To a Writer of the Day

Where are you gone, my friend? I had a look,
No brief one, through the pages of your book,
But scarcely found you there; or found you not
As I should wish:—where are you in your thought?
We who have lived together know each other,
Once and for all as brother does a brother;
But the years flow: man with them; and "we fare
To different ports," you say, "and each must dare
His different course." Yet are we men, are friends,
Lovers of good, and servers of high ends
Accounted as we serve;—where are you gone,
Therefore, in life and verse? The rosy sun
Of your first morning thought, the dewy hour
Of youth, hath risen and passed into the power
And light of day;—what is that day, then? Will
The height and glory of its noon fulfill
Our liberal expectations?
Reading over
Your verses, (and I read them like a lover,
Prepared to worship without rhyme or reason,)
Yet, reading to adore, and at this season,
Too, when blossoms are abroad, and Poetry
Is in the air and to the mind all free,
And pleasant thoughts are welcomest,—for May
Has smiled ungenerous and cold things away,
And sweet ideas come dancing, as the blood
Within us leaps and laughs for the world's good;
—Yet, though it be both May and youth, I found
Somehow I was not satisfied. The sound
Was musical, of course: your current flows
Easily down; your harshest poem goes
Unhindered on its course; but somehow, still,
I had not touched you, had not got my fill,
And, to be plain, felt cheated, and was cross.
And now, as I begin to pitch and toss
The thing about my mind, I think I see
How matters are with you:
You are not free:
Not free enough. I feel that you respect
Some certain criticasters, and reject
Them not with scorn; who, having told you how
Your business is with "words," have made it now,
Perhaps, too late:—like others you are caught
And tangled in their web, their mist of thought.
And looser thinking, more at second-hand,
With less of body, more like ropes of sand,
More incoherent, dead and without hope,
Has never yet been plausibly made up
Into the likeness of true thing! For I
Have read these fellows, too, and candidly
I will assure you that a dock, a thistle,
Has more of nutriment!—'T were better whistle
In sunshine half a day, enjoying it,
Than to benight one's brains with reading what is writ
By all that barren tribe, who blindly dwell
In desert places hopeless! and no well
Of life in all whose dry and withered nation,
Save one apt spring,—their fountain of quotation.
For, as you've heard, great critics are as rare
As those they most indebt, great poets, are.
And though 't would seem a harmless trade to suit
The time's demands to your just needs, and put
A dollar in your pocket, all by clatter
About a good thing, yet 't is no such matter,
Unless what's said, is so;—for those, no doubt,
Who have no better thing to be about,
It is a harmless calling; but it goes
Deeper than that,—how deep no wisdom knows!
For these men deal with living things, with art,
With hope and youth, with energy of heart,
And with high aims, with truth and liberty;
And there's the spot they rub:—they take away
Men's freedom; they create an atmosphere
Jaded and difficult, and far and near
There settles down a dust of pedant kind
Where their words fall, an influence to bind
And lock up every generous power, to do,
As now, in fact, I think they've done to you.
For have you not perused these wise, and then
Thought of alliteration; or how "rain"
Should rhyme with this, not that; or how an "L,"
A dextrously placed dissyllable,
Or a rich "mood" of "M's," or what not more,
Contains the secret of "poetic lore;"—
How poets use their consonants, and all
The rest that makes this life seem flat and dull,
The green world gray, and verse a horrid grief
Even to read,—to write it, past belief?
Have you not added then, "At least I'll be
Perfect in 'Form' and ripe in 'Melody;'
Whate'er my limbs of thought, the outside dress
Shall be a splendor; I'll be covetous
Of 'rich' and 'perfumed' words; when sweet thoughts fail,
I'll weave a glittering, a melodious veil
Of phrases that shall seem like thought, but be,
Instead, pure beauty, pure delight"?—Dear me!
How well I know all that! And how I hate
The burden of the folly of that state
Of imbecile, blank mind!—You should not think
In these men's bastard terms; you should not drink
The cup of their damnation; much less be
Seduced and drawn away from liberty,
From all good sense cut off, by doctrine such
As will not bear the light:—folly, that touch
Of clearer thinking kills! Could I but scour
Your mind of such loose shadows!—You've the power,
The imagination, and the heart to do
What these men falsely talk of; and yet you
Are sterilized by them, enfeebled, made
Into a kind of eunuch, or a shade
Of what's poetic.
Could but this be brought
Into your ken,—that the technique is thought.
Escape from "Style," the notion men can use
Words without thoughts; so wrench and so abuse
The innocent language to their ends that they
Will seem to be respectful, honest, gay,
Grave, or what else; and all the glorious while
The authors' selves sit with the wise and smile:
"'T is but a trick; 't is words; it is a style!"
Your technique, then, is thought, just as I say.
And if you'll write a poem, there's no way
But first to think it clearly; pin your mind
Upon your thought; fasten it there, and bind
The thought into your heart: when your veins burn and flow
With love or hate, the thoughts to music go,
Melt into music, and pour fully out
In a rich flood;—but to take thought about
The "music" of your words, 't is matter quite
Beyond your conscious power! For rhymes, they're right
Or wrong according as they hear, not look
When printed by a printer in a book!
