Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1918-06-19

DoETIC license is convenient term, de-
signed, like charity. to cover a multi.
tude of sins. Like charity, too, poetic IL
cense is likely to- begin at home, somewhat
to the disturbance of the home. BUT unlike
charity, which is often bedridden and un-
able to go abroad, poetic license is an out
rageous gadabout. In fact, poetic license
gads and egads about everything, ruff1ing
the respectable furbelows of Mrs. Grundy
and exasperating all the little rue.of-thumb
critics who sit in big chairs and tell us how
we ought to do things otherwise.
DOETIC license is a double edged weapon
Of offense. 1t may merely affect what
man writes or says when he gets his singing
robes on. And the Gownsman may remark
parenthetically that wings and halo are
not en- regle for all singing robes. Or it
may cut back, this license of the poetic
temperament, and affect the pOet--Or shall
we call him the licensor? 1t may make
him absent minded so that he takes-or
mistakes-somebody else's ideas or some
body elsc's wife for his own. IT may
elevate his thoughts to such a degree that
he neglects the trivialities of life, such, for
example. as the. payment of the butchers
bill--though possibly this is not so accu-
rate case of poetic license as of poetic
justice in these days when the feshpots
of Egypt have become a double snare, for
the soul and the purse.
TIME art of shocking Mrs. Grundy like
L that of the old masters seems now ir-
revocably lost. 1t was at one time flour
ishng, often a highly lucrative, employ
ment, as the triumphant successes in many
fields of Byron, Shelley and Oscar Wilde
can attest; or Poe, Whitman and Whistler.
to come nearer home. For each In his
own sweet way rufIled the feathers of re-
spectability If respectabiity is an old
| bird, as seems quite likely; or fiuttered the
lawns which deck the pudgy shoulders OF
| cOnventionality-to return to Mrs. Grundy
| with the poetic license of "pudgy shou-
ders'' graciously forgiven. Whether this
| excellent old lady, the guardian of our
public conduct If not of our private morals,
| has belied the eyes of Argus and fallen
asleep, dropping her lorgnettes in her lap,
| or whether old age has actually fallen
upon her, certain it is that she cares less
and less what people do, although she oc'
| casionally awalies to what they write.
| TT YOU are not possessed of genius-and
so few of us are-the next best thing
| is the achievement of notoriety. Get your
| name In the papers-it does not much mat
4 ter for what, Contrive to have somebody
| it does not much matter who-call your
| book or your speech or your conduct scan
| dalous." Get Postmaster General Burleson
to prohibit you and your wares the use OF
| the United States mails-and, my boy, you
| are made. You have emerged, you are at
last visible to the naked eye And now. to
| keep 1t up. Do not do things in the man
ner in which other people do them. Any
| man can attract crowd on the street by
| turning a handspring. 1t is not difficult
to turn handspring; scarcely more so
| than to turn a hand-organ. To leave fig
ures, of which the Gownsman confesses
| himself as fond as an actuary, II you write
the things which courtesy and title-pages
call poetry. do not rhyme-rhyming is diff
cult. but you must call II "hackneyed." Do
not descend to counting syllables: no great
poet ever does, and besides, 1t Is likely that
you will count wrong. Above all. do not
make your meaning clear; what has poetry
to do with meaning? Mystery. protundity,
] ep;gms. these are the things; and always,