A Study of Poetry by Bliss Perry (top 10 books of all time txt) 📕
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Through love and thought, through power and dream.”
I also suggest for classroom discussion the following brief passages from recent verse, printed without the authors’ names:
1. “The milkman never argues; he works alone and no one speaks to him; the city is asleep when he is on his job; he puts a bottle on six hundred porches and calls it a day’s work; he climbs two hundred wooden stairways; two horses are company for him; he never argues.”
2. “Sometimes I have nervous moments—
there is a girl who looks at me strangely
as much as to say,
You are a young man,
and I am a young woman,
and what are you going to do about it?
And I look at her as much as to say,
I am going to keep the teacher’s desk
between us, my dear,
as long as I can.”
3. “I hold her hands and press her to my breast.
“I try to fill my arms with her loveliness, to plunder her sweet smile with kisses, to drink her dark glances with my eyes.
“Ah, but where is it? Who can strain the blue from the sky?
“I try to grasp the beauty; it eludes me, leaving only the body in my hands.
“Baffled and weary, I came back. How can the body touch the flower which only the spirit may touch?”
4. “Child, I smelt the flowers,
The golden flowers … hiding in crowds like fairies at my feet,
And as I smelt them the endless smile of the infinite broke over me,
and I knew that they and you and I were one.
They and you and I, the cowherds and the cows, the jewels and the
potter’s wheel, the mothers and the light in baby’s eyes.
For the sempstress when she takes one stitch may make nine unnecessary;
And the smooth and shining stone that rolls and rolls like the great
river may gain no moss,
And it is extraordinary what a lot you can do with a platitude when you
dress it up in Blank Prose.
Child, I smelt the flowers.”
Recent criticism has been rich in its discussions of the lyric. John Drinkwater’s little volume on The Lyric is suggestive. See also C. E. Whitmore’s article in the Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass., December, 1918. Rhys’s Lyric Poetry, Schelling’s English Lyric, Reed’s English Lyrical Poetry cover the whole field of the historical English lyric. A few books on special periods are indicated in the “Notes” to chapter ix.
An appreciation of the lyric mood can be helped greatly by adequate oral reading in the classroom. For teachers who need suggestions as to oral interpretation, Professor Walter Barnes’s edition of Palgrave’s Golden Treasury (Row, Petersen & Co., Chicago) is to be commended.
The student’s ability to analyse a lyric poem should be tested by frequent written exercises. The method of criticism may be worked out by the individual teacher, but I have found it useful to ask students to test a poem by some or all of the following questions:
(a) What kind of experience, thought or emotion furnishes the basis for this lyric? What kind or degree of sensitiveness to the facts of nature? What sort of inner mood or passion? Is the “motive” of this lyric purely personal? If not, what other relationships or associations are involved?
(b) What sort of imaginative transformation of the material furnished by the senses? What kind of imagery? Is it true poetry or only verse?
(c) What degree of technical mastery of lyric structure? Subordination of material to unity of “tone”? What devices of rhythm or sound to heighten the intended effect? Noticeable words or phrases? Does the author’s power of artistic expression keep pace with his feeling and imagination?
For a discussion of narrative verse in general, see Gummere’s Poetics and Oldest English Epic, Hart’s Epic and Ballad, Council’s Study of Poetry, and Matthew Arnold’s essay “On Translating Homer.”
For the further study of ballads, note G. L. Kittredge’s one volume edition of Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Gummere’s Popular Ballad, G. H. Stempel’s Book of Ballads, J. A. Lomax’s Cowboy Songs and other Frontier Ballads, and Hart’s summary of Child’s views in Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass., vol. 21, 1906. The Oxford Book of English Verse, Nos. 367-389, gives excellent specimens.
All handbooks on Poetics discuss the Ode. Gosse’s English Odes and William Sharp’s Great Odes are good collections.
For the sonnet, note Corson’s chapter in his Primer of English Verse, and the Introduction to Miss Lockwood’s collection. There are other well-known collections by Leigh Hunt, Hall Caine and William Sharp. Special articles on the sonnet are noted in Poole’s Index.
The dramatic monologue is well discussed by Claude Howard, The Dramatic Monologue, and by S. S. Curry, The Dramatic Monologue in Tennyson and Browning.
The various periods of English lyric poetry are covered, as has been already noted, by the general treatises of Rhys, Reed and Schelling. Old English lyrics are well translated by Cook and Tinker, and by Pancoast and Spaeth. W. P. Ker’s English Literature; Mediaeval is excellent, as is C. S. Baldwin’s English Mediaeval Literature. John Erskine’s Elizabethan Lyric is a valuable study. Schelling’s introduction to his Selections from the Elizabethan Lyric should also be noted, as well as his similar book on the Seventeenth-Century Lyric. Bernbaum’s English Poets of the Eighteenth Century is a careful selection, with a scholarly introduction. Studies of the English poetry of the Romantic period are very numerous: Oliver Elton’s Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830, is one of the best. Courthope’s History of English Poetry and Saintsbury’s History of Criticism are full of material bearing upon the questions discussed in this chapter.
