THE VALUE OF POETRY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 19 November 1927, Page 9

THE VALUE OF POETRY

Mr. Sydney Walton, in a speech reported in the “Oxford Chronicle,” said some very fine things. “We must minister beauty to the people,” he said, “and to do that we must steep our souls in the poets.”

And surely oar age is not so desperately utilitarian that we cannot appreciate the value of a ministry of beauty. True, there may exist, here and there, poring over the ledgers of business, some whose thoughts continually pursue the beaten track (like a locomotive on its rails) along the parallel lines of money-columns. And yet, back of all such pre-occupation with the actual and the tangible, is that “hunger of the heart that plenty never cures”; that desire for the little more that means so much for real life worthy of the name; and that voiceless longing to view life, not as a mere jostling and scrabbling after material gains, but as “a dome of many-coloured glass” that “stains the white radiance of eternity.” “ Great poets,” continued the speaker, “need great audiences too. The poets Still quicken our imagination, give us (>oise and balance in our daily work, bringing in the invisible and redressing the balance when the visible, tangible responsibility of the day tends to depress. We shall thereby keep alive the sense of wonder which is the very portal of knowledge and understanding. “They will keep us permanently aware of great truths; they will witness to us that . . . King and commoner are united in the commonwealth of song, and finally they will teach us the great lesson confirmed in history, that nothing great is achieved even in practical affairs without a dream and a

song.” Yes. “Give me the making of a people’s songs and I care not who makes their laws.” Soldiers singing on the road to battle; sailors lilting seachanties as they haul upon the rope; the old wife humming about her household tasks; these, and countless others that might be reco'ied, are proofs -that practical endeavour and song are kin. The more deeply you appreciate the Cleaning of your own work (whatever it be) for the world, the more keenly is your ear attuned to the music by which it marches in its advance. Take the poetry out of life, and you destroy it » ♦ * ♦ MARGOT AGAIN The vivacious and daring Countess of Oxford and Asquith has bobbed up again with one of her inimitably outspoken volumes, which she calls “Lay sermons.” Ordinary five-eighths folks like you or me would never get away with such airy persiflage in which she so glibly costigates the great ones of the earth. Any subject under the sun comes as grist to her mill, be it the shrewd and merciless analysis of the foibles of popular politicians or the rival claims of various makes of neck-tie. Winston Churchill “is so short-sighted , . . that he fairly devours himself." Lloyd George, she informs us, is far more deeply in love with a crowd than ever he is with himself; and she describes him further as enduring the ordinary society of bis fellows or the ordeal of posing for the “movies,” with the same stoical air of detached sainthood. Earl Grey, she says, loves birds, trees and squirrels, but with characteristic dating adds he loves them more than people. She does, however, admit his boyish sense of humour. Those who have read the biography of Walter H. Page, the late American Ambassador to Britain, will recall the wonderful friendship that sprang up between himself and Lord Grey during the tragic years of war, and doubtless will be prepared to believe rather in his description of his friend than in the flippancies and brilliances of even a Margaret Tennent. She thinks that with certain modifications, Austen Chamberlain may be said to be all right. He is more loyal to his friends than to his convictions, and holds himself too closely to his own ideas, she says; which seems to me to indicate that for once the brilliant Margot is guilty of self-contradiction. For can both statements be true of the same person, in the same sense, at the same time? 1 Lord Reading “has a warm corner for himself and no corners for other people.” The Cecil family “have subconsciously massaged away some of the more active muscles of their conscience.” Lord Birkenhead “has remarkable brains that oft go to his head, with the consequence that he hears confused and chaotic sounds.” Ramsay MacDonald is watchful and defensive of himself, Baldwin perplexed but undismayed, going on the even tenor fo his way (not that Margot would be guilty of such a trite phrase!) and having an enjoyable time. Her husband is the man to go to for advice. “He knows the world,” she says. Lord Curson forgot the power of love. Lord Northcliffe, by “misplaced confidence in himself,” missed being great. And then, nothing daunted, a propos of marriage as against free love, she thinks of a really smart one and writes, “If a man is a bachelor, he will live in constant dread that pressure from his mistress will make an honest man of him.” Of course, the lady who rode up the front steps of her house and into the hall on horseback can write in a similar spirit. And in spite of it all, we like her stilL Wasn’t it old Socrates who described himself as the “gad-fly to the state”—conceiving it as his purpose to keep jogging and pricking the bodypolitic lest it should sink into sloth or . slumber?—And wasn’t it “Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," who declared that “ A reasonable amount of fleas is good for a dog. They keep 'im from forgetting that he is a dog.” Margot is doing a good work upon ns, even rlth-ngh it be at th ev--r--of an itrb g irritation on •• many of the objects of c diatribe*,, 1