# The Conservative (Lovecraft)/October 1915/The State of Poetry

The State of Poetry
By H. P. Lovecraft.
"Non bene junctarem discordia semina rerum" - Ovid.
Attend, ye modern bards, who dimly shine As worthy scions of Mac Flecknoe's line! Though scarce on Heliconian heights to gleam, To one still clumsier ye supply a theme: As meagre stalk from sterile garden climbs, So springs my trash from your Boeotian rhymes. In state establish'd on the Dunce's throne, Hear infant Codrus with the colic moan. His dreary wail no hint of sense conveys, But critics hide their ignorance in praise. Hard by the King, the pale-fac'd Raucus stands, A ream of witless ballads in his hands. Metre forgot, he screams his sickly song In quatrains part too short and part too long. But ere he stops, Agrestis fills the air With dainty accents, and illusions rare. How might wo praise the lines so soft and sweet, Were they not lame in their poetic feet! Just as the reader's heart bursts into flame, The fire is quenched by rhyming "gain" with "name", And ecstasy becomes no easy task When fields of "grass" in Sol's bright radiance "bask"! To Durus now our keen attention turns, Whose rugged page with manly passion burns. Would that his apt expressions did not lie Where syllable and tone must go awry; A lesser sentiment we needs must feel If "re-al" love be mispronounced as "reel"; While far from his loose line we long to roam, When statelu "po-em" masquerades as "pome"! Next Hodiernus with his lyre appears, And glads the modem critic's Midas-ears. Upon his shelves neglected classics rest, Whilst he reads Kipling, and proclaims him best. The well-turn'd verse, the choice, harmonius phrase, Are foreign to his new, corrupted ways. Form is an error, elegance a crime, To him who courts the plaudits of the time. Ablest is he who can in rhyming reach The lofty coarseness of a Cockney's speech. No name we give to yon degen'rate swine That apes the filthy Whitman's vulgar line.
The stamm'ring sound, the tainted atmosphere, The blank confusion, and the prospect drear, So much repel the mind of decent grade, That author's lost 'mid Chaos he hath made! Mark now Mundanus, who with sordid mind Dwells on our joys and ills of meaner kind. For him no grassy slopes of Tempe wait, Nor does his Muse Arcadian bliss relate: Strephon and Chloe, all the shepherd train, Excite his wrath, and summon his disdain. Saturnian days no thought of his engage, But all the world's to him an Iron Age. His earthy fancy never mounts the sky, But draws its source from kennel, barn, or sty. No sylvan scenes, nor reed-fring'd brooks in June, But mills, and mines, and shops inspire his tune. Almighty Dullness! See the empire rise, The pure to stain, the strong to paralyse: Destructive Commerce! Thy all-blighting pow'rs Pollute our lines, and crush Thought's fairest flow'rs. Can Art survive in a degraded age When none but boors and cynics hold the stage? When verse ideal brings the vulgar smile, And honest words are slighted for the vile? He who would light again the poet's fire, Must straight to some secluded spot retire; Where, pond'ring on the happier days of yore, His fancy may the ancient times restore; Where, as of old, kind Nature's voice is heard, To raise the mind, and prompt the written word. There may we find the Golden Age anew, Where thoughts are simple, and our dreamings true; In such blest scenes we may rehearse again The classic grandeur of Eliza's reign. In Shakespeare's fashion move the anxious heart, Or charm the woodland nymphs with Jonson's art. But let me cease! No such expanding hope Can stir my pencil from the style of Pope, The sounding line, which neither breaks nor halts, Is needful to conceal my graver faults!