Professor Legouis’s account of the change in atmosphere as one passes from Old English to Old French poetry is so delightful that I refrain from spoiling it by a translation:
“En quittant Beowulf ou la Bataille de Maldon pour le Roland, on a l’impression de sortir d’un lieu sombre pour entrer dans la lumi�re. Cette impression vous vient de tous les c�t�s � la fois, des lieux d�crits, des sujets, de la mani�re de raconter, de l’esprit qui anime, de l’intelligence qui ordonne, mais, d’une fa�on encore plus imm�diate et plus diffuse, de la diff�rence des deux langues. On reconna�t sans doute g�n�ralement � nos vieux �crivains ce m�rite d’�tre clairs, mais on est trop habitu� � ne voir dans ce don que ce qui d�coule des tendances analytiques et des aptitudes logiques de leurs esprit. Aussi plusieurs critiques, quelques-uns fran�ais, ont-ils fait de cet attribut une mani�re de pr�texte pour leur assigner en partage la prose et pour leur retirer la facult� po�tique. Il n’en est pas ainsi. Cette clart� n’est pas purement abstraite. Elle est une v�ritable lumi�re qui rayonne m�me des voyelles et dans laquelle les meilleurs vers des trouv�res—les seuls qui comptent—sont baign�s. Comment dire l’�blouissement des yeux longtemps retenus dans la p�nombre du Codex Exoniensis et devant qui passent soudain avec leurs brillantes syllables ‘Halte-Clerc,’ l’�p�e d’Olivier, ‘Joyeuse’ celle de Charlemagne, ‘Monjoie’ l’�tendard des Francs? Avant toute description on est saisi comme par un brusque lever de soleil. Il est tels vers de nos vieilles romances d’o� la lumi�re ruisselle sans m�me qu’on ait besoin de prendre garde � leur sens:
“‘Bele Erembors a la fenestre au jor
Sor ses genolz tient paile de color,’ [Footnote: “Fair Erembor at her window in daylight
Holds a coloured silk stuff on her knees.”]
ou bien
“‘Bele Yolanz en chambre coie
Sor ses genolz pailes desploie
Coust un fil d’or, l’autre de soie….” [Footnote: “Fair Yoland in her quiet bower
Unfolds silk stuffs on her knees
Sewing now a thread of gold, now one of silk.”]
C’est plus que de la lumi�re qui s’�chappe de ces mots, c’est de la couleur et de la plus riche.” [Footnote: Emile Legouis, D�fense de la Po�sie Fran�aise, p. 44.]
While this chapter does not attempt to comment upon the work of living American authors, except as illustrating certain general tendencies of the lyric, I think that teachers of poetry should avail themselves of the present interest in contemporary verse. Students of a carefully chosen volume of selections, like the Oxford Book, should be competent to pass some judgment upon strictly contemporary poetry, and I have found them keenly interested in criticizing the work that is appearing, month by month, in the magazines. The temperament and taste of the individual teacher must determine the relative amount of attention that can be given to our generation, as compared with the many generations of the past.
APPENDIX
Believing as I do that a study of the complete work of some modern poet should accompany, if possible, every course in the general theory of poetry, I venture to print here an outline of topical work upon the poetry of Tennyson. Tennyson’s variety of poetic achievement is so great, and his technical resources are so remarkable, that he rewards the closest study, even on the part of those young Americans who cannot forget that he was a “Victorian”:
TOPICAL WORK UPON TENNYSON
I
THE METHOD OF CRITICISM
[The scheme here suggested for the study of poetry is based upon the methods followed in this book. The student is advised to select some one poem, and to analyse its content and form as carefully as possible, in accordance with the outline printed below. The thought and feeling of the poem should be thoroughly comprehended as a whole before the work of analysis is begun; and after the analysis is completed, the student should endeavor again to regard the poem synthetically, i. e., in its total appeal to the aesthetic judgment, rather than mechanically and part by part.]
FORM / CONTENT
A “IMPRESSION”
Of Nature. What sort of observation of natural phenomena is revealed in this poem? Impressions of movement, form, color, sound, hours of the day or night, seasons of the year; knowledge of scientific facts, etc.?
Of Man. What evidence of the poet’s direct knowledge of men? Of knowledge of man gained through acquaintance with Biblical, classical, foreign or English literature? Self-knowledge?
Of God. Perception of spiritual laws? Religious attitude? Is this poem consistent with his other poems?
B “TRANSFORMING IMAGINATION”
Does the “raw material” presented by “sense impressions” undergo a real “change in kind” as it passes through the mind of the poet?
Do you feel in this poem the presence of a creative personality?
What evidence of poetic instinct in the selection of characteristic traits? In power of representation through images? In idealization?
C “EXPRESSION”
What is to be said of the range and character of the poet’s vocabulary? Employment of figurative language? Selection of metre? Use of rhymes? Modification of rhythm and sound to suggest the idea conveyed? Imitative effects?
In general, is there harmony between form and content, or is there evidence of the artist’s caring for one rather than the other?
II
TENNYSON’S LYRIC POETRY
[Write a criticism of the distinctively lyrical work of Tennyson, based upon an investigation at first hand of the topics suggested below. Do not deal with any poems in which the narrative or dramatic element seems to you the predominant one, as those forms of expression will be made the subject of subsequent papers.]
A. “IMPRESSION” (i. e., experience, thought, emotion).
General Characteristics.
Does the freshness of the lyric mood seem in Tennyson’s case dependent upon any philosophical position? Upon sensitiveness to successive experiences?
Is his lyric egoism a noble one? How far does he identify himself with his race? With humanity?
Is his lyric passion always
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