The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-03-27
The Practical Uses of Poetry.

Everybody reioices when a lazy fel
low is compelled to work. It gives su.
preme satisfaction to see an habitua1
shirk effectually cornered. The most
economical and conscientious will now
and then rejoice at the destruction OF
injury of the most beautiful fabrics, il
they have seemed to give any Fictitious
importance to the body they covered.
The neat kids, the shiny boots, the fine
broadcloth, never give their wearer so
keen a pleasure as they afford to his
homespun and hard-worked neighbor
when any contingency compelling him
to put forth his strength in some meni-
al occupation, splits the kids, muddies
the boot, and rumples the broadcloth.
! 1 suppose it is on this principle that
all those good, sensible, practical
people who consider poetry the natural
loafer of literature, seize every Opp0r-
tunity to put it to some homely use,
and seem to delight in seeing it har-
messed down to a plain, healthy moral,
or made TO express a geographical or
meteorological fact. The despiser of
Tennyson, and ignorer of Whittier, in
variably resorts to
''Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November"
when he wishes to verify his dates. He
'Ooks forth from his window, and dis
Germs the signs of the sky with a NUT
atered
Evening red and morning gray
Takes the traveller on his way"
He even regulates his household econ
omy with such questionable synopsis as
ga stitch in time
Saves nine"
His children are taught their first les
sons of thrift in the couplets-
''See a in and let it Law,
And you'll have bad luck all day;
See pin and pick it up,
And all the day you'll have good luck.
As often as there is funeralin his fam.
lily, he searches the hymn-book for a
rhyme to be placed on the tombstone
and, if the event calls out few origi-
nal stanzas from some local muse, the
copy is preserved forever in the family
scrap book.
It is but q fewyears since one of these
geniuses, who periodically burst upon
the public schools with a scheme of
learning, so sugared aud honeyed that
the children cry for it, turned "Peter
Parley's geography into verse, and set
thousands of classes to singing, in con-
cert, complete list of bays, rivers, capes
and capitals. He was followed by one
who developed the same idea in the
realm of philosophy, and whose crown
ing triumph was the couplet by which |
be taught the order of the colors of the |
rainbow:
'On uemory's tablet these shal live
While we can spell the word R-O-Y-G-B-I-V." |
But more troublesome to remember |
shan dates, facts, and geographical sta
tistics, yet more mortifying to forget, |
are the requirements of etiquette. The |
completest victory of those who lash |
solid facts to buoyant poetry, that the |
whole may float gracefully in the mem
Dry, has been achieved by a genius who |
reduces the whole science to plain rules
and puts every rule in rhyme Landor's
couplet-
''That is foolish who supposes
Those dogs are i'll that have lot noses
was one of the accidental touches which
so often precede a great discovery. The
ripper genius grasps the principle, and
gives it a complete application. Thus
We read
IT'S pity if vCu have a cold,
But worse if the sal fact be told
By every kind of uncOuth sound,
Annoying every one around;
SO let the secret be confined
To your own handkerchief and mind"
Here is an essential principle of po-
lteness so welded to sweet verse that
even a child cannot misunderstood or
forget it:
''In company your teeth to pick,
Would make refined beholders sick"
The worldwide discussion on the
proper use of the knife and fork is all
up and settled by this sugges-
tive passage:
9 If you should, in a moment rash,
Reverse their use. perhaps you'd cash
A mouth already far too vide,
And shock all who might s, e beside.
Bread, nuts, and fruit, dear sir, or madam,
Eat in the mode of Eve and ADAM"
Velily, poetry IS good for something,
after all but, like willful child, one
must know how to manage it.