WORDS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19472, 6 May 1925, Page 13

WORDS.

THE WONDERS OF VOCAB'J LARY. Words are magical things. They form the shrine of immortal thoughts, and become the kaleidoscope of perfect prose. Forming the basis of language, they are as bricks to the pedant and precious jewels to the poet. They give form to expression, and clothe* in dazzling dress the dreams of the singer. Giving substance to the imagination, they provide escape from the four walls of our earthly prison and make the impossible come true. Words fashion the child's fairyland and stock the orator's armoury. They people the nebulous unknown with phantoms: they call down the stars for the scientist and lay bare life's secrets in the laboratory. Words transmit the visions of Isaiah, and fix the fantasies of Dante. All power, energy and beauty reside in words. They hold the secrets of the centuries. Children understand the wonder of words. They play with a new word as with a. new toy; mouthing it deliciously and repeating it, and using it in strange incongruous ways. Such is their delight in words that children frequently become nenlogisti. coining and inventing quec new words of their .own. As the child's vocabulary increases, so he learns the subtle charm of rhyme and the seductiveness of rhythm. " With these he possesses the key to a new world, and hi* l mind patters along the paih to Fairy-land-—a world as ephemeral and as beautiful as a soap bubble in sunlight. Words help him to visualise the comedy of Little Jack Horner and the tragedy of Little Miss Muffet. Words give merriment' to Old King Cole. They toll the requiem of Cock Robin and bring real tears to the ©yes of infant mourners who stand by the bird's small grave. Words convey the sense of reality. They light the child's mind with wonder. They supply fabulous dresses for the King's fair daughter, mermaids to adorn the green sea and rings for the fingers and bells for the toes of the lady who rodo the white horse. And when nursery rhymes have gone the way of the comforter and the cradle, words —bigger words—still captivate the mind of the growing child, leading him to the marvellous universe of Hans Andersen and The Arabian Nights, where words give shape and colour tc the indefinable, and show him the world transfigured. The poet, like the child, has through words an entrance into Fairyland. He knows words as the lapidary knows stones. He fondles them and bends them and shapes them to his desire. He quarries for them and combines them. By their aid he is able to n Me among thestars, hear the sighs of the weary Atlas or inspect the contents of Pandora's Box. With words he makes harmonies which haunt the ages, and word symphonies which ravish the attuned ear. He can raise again "the topless towers of Ilium" in poetry, or, like Jeremy Taylor, he can build "cathedrals in prose to the greater glory of God." For poetry, after all, is a sublimation of repressed emotion set to music for an orchestra of words. Its intellectual content is often incredibly small, so small that more than half our poetry is purile. Nine-tenths of the poetry written at the present day is devoid of any great idea. It could not be translated into reasonable prose. It makes its appeal solely through its music, not by reason of its logic. It is the sweet burble which charms. It is the ring and chant of skilful vowel-play ithat bewitches the ear; the evocation of fascinating falsehoods which seduce reason, and, like pleasant opiates, put _ care to sleep and drowse to keen despair. In poetry each word has its tone and every cadence its form, no less captivating to the poet than colour to the painter; phrases combine in spontaneous harmony, each line opening new vistas of sensation, widening the horizon of the mind, making the dumb longings speak, and lightening the frail heart's importunities. The appreciation of poetry thus comes from the admiration of cunning craftsmanship, the deep-seated and instinctive delight in rhythm and the echoing sweetness of rhyme. The finest poetry is essentially useless, yet infinitely j precious; for it owes its supreme power ' to the captivating clang-tint of words. Words intoxicated Francis Thompson; ho gathered them as nirates used to gather golden spoil. Keats wooed his words with rapture. So did Catullus. She/kespeare, a born alchemist in words, transmuted all things into music. Miiton played upon an immense vocabulary like an organist in a, cathedral. Swinburne made his poetry a. pageant of "orgiac imageries." Beaudelaire blended his words into captivating harmonies. Villon's Ballades have' lines which smite the mind like forked lightning and felicities of phrase, which have lingered on lips for centuries. Poe, in his few crystalline fragments, achieved a piu-e bell-like music, far transcending the technically flawless insipidity of the greater part of Tennyson's poetry. Dryden barbed his satiric darts with words which cut to the quick. Sappho used her vocabulary as a lyre to play upon. And Blake called down the music of the spheres. Words have colour and character of their own. They are like people at a fair, in bright costumes, dancing and singing, fiddling, fighting, and fidgeting with one another continually. There are dull, plodding words; words that walk with downcast heads and sombre steps like Puritans going to church. There are leering words which have the fixed smile—the risus sardonicus—of a corpse. Some words go slobbering in lust. There are bloodcurdling words, and words which express the' treachery of Judas. There are big, fat-bellied, Rabelaisian words, that hold their sides with laughter—quick, electric, lightning-like words. Words that ache, and burn with desire. Words that bring tears to the eyes; grief-laden words, mournful as the timeless waves, lapping on a solitary shore. Some words stand naked and unashamed, alluring in innocence. Some sing paeans in praise of their own beauty, while their sisters gather round themselves the grey cloak of modesty. Other words dance and skip —tango-mad.. Trig,little words trot about daintily in smart figures of speech. There are adjectives which, conjure up the corruption of Soddom, and epithets which embalm the divine beauty of Helen. There are words as lovely as the breasts of Phryne. And as long as men understand and know the rich majesty and the power of words, so long only will the art of writing remain "alive and pliant" in their hands. Ruskin once urged his readers to become "learned in the peerage of words" ; but the majority still remains deaf to their music. Carlyle may scourge with an instrument of discontent; Shelley may sing with faultless voice and Swinburne seduce with sensuous balderdash ; they are for the few. While the generality of men go toiling and blackening the sky with,smoke in pursuit of gold, and Progress, with meretricious swagger, is going to and fro upon the earth, the artificer in words .makes new habitations for the spirit and gives tongue to his subconscious yearnings, working miracles on the harp strings of expression. Without words, imagination is darkened, desire is dumb, and life becomes a mutilated thing. For how can one give utterance to t.'ie desires of the heart in the vocabulary oi a commercial traveller selling boot buttons? How can one voice the sad accents of a soul's agony, when the loved one's pitcher is broken at the fountain, if one Knows only the speech of speilers; or communicate one's visions in the jargon of the publican? What imagination can reveal in the duck puddle of vulgar speech? Without words, the soul beats its "luminous wings" against the bars of the inarticulate. Words supply the untold longing, the trngno^sed want; They satisfy the sharp urge lor expression.