And their "correctness" may be measured best,
And indeed only, by a certain test,—
That, namely, for rebellions: which are so
Until they have succeeded, when they go
By quite another name. Forget not, too,
That every English poet known to you,
That is to say all of them, rhymed just as
The spirit took them and their pleasure was,
And masters that they were, rhymed "falsely," so
As now no poetaster dares to do!
But I've more serious things to say, and am
But half concluded: whence is come your calm?
This hothouse stillness? this so much of ease?
Eternity of zephyr?—such fat peace!
This dancing, quick, inconstant, frivolous,
Light mind and thought?—You polish and caress
A little set of words, plant one rare flower
And tend it every day and every hour
With needless, pretty care; while that domain,
The full and fertile region of your brain,
Lies fallow, empty, dead! Is it not so?
Or wherein do I err?—I would that you
Would till that sleeping soil, not let it lie.
You think I ask for politics?—Not I!
I ask for nothing critical; no scheme,
No theory of the universe; no dream
Of sensual millenniums;—you may be
Whatever thing you will, and yet please me,
So that you are yourself. I do not want
A poet to be modern, militant,
And moral; conscious of himself, and filled
With sense of some grave message; for what's willed
Too powerfully is weak, and he may tell
A simple story, so he do it well.
But what I ask of you is that you be
Wholly yourself;—you give me poetry
As if it were a little dew, which I
Could delicately sip, and satisfy
My soul's thirst with it;—if you gave me seas
Of such small talk in verse, they'd not appease
The lust I have for something large and deep.
Why, what's a nap when a man's dead with sleep?
A single pea, served to perfection, 's food,
But starving men want more:—and I, a flood,
A storm of happy thoughts.—Poets should be
At flood, in blossom, bearing, continually!
Observe I do not ask you to be more
Than Nature made you; I but bid you pour
Yourself out with a liberal hand, and I
Shall find enough in you to satisfy.
So then, at last, let me awake this sleep
And languor of yourself;—it is too deep;
And 't is too long!
Oh, I would have you look
With judgment on your life, and not to brook
The less in art, as not in truth;—forgive
Much in you now I can, never that you less live.
I may put by whatever choice of themes,
But not this air of being by rich dreams
Roofed over, and floored under, and walled in.
As Eastern princes in a palanquin
Luxuriously ride, by eunuchs round
Held and supported, lifted from the ground,
And softly borne,—so you, on the mild shoulders,
Effeminate, of dreams!—Your spirit moulders;
The freshness of your soul withers away
As roses do that cannot find the day.
Oh, free yourself!—take up your life and share
The splendor of this day, the world's great air,
And this new land's delight: this land that we
Adore, this people, this great liberty
Of nations in new birth;—a happy shower
Of golden States,—a many-blossomed flower!—
Now grown a Commonwealth, whose strength and state
And health are dangerous to all that hate
Freedom; and fatal to all those who'd be
Sunk in the dark of Time's abysmal sea,
Safe anchored in the past—safe dead!—that none
Might longer make them fear a change beneath the sun,
To fright them with new good.—But oh, to those
Whose blood within them leaps and laughs and flows;
To all who proudly hope; to all who fain
With their right hands and with their heart and brain
Would throne the right, and make the good to reign;
To all who'd lift man up, and who, heart-free,
Haste toward the light,—this Land and State should be
Dear as their life!—And to her sons should she
Be born again in love, since with her noblest blood
And her right hand of youth she smote the brood
Of her own loins, nested in servitude,
Shadowing the world's detraction with fair peace.
Dear mother of her sons, whose wealth is these,
Her more than gold, their valor, mercy, truth,
Her mighty age, immortal in their youth,
Dear light of hope, oh, needs she not to be
Forever saved into new liberty?
The fallen blood of martyrs is in vain
If ours be not as free to fall again!
But her salvation is a rigorous task,
Eternally accomplishing:—I ask
You, therefore, as one owing more than most
To her, who is your happiness and boast,
That you cast from you all that will not wake
Men's hearts from sensual sleep:—for her great sake
Put by the velvet touch, the easy grace,
The fingers dreaming on the lyre, the face
Forgetful, listening to light melodies;
Cease thou thy toying with the hours, and cease
This riot of thy youth, this wantoning
With all the sap and spirit of thy Spring.
Not twice that verdure's given thee; the Tree
Of Life not twice shall blossom; and to be
Young, 't is to be in heaven, 't is to be
Full of ambition, filled with hot desire,
Pregnant with life, and steeped in such a fire
As sets a world in hope!—Oh, could I say
That which I would, you could not say me nay.
But let your country plead with you; give heed
To her dumb call; sow the eternal seed
Of Truth, and Righteousness, and Love;—though you
Shall be, as poets should, known to but few,
Yet your reward is great: it is to be
Sown in the hearts of men, to make men free;
And in your thoughts to be your land's firm stay,
And her salvation in a falling day,
More than dread cannon, than bright thousands more:
For thoughts, like angels, wage eternal war.