The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1899-06-13

opposes proof that in SnakeSpedreS
time there was a common proverb, 'ha
does not know a haw from a hand
saw; and the evidence Of this fact
which he adduces illustrates very fore
IDLY the industry lie has brought to
bear on his task, and the wide area
Of his researches"
Say what you will, critical and genu-
inc lovers of poetry do like form in
verse. While in New England a few
gush and rave over Walt Whitman as
a great poet, ETC., there are thousands
of cultivated people who have no spe-
cial relish for his rugged and rhyme
less and formless verse. See that great
prose writer and novelist, Thomas
Hardy, putting into print this gro
tesque stanZa:
"And by Weatherbury Castle, and
Inference
Through CasterDridge bore l
To tomb her whose light, in my deem
E~xtinguished had He"
Milton nor Tennyson nor any great
poet would ave WRITTEN that so desti-
tute Of the melody, the essence, the
very sound of poetry. Beauty and lu-
cidity must never be lost sight of in
poetry. The able editor of London Lit
erature, Mr.. H. D. Trail, q, writer of
marked c-ommon-sense and true insight
and robust culture, says of completed,
genuine verse, that amounts to true
poetry:
Perhaps it is a little less fantastic
to say that it must present US with a
mosaic of beautiful qualities, n that
these in their combination are what we
call form There must be an appeal
to the eye and to the ear, an idealiza-'
ton of reality in music, a realization
of the ideal in Elasticity. And all these
qualities, with those of the intellect and
the character interminged with them.
must be harmonized and balanced.
There must not be serried, emphatic
speech at the expense of melody; there
must not be sensation at the expense
of reflection"
If you apply this sane and whole
some criticism to such verse as Whit
man gave the world and over which
his admirers dOte, you will see how
little it can stand the test. Of Har-
dy's volume of poetry published in the
early part of the year, Mr.. Trail says
'fthey are lop-sided; they bulge or COL
lapse where they should present a glo-
bular perfection" There is a tendency
just now, as the poverty in great po-
etic produotiveness becomes more ap-
parent, ito abandon form, or to sacrifice
it ito the caprices of writers with less of
pure imagination than of fantastic
%conceits. AS Mr.. Trail so aptly puts
it, perfection of form, when it is no
J1-~1r $780, H.
of WEAKNESS, and writer's try to secure
sensation by steadily neglecting execu-
tive adroitness." If one would see how
exquisite is poetic art, how perfect is
form, how musical are numbers, now
full Of grace and beauty are the best
poems of our century, let him read
Tennyson, again and again, or turn to
some of the purest and best of Keats's
verse, or of Shelley's, or even much
that Swinburne has written. We have
long held that since Milton no poet has
been so supreme in the finish of his
lines, in the perfection of form and the
music of the poetic expression as Ten
nyson. He has been the greatest de-
light of the poets who themselves pos
: sesssed a noble and admirable art as
we'll as a critical taste in poetry (and
the best critics are the poets), and from
them he has received the most appre-
ciative applause as We'll as the strictest
Justice. All remember, what we have
several times quoted, what Americas
| greatest poet, and the south's most in
spired ~singer-Edgar Allan Poe-said
of Tennyson in his "Magina1it." Find
ing it referred to by Mr.. Trail, with an
opinion of his own, we cor the fol-
lowing from London (not New York;
Literature:
When Poe, no mediocre judge, first
read TennySOn of 1888, he said that the
writer of these lyrics was not only a
:. great poet, but the greatest who had
ever lived. WiSeacres have shaken their
! heads for generations over this violent
dictum, which (of course) was not
meant to be taken literally. But what
! Foe, himself a writer exquisitely SEN
sitive to form, meant was tina
Tennyson's poems showed a combi-
nation of the qualities which go to
make up the harmony OF poetic utter
anee, of it's kind unparalleled in Eng
fish literature. 1t is probable that he
was right in thinking SO, and we may
L AN14Ool oACoAlAAl5 il Sl1QOISIuS
his stated position
/ In a letter written to us a year or
before he died Paul Hamilton
Hayne, a true poet, sal that of all
poets Tennyson was his favorite. And
! so he has been of many poets, al
though some of his poetical contem-
poraries, may not have so seen it. Rag
ged, unmusical, harsh, dissonant verse
may charm others, but give US the
beautiful, coupled with strength, but
refined, flowing, rich, plastic, grace
ful, m~elodious.
There were nineteen graduates at
the Raleigh Agricultural and Mechan-
ical college, Professor Hill made a
very touching address to President