THE POET AND NEW KNOWLEDGE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1455, 1 June 1912, Page 9

THE POET AND NEW KNOWLEDGE.

Mr. AYillinm 'Watson, the poet, has a vigorous defences of poetry and a hifjli appreciation of- the poet's task in the "Century JUagazine." "Although in America an interest in literature, and in what has from ancient times been generally regarded as the highest department of literature, is much more widely'difl'iised than in Great-Bri-tain, the fact, I fear," he says, "remains, that an increasingly large number of persons in ■ nil English-speaking lauds . are acquiescing in a scheme of life which excludes poetry altogether—a scheme of life in which, the poet has no place at all. ' , , . "This is a 'state, of things obviously bad for the poet, ami I,'for one, hold' the opinion that it is not altogether good for his feU'ow-men. It is,' at any rate, a state of things which, as,a phenomenon of our time, deserves attention and study. . "Hetweeu poetry and science I can perccivo : no-antagonism .whatever. Nor. do J- believe it possible for any true .poetic greatness to co-exist-with an attiludo of hostility toward' the advancement of knowledge. If I hear of a poet who, whether under theological or other influences, had cut himself off from the great avenues of enlightenment—who, for instance, allowed himself to live in ignorance of (he results of modern biological research as they ' a/lect the supremely interesting question of man's origin im this planet—t should say: 'This is a poet, insufficiently interested in man and in life; a poet out of relation to man, out of relation to his time, and perhaps to any time'; and I cannot believe that such a poet could have anything, really pertinent to say to his generation. "The pool whfl is really a poet, however deeply bo mav strike root in Hip. past, emphatically lives and moves and has his nein-S in the present. There is nothiii" of the mustinc.-s of antiquity about, him. He is, and-he ought to be, the latest and freshest flower of lime. And tho need for him is never so great as in an asr exceptionally fnutiul in scieutilic discovery. " "For the more we "know of the plan and workings of this cosmos, especially in its astronomical relations, the more does it wear the appearance of a scrupulously and soiillcssly accurate machine; the more does it sewn a merely ingenious contrivance, a ninsiiifiention, on an inlinite scale, of a desisni not inconceivably bi'vond the powers of a prodigious human engineer;.the-more does it seem.a piece of illimitable, fantastic clockwork, rather terrifying in its adamantine regularity, and thn greater becomes our lipcd of that particular order of ininil which never quite loses its consciousness "f die soul b'hihd tho apparently mechanical springs; which carps about the springs mainly in so far as they seem to give, ovielo'ico of a soui; and which translates into rhythm and melody the iron rouliue ol the 'iiiiiuM-se. "Tho indifference of Hie reading public lo eontPMipnriirv poetry is, in my I,cliff, partly due lo ilu- vagaries and perversities of a kind >'F critic who is not so much an t-xposilnr anil inloriiri'tpr of literature as a. rather officious iiilcrloper beU-eeu writers and readers. ' "N it surprising that the great serious-clear-hcadod, and simple-minded public, who can enjoy Sliakesiioarp and the I'lble, iuinsino that contemporary poetry has nothimr to give them which can in r.ny way illustrate or clarify lifo— nothing which in any wav fays to them an intimate and helpful word. "I him more and more convinced that there exist* a largo though scattered lmdy of cuU-iyated, intclligpiit, serious, but silent, lovers of line literature who ai-c riuilo unswavrd. quilc untouched hv-llip literary fashions of (ho hour; ouile indill'eri'iit tn the critical.catchwords which lire so often made to do dutv in phitp of the laws and priiiciplns of taste and ""Tl'iß true ruiHion of Hie poet i- lo keep frp.-li within us nur often llnvcin? sense of the greatness and grandeur of jifp—a sense without which no man ever did anything great or grand,"