A DAILY MESSAGE

Hokitika Guardian, 7 February 1929, Page 1

A DAILY MESSAGE

JUST HUMAN! Why do some hooks live while superior literary efforts die? Why do some songs thrill us while superior music leaves us cold? The hooks that live, that grip and hold the world, are hooks that were written in a heart before they came pouring through a pen. The songs that thrill were played upon the gamut of human emotion before they came bursting through an understanding heart in song. When a lonely soul calls, when a broken heart throbs through a song, it will thrill all those who have known loneliness—all those who have felt the poignancy of pain. Hie proudest song written from the intellect will leave us cold and mute: and so it is with a book. A hook will live only if the author lias lived the hook. A song will thrill only if the singer has lived the song. Mho has not 'felt the exquisite anguish behind the simple words of “Home, Sweet Home?” Hut those simple words were the throbs of a breaking heart. When Payne went hack to sec his old home, and sat friendless and alone in a great city, watching the crowds stream by, the genius of sorrow touched his soul, and in that moment lie wrote “ Home. Sweet Home, he it ever so humble there's no place like home.” It is not t'ne words of “ Home. Sweet Home ” that thrill the world ; it is the exquisite agony o*l Payne’s heart, finding an echo in the hearts of other men, who look hack across “the years that the locust hath eaten.” and know that “ he it ever so humble ” there is no place like the home of their youth. Every hook that lives, every song that thrills, every poem that inspires, ivas first written in a heart. Never a great picture painted, Never a great poem sung. But the soul of the artist fainted And the poet’s heart was wrung. —M. PItESTON STANLEY.