Evening star., 1925-09-07
THIS AND THAT
BY CHARLES +. TRACEWELL.

Flower in the crannied wall.
l pluck you out OF the crannies.
l ,hoid you here. root and all. in my hand,
Little Flower--but il could understand
what you are. root and all. and all in all
should know what God and man is.
Tennyson wrote it-not Wordsworth.
III L had not known it's authorship
all my life undoubtedly I would today,
after being apprised of the fact by cor.
respondents from all parts of the Dis
trict of Columbia
You see, in a moment of abstraction
recently attributed the authorship of
those lines to the great Wordsworth
whom one of the same correspondents
declared wrote many things far su.
perior to anything Tennyson ever
achieved
However that may be. Tennyson
wrote Little Flower in the Crannied
Wall. The fact that manv have taken
me to task for giving it to the wrong
man shows what a hold the great Vic
tor1an poet still has upon the English
speaking peoples.
Yes, he was a great poet, this Alfred
Lord Tennyson an incomparabI
composer OF true poetry in what some
are pleased to call the old fashioned
style. Yet one may be forgiven for
wondering IL this so-called old-fash
ioned style is not, after all, the real
style in poetry.
Have we anything more perfect in
its way than Crossing the Bar? De
spite the fact that it has been hack
neyed by repetition, 1t still remains
sublime and will be regarded so as
long as the world is filled with lovers
of poetry.
Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for me
Ann may there N no moaning at the bar,
when / put out to
But such tide as moving seems asleep.
Too ruiz for sound or foam.
When that which drew from out the hound
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening hell
And after that the dark
Ana may there he no sadness Of farewell
For tho from out our bourp. of Tim. and
The mood may hear me far.
none to see my pilot face to face
Hhen have crossed the bar.
x%
All that men may think or hope of
death IS condensed into those few
lines, all the vast fears Of the cen.
turtles. dating from the far days when
savage ancestors accompanied the
funeral procession: all the tremendous
hopes of men. begun in those same far
ages, and carried down without break
TO this, our time.
Death is no stranger to us of today.
No, and as long AS we feel it's force
as long as there is no fireside. how
ever well guarded. without it's empty
chair, as our own Longfellow nut it
SO long, then, will we have need for
such simple, great expressions as Ten
nysons Crossing the Bar"
What will he the average persons
smazement, then. upon looking for
this poem in The oxford Book of
English Verse" one of our sterling
anthologies. to find II nowhere present.
In emitting it the learned editor
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. has violated
one of his own rules of conduct set
down in the introduction TO that very
fine volume. in which he SAYS:
The best is the best. though a
hundred judges have declared it so
nor had it been any feat TO search out
and insert the second-rate merely be.
cause II happened to be recondite."
Upon this basis il is hard TO see
how Sir Arthur could have left out
of his otherwise good anthology a
poem that most readers, of all de.
Crees of education, will call one OF
the greatest lyrics ever written.
Yes. IL has been quoted sd nauseum,
but who cares? Surely not those who
read poetry in the quiet of their
home. for whom only this mode of ex.
preston fully satisfies the longing for
a combination of music, sense and
emotion on the printed page.
Sir Arthur finds no place, either,
for the Flower in the Crannied
WALL and yet I believe most poetry
lovers will give it a prominent posi-.