On the Reading of Poetry THERE is no doubt, I fear, that certain people are born without, as certain other people are born with, a love of poetry. Any natural gift is a great advantage, of course, be it physical, mental, or spiritual. The dear old tales which suggest the presence of fairies at the cradle of the new-born child, dealing out, not very impartially, talents, charms, graces, are not so far from the real truth. You may have been given a straight nose, a rosy cheek, a courteous manner, a lively wit, a generous disposition; but perhaps the Fairy Fine-Ear, who hears the grass grow, and the leaf-buds throb, had a pressing engagement at somebody else's cradle-side when you most needed her benefactions. There is another elf too, a Dame o' Dreams; she is clad all in color-of-rose, and when she touches your eyelids you see visions forever after; beautiful haunting things hidden from duller eyes, visions made of stars and dew and magic. Never any great poet lived but these two fairies were present at his birth, and it may be that they stole a moment to visit you. If such was the case you love, need, crave poetry, to understand yourself, your neighbor, the world, God; and you will find that nothing else will satisfy you so completely as the years go on. If, on the other hand, these highly mythical but interesting personages were absent when the question of your natural endowment was being settled, do not take it too much to heart, but try to make good the deficiencies. You must have liked the rhymes and jingles of your nursery-days: or Ride a Cock-horse To Banbury Cross! Mistress Mary quite contrary How does your garden grow? I am certain you remember what pleasure it gave you to make "contrary" rhyme with Mary" instead of pronouncing it in the proper and prosy way. 66 66 But," you answer, "I did indeed like that sort of verse, and am still fond of it when it dances and prances, or trips and patters and tinkles; it is what is termed "sublime" poetry that is dull and difficult to understand; the verb is always a long distance from its subject; the punctuation comes in the middle of the lines, so that it reads like prose in spite of one, and it is generally sprinkled with allusions to Calypso, Edipus, Eurydice, Hesperus, Corydon, Arethusa, and the Acroceraunian Mountains; or at any rate with people and places which one has to look up in the atlas and dictionary." Of course, all poems are not equally simple in sound and sense. It does not require much intelligence to read or chant Poe's Raven, and if one does not quite understand it, one is so taken captive by the weird, haunting music of the lines, the recurrence of phrases and repetition of words, that one does not think about its meaning: "While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "Tis some visitor,' I muttered, tapping at my chamber door Only this, and nothing more.'" The moment, however, that your eye falls upon the following lines from "Paradise Lost you confess privately that if you were obliged to parse and analyze them the task would cause you a weary half-hour with Lindley Murray or Quackenbos. "Adam the goodliest man of men since born Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain-side, |