry." There we have it, and the parallel may be all the apter after Mr Ford's new model appears, for then wo shall have something to match tho opening lines of the "Diyina Commedia." If any lowbrow wishes to rage and tear up some of the volumes of modern verse, let him read on: <

"Let us not despise the primers of poetry. They may lead tho people into the Promised Land by way of the wilderness. I believe that every lover of poetry goes through a period of evolution in taste. It is a long way from Longfellow to the great poets, but it is at least a way. In his verse there is a weak dilution of poetry, but even diluted pootry is good for poetic babes. "There may be no pure and absolute poetry in such lines as

The air is fall of farewells lo the dying And mournings for the dead.

"But such passages may create a palate for sublimer and loftier music. The lover of Longfellow may progress, ripen, and mature. He is not past praying for. "The truth is that poetry iu our time tends to become the property of a priesthood, the monopoly of a hierarchy, the guarded secret of a sect. It loses itself in metaphysics. It becomes esoteric. Its language is unintelligible. It is a cult, not a living river. "There is a gulf between the poets and the people. Hence the haughty derision heaped upon Longfellow by our Intelligentsia. He is beneath their subtlety, although his simple rimes once ran like wildfiro through the minds of the masses.

"I submit that the tenth-rate poets are useful as sign-posts, on the poetic highway. They point the way to the pilgrims. The lover of Longfellow may hew his way to the high bards who sing the high songs. An attempt to murder Longfellow is like an attempt to murder the alphabet."