The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-05-18

straight to the point and stayed there.
That was the main objection to the poety
we read IN school. To us it seemed impos-
sible that poet should ever write what he
ter his meaning without grubbing pain
fully through Webster for the roots
of words he had gathered from every
language under the sun; that we
could ever expect to read more than
line or two without being ordered to sud
den halt to paraphrase-to put his language
specially hard. Here was q man who
wrapped himself in poetic mantle, and
was at liberty, we supposed, to wear long
hair and any other peculiar outfit he had
mind to; man who was reaplng Cor him
publication of book presumably and os-
tensibly in the English tongue: and there
were we poor boys, without hope of pecu-
mary reward, sometimes with our heads
bent before . sweeping TRADE of abuse,
laboriously disentangling the utter confu-
into shape for him. It did seem hard
Why could not poets write as other people
talked2 Why were they forever hunting up
the most distant resemblances, the most
far-fetched comparisons, with the sole pur-
pose of giving us exercise in hunting for
metaphors as they called them2 There
was none had ever met-afore. and did
not:care if never did again. Why should
they be allowed, not only allowed but en-
couraged to indulge in expressions that were
obviously false and exaggerated, and have
US try to believe that the whole thing
''panned out rich" in hyperbole and some
more outlandish names?
But, if my memory serves me right, We
had against poets still greater grievance,
that they meant far moro than they wrote.
There seemed to be some peculiar mental
obliquity in poet that compelled him to
mean ever so much more than he could act
ually take the trouble to set down. To us it
seemed an utter swindle. Here were we in
good faith paying money for book, and
actually compelled to furnish the greater
and more valuable part of the material.
Shakspere, recollect, was the greatest sim
ner in this respect; the amount of deep
hidden, bedrocks, meaning that man could
cache away beneath few words of appar-
emily ordinary surface would have made
him a millionaire, if he had hit upon
his born occupation of writing up wildcat
mining schemes. Shakspere was an anach-
ronism; he should be living now.
Yes, that poetry was very pleasing in our
eyes and we had dim sort of idea, never
formulated in words, that it must have been
the composltion of some gifted school boy,
who had not at that time entered the world
and become contaminated by the influence
of other poets. Contaminated, we sadly
supposed, he must have been. for we had
never succeeded IN uuO10S any poetry OF
such plain, practical order of architecture
as that was in our school books-no one, of
course, would dream of reading poetry I'M
less in school book and he was obliged to
and it stood to reason that a man of such
superlative gifts as his boyhood promised
would never have been content to hide his
light under a bushel. Perhaps, and the
surmise was a sorrowful one, he died young
and gladly left behind him an inapprecia-
tive world of grown-up people, who had no
sympathy with the mission he must have
felt was his-to reform the poetry of the
nations. .u. II.
There was, / remember, another verse that
used to grace the blank leaves of our books.
1t had not the same high moral altitude as
the other, its note had more than a sus-
picion of the tone of the dominant SIXTH
form, it kavored more of the fortiter in re
than of the suayiter in modo, and was
therefore relegated by all schoolboys of
good. taste to the blank leaf at the end Of
their books. Stay, how did it run? All!
yes, here it is:
Touch not this book
For fear of shame,
For here you see
The owners name.
Or, when you die,
The Lord will cay: w..
Where is the book
You stole away?'"
It was felt, as I have said, that the