THE SPURIOUS MUSE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1527, 24 August 1912, Page 9

THE SPURIOUS MUSE.

When,- long ago, the dwellers on the iugli Olympian Mount dominated the .world, anu tho inspiring goddesses of song were born to Zeus and Mnemosyne so beautiful and enchanting were they that irom the plains below others were found to imitate them, to chant in unmelodious voices the praise of 'sun and moon, of earth and heaven; and the worst of it is-that these spurious Muses proved to be as immortal as their ehining exemplars, and far more presumptuous. Thus, lust as Euterpe rfill weeps over the misdeeds of-her base and unscrupulous Bister as exhibited in the poor lifeless strains of the modern "music" pall, so must Calliope ■. and Erato ofttimes sob in united lamentations by rea,BQn.oi the things that are done in their eacred names; and it is no wonder that they_take their flight back to a lovelier, more congenial land despite tho most Sons WOOIDS ' m ° St perdisteat invoca - Few things are more pathetic, confining our ] view for the moment to the world of literary matters, than the attempt' of the utterly prosaic soul to express itself in poetry; tho blind mad-Valkiug a crowded street pursues a strai-hter ccurseand we are bound to say that tho pathos It ver yfoi l 'ently due to the fact that «£ e f P ? It* l vidontI y not taken the slightest trouble to ascertain what JJbetry is. Any lyric,- for him, is a sonner j nny assonance, however remote is rhyme; any column of rhymeless lines of about the samo length makes "blank verso ; any number of syllables in a' line will do. It has never ocourred to. , him to look up the word "sonnet" in a dictionary, or to examine .uny well-known poem in tho endeavour Ho-find out the hidden rules that went to its construction. His themes, too, are limited bv no sense of timidity or . rcverenco; he sings in broken accents of the lark of immortal love, of war and- death and a lire in tno next street with the utmost impartiality, unconscious of the illustrious dead, or of any impot«r.co in his pen. Ho possesses in a remarkable degree the courage of his convictions; a dozen timea a week we read his effusions, a dozen times a week wo post them back to him or carefully deposit them in a vory large drawer especially reserved for stampless efforts. But often, in truth, they reach the dignity of print. Only a lew days ago we camo across a volume of one hundred and forty-seven "eonnetsf printed on tho other side of the world, of which this is tho sixty-seventh: The sonnet , s tho thing tn you I declare To vehicle verse in musical air, To bioadon the stave, mako octaves count ton, "When issues from brain sweet sounds through my r>en. If you are my rouse, then music to you Through translucid air in airs which ' are true. My heart it must sing or elso it will " break t' I'll sing;to thee, love, so lovingly tako My paeons of song for love's own sweet ' - sake.'" It would be easy to comment wnggishly sl>n this;' but what is tho state cf mind

of a man who can produco over a hundred such stanzas, many of them fur worse than this, imagining that they aro nootrv of tho most notablo description? What has he read, that he should conio to this, and what vaguo phantasmagoria of unapprehcmled beauty floats bcioro his eyes? *> Hy should he, and thousands like him, rush to tho pen immediately the need for expression overcomes them; why strive to write a poem rather than to paint ;i picture or to compose- a symphony? The lact is. that the materials for Iho written ward aro to hand at almost any awl tho average unlearned man—clever fellow though he my be in other than literary matters—somehow holds Hie opinion that although the artist oud tho musician have to pass through k-ng oml severe, periods of training before theit ivories are of a worthy quality, anyono who can hold a pen and concoct a decent letter <s fully equipped for Parnassus by the road of poesy. Bid him devote a spare fortnight to tho composition of a chant royal or'α-sestina; bid him pack his too bulky miiso into sorno definite form, where sha may at least be a shapely dummy, whether she have the breath of life or not, and' he would gaze at you jn astonishment. Explain to him that it will bo better for him (and incidentally for other people) to tear up everything ho .writes for the space of a couple of years or so, and ho would smile scorn.fully, imagining possibly that you wero envious of his achievement. Ho deflowers tho lyric, mauls the sonnet, with a light heart, never having known their secret or perceived their beauty. Hardly ever does tho "poet" who has thus been taken captive by the Spurious Jluse reform, or rather escape; and here .we must explain that no reference is made in this article to the glorious company of minor poets, praiseworthy students and workers many of them, whese efforts often reach tho appeal ol print in various journals and magazines. It is the hopelessly inglorious ones, ever scribbling vainly and illiterately, without ferrn and void, whom we-have in mind just how; those who Can write such ftarsomu linos, for instance, as these: Bacchus is tho God of Wine, Antony much wine doth love: Mars tho God of War above, Thinketh Antony a soldier fine;. Minerva for Antony gives no sign. Venus with Cupid doth compact That Antony see Helen that 1-ad Troy sacked. These seven lines constitute the "octave" of something, which is entitled a. "Sonnet," and which, to ikeep up the originality, has seven iines'also in the "sestet." Here is a man who Mias evidently read one of tho world's great stories, who has some slight acquaintance with mythology, and yet produces an. effect which is simply terrible. Again, let us look at the closing stanza of a "lyric" in' praise of looks.— Such.sweet companionship I'll, find, In books for company, While loneliness within my heart They'll not allow to be; Unless they bring a longing for The joys of which they tell, And then life's cup may not seem filled, Which does not seem so well. There is no doubt at all as to the genuine feeling here; tho tragedy only happened when the author came within reach of pen and ink. The measure is tho ordinary, "common metre" of the hymn-books—the measure of "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night," of the immortal "St. Agnes' Eve":— Deep on the convent-roof ■ the snows ' Arc sparkling, to the moon: My breath to heaven like vapour goes: May my soul follow soon. . . . Make thou iny spirit pure and clear As are tho frosty skies, ; Or this first snowdrop of the year That in my bosom lies. Yet what leagues of thought, what uncrossed oceans, separate the two!Much is accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that no critics are at hand to warn the immature rhymster of the error of his ways. Most of his friends have stood round him in open-mouthed astonishment while he reads or exhibits his latest production, staggered at such;evidence of ' genius in unexpected quarters; and when they have recovered their brcathj* havo extolled him to tho uttermost extent of a limited vocabulary until he hears tho wavelets of the sea of fame already lapping round his feet. They have gurgled, "It's lovely!"—which is not true;' they havo said, "It's simply wonderful how you can do- it!"—which is strictly, true, though not in tho sense in which the words aro spoken. But in no way are such expressions of opinion judgments or criticisms of the remotest value. Nor does the broken-winged flutterer gain any knowledge when, as frequently happens (alas, how well we know it!.), he submits his efforts to tho chilly editorial glance; for editors havo no time to criticiso rejected manuscripts. Thus he goes on writing, his friends go on admiring, and occasionally the "poems" are printed—at his own expense. There is no remedy for this; for human nature, strongly moved, is bound to' express itself somehow. The blame must be laid upon thoso exquisite goddesses of \ song whoso "beauty first tempted others to don the mask and essay the same glorious deeds. But if, reproaching the immortal Spurious Muso for her hapless, prosaic ways, wo 'discover in her some faint glimmer of the true poetic flume, it.is matter for a notable thanksgiving.—Wilfrid L. Bandell, in the "Academy/ ,