Omaha daily bee., 1909-09-19
ANCIENT MAXIM OUT OF DATE
V~enerRted Sayings Are Feeble Guides
to Right Thinking and Good
EndeavOr.

that we are wiser in our generation than
the children Of light are possessed Of
several bylaws to the creed of modern
diving. bylaws in themselves ancient
enough, and which we cherish with self
defensive reverence. One is that we'll
enough should be let alone, another that
the sleeping dog should be left to lie. yet
another that all must be well hat ends
well, and lastly a dearly loved-and like
wise dearly bought-fallacy that poets are
engendered by adversity-in fact, that ad-
versity agrees with the poet better than
prosperity and is his natural diet. o
The Bard of Avon cannot be held al
together responsible for the emphasis
given the meretricious and catchy phrase,
"Alrs we'll that ends we'll" It's subterfuGe
covering the evasive philosophy that the
end ~justifies the means, 1t having de-
scended to Shakespeare from Boccaccio.
through Painters palace Of Pleasure"
Again. Let we'll enough alone" never yet
discovered the North pole. and as for the
prime favorite Of the professional optimist,
Let sleeping dogs lie," 1t DISCUSSES the I'M
pleasant evidence that the sleeping dog
when aroused has an embarrassing fashion
of refusing to lie in the face Of fact.
The cherished fable pertaining to the
poet and his nourishing poverty has proved
too reassuring and too picturesque to re-
linqulsh lightly, and is open TO nice de-
~duction-poetry is wrung out by pain; poets
suffer acutely and easily; pain is caused
by privation; many poets have been haunted
by poverty and were forced to write-see
Shelley and his debt-harrassed life, Poe
menaced by the finger of starvation, and
there are others. Add to this the tradi-
tional picture of the poet in the attic with
crust and candle near, the bitter wind
outside, and the sum total is Irresistible
poets, poverty and prlvation, an indivis-
ible trinity of which we all have read
ever since we knew that Milton was paid
&10 for Paradise Lost"
But never yet has there been anything
to prove what the poverty-stricken and
harrassed poet, in the great line Of poetic
succession, might have given his world
had his world fostered even to a fuller
~fruition and a more normal development,
the light Of creative beauty with which
he was ndowed. Had not the angel of
liberation come to Peter in prison Herod
probably would ave ended Peters career
then and there. We have the free gift
Of beauty in literature from poets who
were prisoned by want and despair, but
what would the same poets have given
us otherwise2
Keats and Rossetti, while not practl-
cally of those, were creatures of such acute
mental suffering. such capacity for per-
sonal pain, that 1t was emblematic, and
probably they would nave suffered any
how and anywhere. Shelley was a sort OF
spiritual ~visitant, too ~sentient for mortal
pain, and. as Arnold said TO him, beat
ing in the void his luminous wings in
vain" which describes Shelley; but as a
N,aN ~ Aza4 $50 4.-1- l. -
The modern poets who have made golden
the Victorian Age-Tennyson, Browning,
| Swinburne-did not give us the results of
stultifying poverty. Not having endured
that extreme test, no one now can reckon
Of what privation, hunger and its despera-
ton might have stripped the world in
their case. It is possible that we should
not have had the greatest Of their poems,
nor so many years OF their genius.
Tennyson lived consistently the life OF
the great poet respecting the differences
of genius cherlshlng its distinction, hus-
banding its reserves and yielding TO the
demands Of its eXclusiveness; in other
words, he was true TO his individuality.
In a measure Tennyson's life accorded with
the placid existence OF Wordsworth, who
also kept close to the Inspirations Of ma
ture. 1t is noticeable that those poets who
suffered most from poverty and want
weEe endowed with a peculiarly delicate
and imaginative poetic genius, the evanes-
cent form easiest crushed and despoiled
and likewise quickest to respond to right
conditions.
1t has been reported recently that
Stephen Phillips was to the
bankruptcy court and failed to attend be-
cause he was unable 10 buy a ticket from
oxford 10 London. This may or may not
be true. II true, II proves that poets
cannot steal, and to beg they are ashamed,
and also that In this rich century -especi-
ally rich in 7socialistic and philanthropic
deslRns-the world does not always pay
the great debt which occasionally Il owes
There is a debt eternally owing the poet
and artist, 90 him. who alone recreatos
and keeps alive the spirit Of Beauty before
mems eyes-a debt which cannot ado
quately be paid by the erection Of a men,
orial tablet after the poets death. Now
when the infusion Of modern practical life
in literature never was more pronounced
there comes the occasional and vital op-
portunity for action--BaltimOre News.