additions to its penny publications: The Three Companions of Christ, a translation of the Visions and Instructions of the Blessed Angelo of Foligno, by Rev. George O'Neill, S.J., is a series of highly and deeply spiritual meditations on Our Lord's inseparable companions while He was on this earthPoverty, Humiliations, Sufferings. The thoughts have that insight and unction which are to be found only in the writings of saints. Belgium, by R. L. P. is an interesting and wellwritten sketch of the history and general characteristics of that suffering country. Benedict XV. and the Unrest pervading Human Society, by R. J. Kelly, K.C., contains a translation of the present Pope's Encyclical of Nov. 1st, 1914, and a lengthy introduction recounting the events of his life up to the present time. Popular and Patriotic Poetry. Part IX. Compiled by R. J. Kelly, K.C. Thomas Davis, James Clarence Mangan, Thomas D'Arcy M'Gee, Father Abram Ryan, and a dozen other writers of popular poetry, are represented in this number of the series. It opens with Davis's splendid "Song of the Volunteers of '82."

TRIOLETS

(JOYS, SORROWS AND GLORIES)

Mary's joys though deep and wide
Equalled were by Mary's woes
Ere her Son for sinners died.
Mary's joys though deep and wide
Led to Calvary's crimsoned side,

Where she saw Christ's Passion close.

Mary's joys though deep and wide
Equalled were by Mary's woes.

Mary's joys and sorrows made
Her a Queen in Paradise,
Where her glory ne'er shall fade.
Mary's joys and sorrows made
Her the sinner's hope and aid.

Christ no boon to her denies.
Mary's joys and sorrows made
Her a Queen in Paradise.

MAGDALEN ROCK.

THE IRISH MONTHLY

JULY, 1915

POETRY AND THE REVERSE

PART III. THE UTTERANCE OF POETRY

By THE REV. GEORGE O'NEILL, S.J.

WHEN

WHEN a theorist on an art-subject begins to talk about "the laws of beauty," then indeed there is reason for anxiety on the part of those who are following him as to when and where he will end, and through what obscure regions, after "how many ways and days" he will arrive, if at all, at a conclusion. On such a subject as this the professor in the Bab Ballads was very exhaustive:

He argued right, he argued left,
He also argued round about him,

while his auditors slept. But we have no desire to involve ourselves in the pains and penalties of so unrelenting a completeness. We intend to avoid them on the present occasion by the most drastic of methods-by skipping an entire treatise on the nature of the Beautiful, and by leaving that difficult question to be settled by the general apprehensions of each reader. General apprehensions will, I believe, be sufficient for our purpose. What we require is such a general idea of the demands of beauty in art as will enable us to determine the nature of poetical expression. We require practical answers to questions such as the following-does poetry require verse and metre; can there be poetry in prose; is science rather than prose (i.c.,

VOL. XLIII.-No. 505

31

the matter rather than the manner) the true antithesis of poetry? To supply such answers (or the material for them) is one and the same thing with our consideration of the laws of beauty as ruling the utterances of poetry, and forms, therefore, our present task. (1)

Poetry is subject to the laws of beauty because it is an art, and art is par excellence the sphere of beauty of beauty evolved by man. The connections of art with the good, the true, the useful are real, most real; else would art have no right to exist. But these relations are indirect or external. The intrinsic laws by which art is ruled are those of beauty -beauty understood in its widest, most generous sense. Now, if poetry is subject to those laws it must be rhythmical. Rhythm pervades all that is beautiful, nay indeed, if we are to believe some thoughtful souls, all that is vital.(2) Our pulses beat rhythmically, our physical pains, our griefs, our remorse, our high spirits, come and go rhythmically. In all that we admire rhythm is obviously or subtly present. Good prose is rhythmical. But these loose rhythms of nature and prose are not enough for poetry. Considering its definition so far as already explained, we shall see that it asks for elaboration of design and symmetry, for rich variety rounded by unbroken unity. It is a carillon whose chimes must always satisfy and never disappoint the expectant ear. In simple words, poetry craves metre seeks expression in rhythms that are balanced, measured, symmetrical.

Prose, we have said, is rhythmical: it cannot be metrical. Prose is not a pure art, while poetry is: the former therefore must not "lay itself out" (as we say) for the purpose of giving aesthetic pleasure, while it is the business of

I See Irish Monthly for June, 1915, where poetry was defined as "the language of passion and imagination expressing themselves under control of the laws of beauty."

