The Fargo forum and daily republican. [volume] (Fargo, N.D.) 1894-1957, 1913-03-12
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,attains elevation only at the expense
of real emotional warmth and imagi-
nation. The drift is, indeed, towards
a purely intellectual exercise Of the
fancy, based rather upon concepts.
upon intuitive perceptions. 1t
was Miss Ellen Terry who said she
had eve heard so much talk about
beauty, or seen so little evidence of
it's sensuous appreciation, as among
might be said OF American verse,
which impresses the reader no less
by it's coldness than by it's intricate
Subtleties of form. Nor has subject
matter much to do with this. The
young poets who today rebel most
against what they call "Puritanism''
in American art, and seek to intro
duce a note of passion, assume pre-
cisely the same attitude In essaying
to celebrate it's glowing myteries; and
in attempting to exalt these, they i'm
port into them outworn conceptions OF
allurement and of sin in the manne
of Swinburne and Baudelaire or Os-
car Wilde. 1t is, after all, merely an
exchange of models The mood is the
same, and we are just as far as before
from real poetry-that is, poetry that
is an intimate personal record of
thought and emotion.
1t is not new themes that we need,
but the knowledge that the province
or poetry marches upon that OF prose,
that the material for the one as for
the other lies close at hand, ready for
use, and that the surest way to attain
heights in either is to pay strict at
tention to truth and naturalness of
expression. The taste for Subfimities
tends to dry up the sources Of the
simple, tender, purely human senti-
ment that finds utterance, for exam
pie, in the verse of ONE of the young-
er French poets of today who at once
in their ease and their elegance afford
a distinct relief from our own Wrists.
The latter, like our athletes, seem Oft
en- over trained. These French YER
sitiers have also that sense Of hui
NOR" which we so irritably arrogate
to ourselves as a national excellence,
though it does not safeguard us
against taking ourselves very serious
ly indeed In nearly everything we at
tempt. We strive so to appear, while
they feel absolutely at home in their
medium of expression, daring to say
so much in verse that we should
shrink from for fear that it might be
bad manners or beneath our dignity.
No incident which pleaSes or amuses
them, no fancy which excites or graft
fles them, is unworthy to be turned
into easy flexible, and dexterous
~VerSe-yeC verse admirable In warmth
and tenderness of sentiment-to
which they bring a closeness of obser-
walton, a realistic coIoring Of descrip-
ton, a ~cleverness of witty invention,
productive of charming surprises,
from stanZa to stanza, that we seldom
encounter in our own versiiers.
1t seems plain that the great poetry
for which we are so DESTROYS today,
and which must first of all be natural
and sincere, might be more surely at
tained in the course of time If we
were to relax somewhat from our
strained and tense attitude in court
ing the muse. We should make of
poetry one of the graces rather than
n of the sever duties Of the intel
lectual life. And we should. in the
meantime, be accommodating an admir-
able body of well turned minor verse,
without due appreciation Of which,
according to the degrees of it's merits,
we may fail to recognize the great
manifestation when it does finally ar
rive.
Food may be digested in the stom
ach of a cat thirteen hours after its
demise Wonder iii fha aiRhf rannain-