Even in England, the orthodox poet has not been nonexistent. Christina Rossetti portrays such an one in her autobiographical poetry. Jean Ingelow, in Letters of Life and Morning, offers most conventional religious advice to the young poet. And in Coventry Patmore's The Angel in the House, one finds as orthodox a poet as any that the eighteenth century could afford. The Catholic church too has some grounds for its title, "nursing mother of poets." The rise of the group of Catholic poets, Francis Thompson, Alice Meynell, and Lionel Johnson, in particular, has tended to give a more religious cast to the recent poet. If Joyce Kilmer had lived, perhaps verse on the Catholic poet would have been even more in evidence. But it is likely that Joyce Kilmer would only have succeeded in inadvertently bringing the religious singer once more into disrepute. There is perhaps nothing nocuous in his creed, as he expressed it in a formal interview: "I hope poetry . . is reflecting faith . . . in God and His Son and the Holy Ghost." But Kilmer went much farther and advocated the suppression of all writings, by Catholics, which did not specifically advertise their author's Catholicism.2 And such a doctrine immediately delivers the poet's freedom of inspiration into the hands of censors. ... Perhaps a history of art would not square with 'Letter to Howard Cook, June 28, 1918, Joyce Kilmer: Poems, Essays and Letters, ed. Robert Cortes Holliday. See his letter to Aline Kilmer, April 21, 1918, Joyce Kilmer, Poems, Essays and Letters, ed. Robert Cortes Holliday. the repugnance one feels toward such censorship. Conformance to the religious beliefs of his time certainly does not seem to have handicapped Homer or Dante, to say nothing of the preeminent men in other fields of art, Phidias, Michael Angelo, Raphael, etc. Yet in the modern consciousness, the theory of art for art's sake has become so far established that we feel that any compromise of the purely æsthetic standard is a loss to the artist. The deity of the artist and the churchman may be in some measure the same, since absolute beauty and absolute goodness are regarded both by poets and theologians as identical, but there is reason to believe that the poet may not go so far astray if he cleaves to his own immediate apprehension of absolute beauty as he will if he fashions his beliefs upon another man's stereotyped conception of the absolute good. Then, too, it is not unlikely that part of the poet's reluctance to embrace the creed of his contemporaries arises from the fact that he, in his secret heart, still hankers for his old title of priest. He knows that it is the imaginative faculty of the poet that has been largely instrumental in building up every religious system. The system that holds sway in society is apt to be the one that he himself has just outgrown; he has, accordingly, an artist's impatience for its immaturity. There is much truth to the poet's nature in verses entitled The Idol Maker Prays: Grant thou, that when my art hath made thee known But as I pray thee now, then let me pray 'By Arthur Guiterman. VII THE PRAGMATIC ISSUE No matter how strong our affection for the in gratiating ne'er-do-well, there are certain charges against the poet which we cannot ignore. It is a serious thing to have an alleged madman, inebriate, and experimenter in crime running loose in society. But there comes a time when our patience with his indefatigable accusers is exhausted. Is not society going a step too far if, after the poet's positive faults have been exhausted, it institutes a trial for his sins of omission? Yet so it is. If the poet succeeds in proving to the satisfaction of the jury that his influence is innocuous, he must yet hear the gruff decision, "Perhaps, as you say, you are doing no real harm. But of what possible use are you? Either become an efficient member of society, or cease to exist." Must we tamely look on, while the "light, winged, and holy creature," as Plato called the poet, is harnessed to a truck wagon, and made to deliver the world's bread and butter? Would that it were more common for poets openly to defy society's demands for efficiency, as certain children and malaperts of the poetic world have done! It is pleasant to hear the naughty advice which that especially impractical poet, Emily Dickinson, gave to a child: to live in vain, dear. I wish I had." "Be sure And one is hardly less pleased to hear the irrepressible Ezra Pound instruct his songs, But above all, go to practical people, go, jangle their door-bells. Say that you do no work, and that you will live forever.2 Surely no one else has had so bad a time with efficiency experts as has the poet, even though everyone whose occupation does not bring out sweat on the brow is likely to fall under their displeasure. The scholar, for instance, is given no rest from their querulous complaints, because he has been sitting at his ease, with a book in his hand, while they have dug the potatoes for his dinner. But the poet is the object of even bitterer vituperation. He, they remind him, does not even trouble to maintain a decorous posture during his fits of idleness. Instead, he is often discovered flat on his back in the grass, with one foot swinging aloft, wagging defiance at an industrious world. What right has he to loaf and invite his soul, while the world goes to ruin all about him? The poet reacts variously to these attacks. Sometimes with (it must be confessed) aggravating meekness, he seconds all that his beraters say of his idle 1 Gamaliel Bradford, Portraits of American Women, p. 248 (Mrs. Bianchi, p. 37). 'Salutation the Second. |