The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1894-02-18
JOT AND TITLE PAPERS.
For The Sunday Herald:
NO. I.
THE pEcLINE on PoEsY.


Whatever we may be doing in fiction
and other lines of prose composition,
when we think of the turbulent stream
of verse that would swamp the world,
if it could, we are forced to cry out,
There were giants in those days.
There were. We have our Howells,
but who is our poet? The world likes
poetry Just as well as it ever did, but
lit must read what it has read or go
hungry-or, worse still, suck its stonl-
ach full Of scented wind. Has the
Pierian spring run dry? Is Castalia
choked up with weeds? Is evolution
Idownwards possible? Pegasus may
have become an untamable broncho or,
it may be- has forgotten how to canter
under bit.
Anyhow. no aspirant for the chaplet
of laurel seems pre-eminent over the
vulgar herd of petty rhymesters. They
IAN tickle our noses with the same
feather and think to hide their shallow
ness under a gauze of art, to befuddle
our understanding with the mere tin
Naturalization of words. They have even
forgotten. or never learned, that old
recipe of mediocres: AIRS est celare
artemn But art as art, exposing even
the hand of the joiner. the streaks OF
the brush. the touch of the burnlsher
| or the smell of kercsene-the most pal
pable. Haunting art would be accepta-
BILE were it not the merest veneering.
Don't breathe on it. you feel; 1t will
! tarnish. Don't touch 1t; it is fragile,
lit will break.
There is a story of Pindar, told of
lother poets as well, however, thdt,
iloitering around on the slopes of Mount
Helicon one day, in his idle youth, ne
Il
! Then it was that a select committees OF
roval-hearted bees waited upon the Ia
vored STRIPPING, alighting upon his lips
lsmearing them with the honey OF IN
lspiration. and thus amounting him to
be the choicest lyrical spirit OF ms
time. A pretty story, but my what a
Hot of inferior bees now people Inc
fiowery coves of Helicon!
There certainly was never anythine
more insipid, more vapid, than the
lpoetrvof recent and current literature
liz is the age of servile imitators ano
ldilletantes.
However. the careful cleaner may
lind a head of golden grain, now ano
then, if he weary not in wlnnoWing
much straw In the rubbish he may
find a gem that win hold its color il
the glare of succeeding days, or, a.
ileast. serve to garnish a half-hour OF
leisure. Such a poem. L believe, is
l''Hagai," in q recent number of the
lCosmopolitan l do not know Whetnel
lany one else has said so or even though
so, but 1 think that Eliza Poiteven
Nicholson. whoever she may be, ha:
struck out a poem worth reading
worth reading twice perhaps. The ole
Bible story Of Hagar's dismissal o
lAbraham's perfidy and cowafdice. %
lSara's triumph. is retold in a mos
Captivating way Poetic in sentimen
land treatment. it is nevertheless real
listic as well. in that you feel the au
Thor would have used the very words
she puts into Hagar's mouth if sh'
had stood in her place Vigorous as Il
1.-THE language, the motif of the poem
lcould only have been sustained s.
inimitably and SO exquisitely wrough
lout by a woman. There is not grea
ldeaI of fancy in the story, not mucl
lof that finer. diviner, elusive essence
(which seems to hover over and ln-sou
1.-THE verse of Shelley; but it is a poem
of many excellent parts nevertheless
lRead it.