Thus the Japanese sage quoted by Mr. Rolleston in his book Parallel Paths, p. 250, for whom "Art is the great Mood of the Universe, moving hither and thither amidst those harmonic laws of matter which are Rhythm," and for whom the first principle of Art is "The Life-movement of the Spirit through the Rhythm of Things." See also Mrs. Meynell's essay (giving its name to the volume which it ppens) The Rhythm of life.

poetry to do this. Prose has its own harmonious effects, powerful often, sometimes exquisite: but they must remain far short of metre as of all that suggests ornament for the sake of ornament. Prose, bent on the tasks of reason and practice, must be always sparing and sometimes ascetic in its use of graces and embellishments; but Poetry, even though her message be as weighty as that of an archangel, need not ever, any more than Gabriel, lay aside her light wings and her rainbow vesture.

Poetry tends to be metrical, because it is passionate. This is no contradiction of what has been already said concerning the utterances of passion. (3) The outbursts of uncontrolled passion are indeed unmusical and therefore unmetrical. But we shall find that human emotion-and the more surely the higher, intenser, more engrossing it istends to submit itself to the bonds of rhythm. In musical forms it finds soothing and solace; it also finds effective selfexpression. Study the outbursts of joy for triumph, grief for disaster, lamentation for the dead, fury against the enemy, welcome to the conqueror, that are the rude poetry of primitive folks; and you will find how largely repetition, refrain, inchoate metre are part of their natural language. Of simple repetitions it might be tedious to give examples: but, passing on to more artistic forms of varied or intensified repetition, many illustrations might be quoted from (to take but one source) the Hebrew Scriptures. Listen to the Psalmist's penitential prayer, the "Miserere, with its pathetic returns upon its own phrases; or to a passage like the following, where linked progress is combined with constant increase of force :

66

Hear, O Lord, my prayer,

And let my cry come unto thee:
Turn not away thy face from me;

In the day of my trouble, incline thine ear to me;

In what day soever I shall call upon thee, hear me

speedily.'

Rhythm," says De Quincey, "is at once a cause of impassioned feeling, an ally of such feeling and a natural effect of it."(5) Passion, therefore, naturally seeks for itself

Irish Monthly, June, 1915, p. 383. 'Psalm 101.

5 Style, vol. x., ed. Masson.

the sublimated and perfect rhythm which is the voice of poetry, and, finding it, can thrill the world. For, as the rhythmic, symmetric vibrations of the air or the ether stir up illimitable corresponding vibrations and fling far into space the contagion of sound or electricity, so the metric pulses of the song or the saga propagate unto multitudes and peoples the emotions of the singer, and make his song a vital force in a million of remote lives.

Poetry, then, is metrical because it is emotional. It is metrical, again, because it is imaginative. Imagination requires expression that in the highest degree idealizes. We have seen how this faculty, or rather group or conspiracy of faculties tends to exalt and transfigure all tha it takes up, raising us from the inconsistencies and poverties of the actual world to spheres where (for a brief hour! dreams and hopes are realized. Now to this idealizing process metre gives the last magic touch. It bars out the

real by what we may venture to call its unreality. Its unreality-for, in the first place, manifesting as it does the shaping hand and the creative purpose of the artist, it is a perpetual evidence and silent reminder that we are now far removed from the region of literal facts, that we have given up materialistic records for what Lord Bacon calls "feigned history." In the second place, metre constantly suggests to us what is the immediate and proper purpose of poetry, namely, the giving of pleasure of a certain rare and elcvated pleasure. It keeps ever before us the non-realistic beauty of order and design. (6) It unremittingly and agreeably stimulates the attention, claiming no small share of this for itself; and by this perpetual interposition of its own beauty it relieves the grimness of tragic themes and the dulness of plain ones, presenting all these to us alike not as crude realities, but as ethereal fields for the free play of our mental faculties.

Finally, poetry is metrical because it is an art. Its business is the use of words to the purposes of beauty: now metre is the most commanding means by which beauty can be elicited from words. It elevates them to a new power of

6" Non-realistic": because though order and design may be everywhere, we do not and cannot always realize them.