POETRY AND ASCETICISM.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 775, 26 March 1910, Page 9

POETRY AND ASCETICISM.

Not much fault can be found with the statement niado by a writer in a London paper recently, that "Wordsworth is perhaps the only English poet who preferred and lived, of freo choice, tho simple country life"—intellectually, that is, as well as rosidentially. And even to Wordsworth, as to Cowper and Tennyson, tho rustic cottage Window was mainly a loophole of retreat from which to gaze upon the world, tho difference in Wordsworth's caso being that ho occasionally turned his whole mind directly upon tho affairs of his fellowcottagers, and viewed the world in tho microcosm' of a Cumbrian dale. But even Wordsworth, though there was much of tho peasant, in him, did not live tho sort of simple lifo that circumstances forced upon .. Burns and Clare. His economic roots were not in the soil, but in the county exchequer; in the strictest of possible senses, he was no more a peasant than the retired merchant or Civil Service official who devotes tho evening of his days to amateur farming or gardening. Had ho been a labourer, like. Clare, or a harassed and needy farmer, like Burns, it; is', next to certain that his poetical legacy to 'posterity would have lacked everything that makes it worth preserving. The-worries and fatigues of agriculture do not allow of those Jong periods of; inteuso sclf-absorptioh ■ that are necessary to. a genius like Wordsworth's. The miraclo of Burns was that he should have been able to detach himself at will from his own economic function and environment, and mako poetic material of an .occupation> that has almost invariably extinguished the seeds of poetry. It is not in the first generation of smallholders that we can look with, any confidence for another Burns. Many farmers' sons have been poets, but Burns is the only poet farmer.

_ Even as an exponent of tho simplo life in the ordinary sense, Wordsworth is practically unique among men of highly poetical imagination. And this is scarcely- to bo wondered at.. Sensuonsness and curiosity are among;the chief elements'of poetry, and, these cannot bo ■ gratified unless the poet:-is closely in touch witli the'great centres of civilisation. Nature, of course, is a perpetual fountain of rich sweets, but tho taste which roves and discriminates among them will demand a corresponding , beauty and harmony in housekeeping; The nostrils that quiver to the spicy , breeze that scents tho evening gale'are not likely to curl contemptuously at the spicy odours of the dinner table, and the flavour of wild strawberries only whets tho. palate for the' flavour, of. Jamaica.pineapples,.' The crystal .spring is good, if ;the; poet "be in a concatenation accordingly"—that is, if ho is thirsty and can get nothing ■better—but a doublo inspiration lies in tho "beaker full of tho.warm.south," unless the poet eschews vintages-with "beaded bubbles:winking at the brim," and takes Mr.. Hilaire Belloc's advice to confine . himself to pre-Reformation beverages. .'lt is easy for our friend tho "average man,", who, if he reads poetry at all, does so only under tho most, comfortable circumstances, to say that, the poet should bo_ content with the pleasures of, the imagination—as he has often had to.be. Poets think, differently. _Tkey know that the prolific flowcr.'of joy,, which is art,'.'must have its.Toptsin a healthy. sensupusn'ess,:ahd if tho.- : mental i floreation- •'; is • unduly forced or prolonged, tho sudden return ;of-. tho 'sap is'very .apt" to 'result, in an, insane.' sensuality,- .as in - the case of' -Marlowe, Byron, or iTu'rher.'.-: . Even ,'Tboreau, was, so to speak,'a':iittk> less than thorough in his.exposition,of tho simplo'life. Walden Pond had to giv'o itself to the grow stagnant; (and.so had the hermit of Walden. If pio did, not drown himself in.an ocean ''of excess,' it was because .• ho, 'was an American and a valetudinarian. And 'even 'as an experimenter in simplicity,; ?he has found no imitators:,on 1113 own .intellectual plane. . -We , ; havo had poets jand publicists who have made, a virtue of their gastronomic eccentricities or digestive exigencies, and sneered at.the ginger they did not care or dare, to heat .their mouths: with. But to do this at tho world's'.car is hardly, to live the simple' life. And it is not uncharitable, but only human, to sup■;pose that.these would-be Spartans .have .experienced some physical gratification, •in "birlin'.',' at beakers of cocoa or grape-juice, or "rioting over a turnip." —"The Standard." ''