Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-04-20

sunshine and breathe the airs that tell of the
daffodil's bloom and the yiolet's birth.
But alas the daily grind must go on. The
little folks, who would fain play in the sun,
have to hustle into school to poke over les
sons, write upon states the live
long day, and breathe the dusty at
mosphere that most pervades the
schoolrooms. The toilers in the factories,
the shops, the works, the Offices, the kitchens
of the great city have little chance to secure
the new spirit OF youth, TO breathe the
spring on man." for it is
Work-work-work
From weary chime to chime.
They can say with Tom Hood:
oh but to breathe the breath
or the cowslip and primrose sweet
With the sky above my head,
And the grass beneath my feet,
Before knew the woes of want
And the walk that costs meal.
What boon and blessing is the city
park that gives the toiling thousands u
taste of the sweets OF groves and gardens,
running streams and howery feldsi
God made the country and man made the
town.
What wonder then that health and virtue. gifts
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught
That life holds out to all. should most abound
And least be threatened in the fields and
groves.
is how Cowper puts it, so if man makes the
country in a town, it is plain he promotes
the cause of health and virtue, and the
two noblest things, which are sweetness and
light.
THE SPRING POETS.
The invigorating forces of the wakening
earth and rising sap affect people differently.
In the poets, it takes the form of odes to
spring, songs of May, sobbing April days.
May musings, pastoral laws and "sIch. !"
By editors generally these are held in de-
rision, and spring poets are refused license
to warble, and are reduced to singing for the
waste baskets. But what, may We ask, are
the poets to do? When the inspiration
seizes them through force of natures waking
loveliness and the coming of "Hoar win
ter's blooming child, delightful spring."
how are they to bung up their raptures, un-
tune their lyres, and voiceless view the buds
and blossoms, the smiling verdure, the frag-
rant flowers, the dandelioned grass? How
can they fail to lapse into rhyme and meter
when they list to the anthems of the water
falls, the murmurng music OF messy brooks,
the unlocking of the flowers to paint the
laughing soil"-more especially, too, when
they have such illustrious examples before
them set?
1t is no discredit for the spring poets to
follow in the footsteps of their immortal
fcrerunners. CHANGER, and Spencer, and
Milton, and Shakespeare, and Goethe, and
Pope, and Tennyson, and Longfellow, and
Gray, and Keats, and Shelley ct al. If
Milton did not disdain to write spring
poetry, why should they? If Goethe tuned
his lay to sound the glories of the May,
why should they not sing in unison? If
Shakespeare made no bones of sending down
the ages his sonnet as to
When proud-pied April dressed in all his trim
Hath put spirit of youth in everything,
and of committing to the keeping Of i'm
mortal fame his remark as to well ap-
parelpd April treading on the heel of limp
ing winter" there can assuredly be nothing
wrong in poets to-day lisping in numbers on
the gentle spring.
Milton had no scruples as to spreading
himself on ''Airs, vernal airs, breathing the
smell of field and grove, attune the tremb-
ling leaves" and 'the bowers where revels
the spruce and jocund spring." while Pope
wakes poetic upon the same subject and
wakes his muse to sing Of
That soft season when descending showers
Call forth the greens and wake the rising how-
When opening buds salute the welcome day
And earth relenting feels the genial ray.
1t may be said that our small nineteenth
century poets cannot sing the glories of the
beauteous spring as could these giants of
the past, but that is no reason why they
should not sing small, il the spirit moves
lhem. Why should spring poets be re-
pressed any more than play writers, or story
tellers, or poets OF passion? The play
writers of to-day cannot write as Shakes
peare, the immortal, wrote upon the loves,
and follies, and passions Of mankind, but
they can write society plays-the pictures
of the time-and make more money than
either Shakespeare or Milton ever
did. Poets of passion pile up
stocks of fame and hard cash, but
alas the spring poet with all his
wealth of inspiration and flow of gush has
the genial current OF his soul frozen up be-
cause of the stony prejudice of editors
against the genius that blooms in the spring
the muse that sings when the sap rises
the divine afflatus that wakens into song
when the glad time comes around when
mankind delights to dig in the dirt and
plant onions.
The following spring poem we doubt not
would go plump into the waste basket, and
yet 1t is the work of great mind, the man
said to be the most distinguished thinker of
his age, to hold the supreme Intellectual
place in Europe, to have the power as
poet and philosopher to beautify, even this
"rag-satnering age" with beams of divine
splendor-the man Iauded and magnifed as
a second Shakespeare-a German Voltaire,
and whose name is Goethe. He devotes the
power of his intellect to spring thus:
Light and silvery cloudlets hover
In the air. as yet scarce warm;
Mud with glimmer soft tInged over,
Peeps the sun through fragant balm.
Gently rolls and heaves the ocean
As It's waves the bank O'erfow,
And with ever restless motion
Moves the yer lure to and fro
Mirrored, brightly, far below.
This, of course, is sweetly poetic. but
strange to say there Is crushing prejudice
in an editors mind against "cloudiets" and
"birdlets" and little emotional tender turn
lets of any sort, and we are burdened with
the thought that they would not pay cent
for even spring poetry of the Goethe order
or the Miltonic stripe-they might not per-
haps decry the grandeur of the genius
which inspired them, but would be likely
to say they were not adapted to the columns
of their papers.
HOW IT STRIKES OTHER PEOPLE.
But while the spring poets have hard
lines, the spirit of the season strikes palmer
and more practical people In another way.