The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1891-03-10
LITERARY.
L AGE N E

Dryden once spoke of youth as IAN
age when the soul is most plant, and
the passion of love makes almost every
man a rhymer if not a poet"
If the gods ever vOuchsafe to make
us poetical, it is when the fresh delight
of childhood is first touched by the
deeper thoughts of youth. However
shOrt-lived and Elusive, there comes a
times, Just when we are entering upon
the fulness of III powers, when we are
captured by a transport which trans
forms us. Strangely receptive to the
new impressions which crowd upon us
with celebrating rapidity and vivid
ness, we Ire shaken and stimulated by
a turbulence Of feelings and hopes; we
are elated by the consciousness OF sud
denly developing and seemingly I'M
limited powers.
'"The ''pliant soul" soon becomes stiff
fened and case-hardened enOughtO pre-
sent an impenetrable front to expert
ence; the soldier has clean forgot all
his wOeful ballads made to his mis-
tress's eyebrows, the justice, for all
his wise laws, is incapable of under
standing them. Pendennis tears up
his verses to the FOtheringay and be-
takes himself to reviewing with the aid
of the encyclopedia. "Ay, doubtless I
am old and think grey thoughts, for [
am grey" says the venerable speaker
in TennysOn's second "LOcksleY Hall"
But if the grey thoughts come to Is in
these latter days-none too faYOrable
to enthusiaSms-even faster than the
grey hairs, we must remember that
most of us have been but rhymers and
not poets. In that fairer world where
we have once been denizens, the poet
is a citizen and a freehOlder by an In
defeasible title. 1t is bis distinction to
possess a nature so finely organized,
that it lever ceases to vibrate at every
touch of pain or pleasure.
The poetry of age is not that OfretrO-
spectiOn alone it takes on, likewise, the
sober colOring that comes from the
tinge of thought. [ do not know where
we shall find a nObler or more genuine
expression of the sacred inner thoughts
of age, than in the famous poem by the
cOurtly, and often trihing Waller:
Clouds of affection from our younger eyes
Conceal that emptiness that age describes.
Th SOULS dark cottage battered and decayed
Lets in new light through chinks that time has
made.
Stronger by weakness wiser men become,
As they drew near to their eternal home
The last two lines contain the conclu-
sion of the whole matter. This is the
picture of the poet in age; his foot
trembling upon the threshold of a new
world; his look now forward, now cast
l~ingeringly backward at a receding
life, which he sees with something of
the clear, impersonal insight of the dy-
ing, if there is a fugitive and, perhaps,
Incompatible rapture in the first poetic
Outburst of youth, when the new wine
Of life Overbrims the cup, there is in
this poetry of age a pathetic and pecu-
liar charm, which we'll repays Gu
riOus study. @n
'CEdipus at Colonus, " the tragedy of
Sophocles' old age, is sombre with the
shadows of death. Death comes to the
aged Gdipus, worn out with many
sorrows, as the helper"
If one were to set about bringing to-
gether the characteristic and note
worthy poems of age, he would find a
mine of treasure in the sOnnets OF
Michael Angelo. The love of such an
old age, as that of Angelo, for such a
woman as Vittoria COlonna has a dig
nifty and a pathos which find no paral-
lei in the Arcadian romances of youth.
Two as striking instances of the poe
try of age, as are to be found mall the
centuries of English literature. are
given in B~rowning's "Asolando" and
Tennyson's 'Dementer." I do not
know when two poets of such genius
have thus, as with one voice, addressed
the world from the ventage ground OF
old age.
The poetry of Browning shows
fewer traces than that of Tennyson, OF
the peculiar marks of g Tt is as
though the amazing vitality of the
man, his active and diversified interest
In life, kept at bay the impersonal tone
towards men and the world well nigh
until the last. Yet in ''AsOlando." In
the midst of it's healthy vigor and I'm
abated energy a new, strange note is
Enthusiastically present. Any one who
looks for it, can find, here and there.
through the pages of "Asolando,," the
more or less emphatic traces of this un,
wonted mood, patches of autumna]
coloring while the woods are still
green, until, in the epilogueLas nota-
bic, if not as i~nexplicable, as Shelley's
! seeming prophecy of his coming death