The independent. [volume] (Lincoln, Neb.) 1902-1907, 1903-08-06
THE SERVICE OF SONG.


| keep it staying at home,
With hoholink for chorister
And an orchard for dome.
Some keep the Sabbath In surplice;
just wear my wings,
And instead of tolling the bell for
church
Our little sexton sings.
God preaches-a noted clergyman
And the sermon is never long.
So instead of going to heaven at last,
I'm going all along"
How desperately much of that bu-
collie glory habitants of great cities
miss-God's sky at best in retail
pieces, often never at all visible for
days; the sun eclipsed behind clouds
of black smoke: never whole rain
bow, only choppy bits of one now and
then, half seen, dingy and ashamed,
athwart tall chimneys and sky-scrap-
ing business blocks.
Often as | walk the streets of
great city do / remember Matthew
ArnOld's verse:
who can see the green earth any
more
AS she was by the sources of time?
Who imagines her fields as they lay
In the sunshine, unworn by the plow?
Who thinks as they thought,
The tribes who then roamed on her
breast,
Her vigorous primitive sons?
This tract which the river of Time
Now flows through with US, is the
plain.
Gone is the calm of it's earlier shore.
Bordered by cities and hoarse
With thousand cries is it's stream.
And we on it's breast, our minds
Are confused as the cries which we
hear
Changing and short as the sights
which we see.''
There must be in our land multi
tudes of children, if not men and
women, who have never yet in all
their lives seen natural forest, mea-
dow, grass-plat, mountain or water
fall; never heard ''the wild sough of
the sea, or even the Great Lakes fee
BILE imitation thereof, never listened
to one of those bird OratOriOs which
each summer morning turn every
country side in the world into a por-
ticO of heaven. To most denizens of
cities these precious, unique, original
sources OF cultivation are seven
sealed books. Cities must open to
their children the best possible Sec
ondary sources. Gods works failing.
let mems come in-the splendid imi-
tations or analogies of Gods in mu-
sic, architecture, painting, sculpture
and literature. If we must miss grace
ITSELF absolute grace, let us have for
ourselves and all our fellows the best
possible means of grace. And, |
would specially urge that we need to
cultivate widely creative art power
and not merely art receptivity and ap-
probation. Creative power is to be
cherished not alone and not mainly
that we may always have plenty of
great artists, but that the rank and
file of society may ever possess the
most virile possible esthetic and NOR
al life. Esthetic creativeness con-
duces more to real art life and so to
than esthetic receptivity
does
There is common impression that
the periods in mankind's history when
the fine arts have reached their choic-
est bloom, have been precisely the
periods of special moral degeneracy.
Were this true in the sense usually
meant by those who PROFOUND the
statement, it would give the lie to
nearly every proposition advanced
this hour. But it is not true In that
sense. Times of rank moral decline
in human story are usually times of
wealth, when moneys are
lavished in art commissions and when
artists of grace and nnisn, as distinct
from artists of originality, multiply
and thrive. Praxitiles and his like
will be in their studios then, tfronged
by rich nobodies with gold galore to
place heavy commissions. Ask for
Phidias or any creator; you will be
told: 80, that yirtuoso died a hum
dred years ago. The artists of fin
ish, marking times of moral decad-
ence, come after the creators and
stand upon their shoulders. The Gre
ators lived in the good old times, be-
fore virtues had given way; and the
immortal creators were able to be-
come such because in their times real
art spirit was rife and multitudes who
never attained fame were creating as
best they could.