NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 5, 4 February 1925, Page 34

NOTES

Purity in Poetry jfc English poetry is as a rule pure enough P to be read by all. At any rate it is true m to English poetry is as a the best, and that to be read by all. At any rate it is true to say that the pure is the best, and that P he who shuns what is tinged with obscenity K does not miss much from a literary point of " view. Shakspere sinned in few instances owing to the greater coarseness of expression in his day. Byron was objectionable here and there. A few moderns who will not be heard of in ten years are neither fit to be read nor worth reading. Among the eld dramatists of the past there were notorious offenders, such as the “literary skunk” Wycherly. But apart from such cases, which grow as the thistle grows in the corn the tone of English poetry is traditionally lofty, pure, and moral. There should he no nerd to warn our readers against either poetry or prose which could bring a blush to the pu.est brow. Unfortunately we cannot' say as much for modern prose as we have said for poetry. There are too many Novels in circulation---written often by neurotic women or by mannikins like George Moore— which have no earthly excuse for existence and which nobody should read. Let Elinor Glyn, Victoria Cross, and id otnne genus be anathema maianatha. Onr Church prohibits us from renting obscene books, and that should be enough .for ns. Girls ought to recall what Dr. Johnson said to a lady who mentioned that she had read an old novel: “Madam, you should be ashamed to toll it.” One who knew the corruption of the human heart from sad experience in pagan Rome uttered the warning—tcnr.ro. nr tan ye par I on ! (.allimach urn fugitn. Aon cs t inimieus ■Amori : ht cum (j alii inn rho tu quoqur, ('etc, notes. Me errte Sappho mdiorem fecit ami me, A Tec riyidaos mores Tcia Musa dedif . Carmina quis potuit into lejisse Tihvlii, Vel tua, cuius opus Cynthia sola fuit?

Verses About Poets Mr. Birrell closed his study of the alleged obscurity of Browning with a few apt lines descriptive ol that poet’s work. In him we can Discern Infinite passion and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn. / Of Arnold he quotes

Whence that completed form of all completeness ? ) Whence came that high perfection of all sweetness ? A «d of the spell of Rossetti’s “luscious lines” he cites— In sundry moods tis pastime to be bound. Matthew Arnold’s lines on three great poets are well known and very true—

Time may restore us in its course Byron’s wild power or Goethe’s force, But when shall Europe’s later hour Again see Wordsworth’s healing power? And Dryden’s stanza is almost hackneyed by frequent quotation— Three poets in three distant ages born Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. The first in loftiness of thought surpassed; The next in majesty; in both the last. The force of nature could no further go; To make a third she join’d the former two. Needless to remark it is a very English estimate of the three, and naturally very kind to Milton, lust and least of the trinity. Nowadays he is an unhonored prophet in his own country, and lew read him at all, which is a pity. The Wogans At first sight one might be inclined to wonder that c A\ogau”, is an Irish name. But if yon consult a dictionary you will find Hint it is only the Sassenach form of d:agan,” about which there is no doubt. A recent number of the .hu-ohiir—n brave little paper which still keeps green the memory of all the far-off things and battles long ago connected with the Stuart cause, referred To the fidelity and honor with which the Wogans served the “rightful King’’ in bygone years. And. indeed, the names of Charles an( i_ Janies Wogan stand put like stars against the dark background of history; and never were there braver champions of any lost cause titan those two Irish soldiers. There is a novel by A. K. W. Mason—if is called Clementina— and if yon read it von w ill find in a line, stirring story an account of the marvellous exploits of Charles AVogan. who rescued the Princess Clementina Sohieski from Innsbruck and brought her safelv, amid hair-breadth escapes, into Italy to be married to James Stuart. The story tells ns that Wogan’s heart was lost to the Princess whom he saved, but that he honorably and .faithfully kept his trust ami for better or worse in the domestic chapel of Cardinal Oi'iga, Charles, as proxy to I lie King, married Clementina not as her own man hut as the King’s. Shi', too, (lie story goes, was by no means indifferent to flic gallant soldier who had brought her into Italy. And as they stood face to face in (lie chapel on that far away morning there was enacted a, marriage that was a tragedy for lie bride as well as lor the bridegroom’s proxy: “bi a word there was no ruffle of the great passion which these two, man and woman, had trodden beneath their feet. She did not hint of Iphigenia and he borrowed no plumes from Don Quixote. Nor need one fancy that their contentment was all counterfeit. They were neither of them grumblers, and ‘ fate’ and ‘destiny ’ were words seldom on their lips.”

In another of Mason’s novels— Parson Kelly, in which he collaborated with Andrew Lang— will find more of the Wogan family. The book seems to have dropped out of sale of late years, but it is worth a hundred of the novels that are thrust on buyers to-day. Of the end of Charles’s life ’ Mason writes in the epilogue to Clementina : “At La Mancha he lived for many years, writing a deal of Latin verse, and corresponding with many distinguished men in England upon matters of the intellect. Mattel's of the heart he left alone, and meddled with no more. Nor did any woman ever ride his black horse into his city of dreams. He lived and died a bachelor. The memory of that week when he had rescued his Princess and carried her through the snows was to the last too vivid in his thoughts. The thunderous roll of the carriage down the slopes, the sparks striking from the wheels, the sound of Clementina’s voice singing softly in the darkness of the carriage, the walk under the stars to Ala, the coming of the dawn about that lonely hut perched high-placed among the pines these recollections, one may think, bore him company through many a solitary evening. Somehow the world had gone away. Clementina had gone into her convent. . . .James was fallen upon a. deeper melancholy and diminished hopes, lie, himself, was an exile alone in iiis white patio in Spain. . .” And so, with his dreams and with his 'scholarly’leisure, this brave Irish soldier of fortune went slowly down the western slope of his days, with two great human loves to light his memory of the downgone days; a, great love for a beautiful woman and a greater love for honor. All, the lost causes! How many a AA’ogau came out of the distant western land in all those years that followed the English invasion, and went forth to carve with their swords a glorious path in other lands. They led the lances among the hills of Spain; they rode to victory with the lilies of France; they charged at the head of Austrian cavalry; and in many cases survived but to eat out their hearts while they ate the bread of exile and climbed the hard stairs of the stranger’s walls.