Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1879-02-25
For the SPECTATOR.
Vi0let's Thoughts ON Poetry.

DEAR SPECTATOR II never wrote {
line for a newspaper in my life before
and the very possibility that maybe yor
will, through kind of chivalrous cour.
tesy, admit this to the columns of thu
SPECTATOR, makes me frightfully ner-
vOus.
| There are some things, however, that
need comment, and as no other con-
trlDut0r seems inclined to assail these
erumbliug fortresses of old fogyism that
l have in my minds eye, I will attempt
it alone. l hate, my dear Mr.. Editor.
this spirit of contempt that it seems
fashionable to feel for everything mod
ern, and that disposition to look over
the heads of home talent and culture to
far away regions for authors to admire
and poets to reverence. There is spe-
cles OF classic mania that affiicts great
many people. The newly graduated
young man or woman, of course, never
esteems anybody outside of Ancient
Greece as werthy of notice. No poet
ever lived except blind old Homer. No
satirist ever existed since Aristophanes
NO sculptor's chisel has wrought marble
into immortality since Phidias. OF
course, we expect this in the collegian,
and it really amounts to little, for, after
his or her valedictory discourse, they
never refer to the classics again. But
there is another and more pernicious
kind of intellectual blindness to the
present that is subject of deeper con-
cern. There is Tennysonian mania,
and an Owen Meredith gush, andla Will
liam Cullen Bryant enthusiasm, and a
Jean Ingelow glOrification, that is all
very right and proper for people to in
dulge; and there are in our midst intel
lectual pearls, whose unobtrusive lustre
goes unnoticed and unappreciated. This
ls what l am excited about, and what 1
want to lift up my feeble woman's voice
against. I, too, have caught the dreamy
literary infection of the Lotus eaters,
and admire the Laureate as much az any
one. and drink in the metric nectar Of
Lucille with the thirstiest. But I am
not of that thoughtless class who fail to |
discern in home surroundings the germs |
OF poetic genius and the possessors of the
"divine aff1atus."
There are fugitive pieces floating thro'
the columns of the SPECTATOR every /
week that vie with the idyllic glories of
the best of those who have adorned our
Anglican literature. Why do we ignore
these to rave over the fancied excellen-
cies of ''Thanatopsisp or the pathetic
weirdness of 'Elaine.n
These gifted children of song have
caught their key notes fr m the anthem
that the winds chant as they blow above
our own beloved Virginia mountains;
and the "Songs of the Shenandoah"
over the name of one that recalls the
dreamer of old England, possess the
double merit that they chrystalize In
imperishable verse the records of that
groad and historic river, which, muir
muring of the deathless deeds of valor
along it shares, flows OH in its ceaseless
melody to the sea forever.
The tender sentiments embodied in |
the graceful verses of ~. w. "" have |
found responsive echoes in many q
heart. Mourners above the dust of those
who stood as knightly as did Sir Laun-
celet, on the perilous edge of battle, have
felt the tear start and the pulse throb at
the moving and heart-touching rythm
of these contributors. Why is it then
that we turn from our own epics to ex-
ude an artificial sentimentality over the
woes of King Arthur, ~or bend above
him who
"Lay DOING in the Vale of Avalon,
And watched by weeping queens"
1t is the legitimate result of the spirit
denounced at the outset of this article.
We ignore our indigenous, fruit-bearing
plants to 60 cropping after exotics. Let
us in literature live nearer together, and
when our own soil and our own genius
produce meritorious work bow down
and recognize it. Less than half CEN
tury from now these floating gems will
be gathered, and the casket will be the
priceless heritage of this generation.-l
Let it not be said of US. as has been said
of the people who lived when Chatter
ton died in his garret, and Keats breath
ed out his fiery soul ia the dreariness of
a tenement house in Rome, that we
lived and yet failed to honor.
am sorry that I have trespassed so
far, but the subject is one on which
have thought much and with the earn
est hope that my egotism will be par
doned, am yours truly,
VIOLET.
OREANNA, Augusta Co., Feb. 20, '79.