Ponkapog Papers [26]
inform the world in eleven anaemic stanzas of terze rime that the cup of happiness has been forever dashed from his lip (he appears to have but one) and darkly intimates that the end is "nigh" (rhyming af- fably with "sigh"), will probably be engaged a quarter of a century from now in making simi- lar declarations. He is simply echoing some dysthymic poet of the past--reaching out with some other man's hat for the stray nickel of your sympathy. This morbidness seldom accompanies gen- uine poetic gifts. The case of David Gray, the young Scottish poet who died in 1861, is an in- stance to the contrary. His lot was exceedingly sad, and the failure of health just as he was on the verge of achieving something like success justified his profound melancholy; but that he tuned this melancholy and played upon it, as if it were a musical instrument, is plainly seen in one of his sonnets. In Monckton Milnes's (Lord Houghton's) "Life and Letters of John Keats" it is related that Keats, one day, on finding a stain of blood upon his lips after coughing, said to his friend Charles Brown: "I know the color of that blood; it is arterial blood; I cannot be deceived. That drop is my death-warrant. I must die." Who that ever read the passage could forget it? David Gray did not, for he versified the incident as happening to himself and appropriated, as his own, Keats's comment:
Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain, There came arterial blood, and with a sigh Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, That drop is my death-warrant; I must die.
The incident was likely enough a personal experience, but the comment should have been placed in quotation marks. I know of few stranger things in literature than this poet's dramatization of another man's pathos. Even Keats's epitaph--Here lies one whose name was writ in water--finds an echo in David Gray's Below lies one whose name was traced in sand. Poor Gray was at least the better prophet.
WISHMAKERS' TOWN
A LIMITED edition of this little volume of verse, which seems to me in many re- spects unique, was issued in 1885, and has long been out of print. The reissue of the book is in response to the desire off certain readers who have not forgotten the charm which William Young's poem exercised upon them years ago, and, finding the charm still potent, would have others share it. The scheme of the poem, for it is a poem and not simply a series of unrelated lyrics, is in- genious and original, and unfolds itself in mea- sures at once strong and delicate. The mood of the poet and the method of the playwright are obvious throughout. Wishmakers' Town--a little town situated in the no-man's-land of "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" --is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the dawn. The clangor of bells far and near calls the townfolk to their various avocations, the toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness, the miser to his gold. In swift and picturesque se- quence the personages of the Masque pass be- fore us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers, gossips, soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd the scene, and have in turn their word of poign- ant speech. We mingle with the throng in the streets; we hear the whir of looms and the din of foundries, the blare of trumpets, the whisper of lovers, the scandals of the market-place, and, in brief, are let into all the secrets of the busy microcosm. A contracted stage, indeed, yet large enough for the play of many passions, as the narrowest hearthstone may be. With the sounding of the curfew, the town is hushed to sleep again, and the curtain falls on this mimic drama of life. The charm of it all is not easily to be defined. Perhaps if one could name it, the spell were broken. Above the changing rhythms hangs an atmosphere too evasive for measurement--an atmosphere that stipulates an imaginative mood on the part of the reader. The quality which pleases in certain of the lyrical episodes is less intangible. One readily explains one's
Last night, on coughing slightly with sharp pain, There came arterial blood, and with a sigh Of absolute grief I cried in bitter vein, That drop is my death-warrant; I must die.
The incident was likely enough a personal experience, but the comment should have been placed in quotation marks. I know of few stranger things in literature than this poet's dramatization of another man's pathos. Even Keats's epitaph--Here lies one whose name was writ in water--finds an echo in David Gray's Below lies one whose name was traced in sand. Poor Gray was at least the better prophet.
WISHMAKERS' TOWN
A LIMITED edition of this little volume of verse, which seems to me in many re- spects unique, was issued in 1885, and has long been out of print. The reissue of the book is in response to the desire off certain readers who have not forgotten the charm which William Young's poem exercised upon them years ago, and, finding the charm still potent, would have others share it. The scheme of the poem, for it is a poem and not simply a series of unrelated lyrics, is in- genious and original, and unfolds itself in mea- sures at once strong and delicate. The mood of the poet and the method of the playwright are obvious throughout. Wishmakers' Town--a little town situated in the no-man's-land of "The Tempest" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" --is shown to us as it awakens, touched by the dawn. The clangor of bells far and near calls the townfolk to their various avocations, the toiler to his toil, the idler to his idleness, the miser to his gold. In swift and picturesque se- quence the personages of the Masque pass be- fore us. Merchants, hucksters, players, lovers, gossips, soldiers, vagabonds, and princes crowd the scene, and have in turn their word of poign- ant speech. We mingle with the throng in the streets; we hear the whir of looms and the din of foundries, the blare of trumpets, the whisper of lovers, the scandals of the market-place, and, in brief, are let into all the secrets of the busy microcosm. A contracted stage, indeed, yet large enough for the play of many passions, as the narrowest hearthstone may be. With the sounding of the curfew, the town is hushed to sleep again, and the curtain falls on this mimic drama of life. The charm of it all is not easily to be defined. Perhaps if one could name it, the spell were broken. Above the changing rhythms hangs an atmosphere too evasive for measurement--an atmosphere that stipulates an imaginative mood on the part of the reader. The quality which pleases in certain of the lyrical episodes is less intangible. One readily explains one's