University of Virginia Library

THE OLD NOVELIST'S MONOLOGUE

So you've written a novel, you clever boy, and ask me to read it through?
A serious task, at my time of life, when I'm turning seventy-two.
But it 's complimentary, nevertheless, for a grandson twenty-four
To vote his grandfather's views and creeds are a boon instead of a bore.
I 've written famous novels, you say? Dear Guy, it was long ago!
I must read myself up. I 've forgotten the names of at least a dozen or so.
Do the people take to them kindly still? I recall—the publishers do ...
That 's a bit of a pose, I'm afraid you'll think, for a fellow of seventy-two.
But I never posed, and I told my tales no less with head than with heart,
And I trusted art for the sake of truth, not art for the sake of art.
Let me give you a bit of warning, boy; it 's a path full of snares and slips
Before, like Roland, you reach the tower and set the slug to your lips.
Hell 's paved, they say, with intentions good; you may take it ill or well,
But you'll find before you are forty, Guy, that literature is hell!
God help the best of 'em when they seek, howsoever brave their laugh,
To make it (as old Sir Walter said) a crutch instead of a staff!
But thanks to your dear dead father's thrift, you can twirl the cane to your taste—
You never need drown in the newspaper sea; there 's a belt of cork round your waist.
I 've seen so many who went like that—poor, dauntless, with troops of friends;
They burned their candle to quite a blaze, for they burned it at both its ends.
And soon they had left but the smoking wicks in lieu of the bridling flame,
And even the smoke long ago has gone, though the world once called it fame.
But you, dear boy, have the chance and choice; you 've the honey without the gall;
Euterpe may wait in your anteroom and Pegasus fume in your stall.
You can spend a week on the turn of a phrase till its tinkle is deftly placed;
You haven't that hair at the nib of your pen, with its harsh little name of haste.
You can stare in Minerva's grey-green eyes, and vow, by their dreams beguiled,
That you'll ache with a discontent divine till her sculptured lips have smiled.
But ah, be cautious, my gifted Guy; there are waves that lurk to whelm
Even hardier-builded boats than yours, when leisure is at the helm.
Excalibur meant mere clumsy steel till Pendragon its hilt had reared,
And Aladdin, you know, had to rub his lamp before the genie appeared.
You ask me for counsel? Gird your loins; disheartenment laugh to scorn;
With a sturdy alpenstock clamber up where the mountains meet the morn.
Don't aspire to scale the loftiest peak; Shakespearian lungs are rare. ...
Still, climb as long as your own can breathe the attenuated air.
Of its tonic opal quaff great gulps ere you look on the lands below;
For the lands will be Life; you must watch them well, with their wonderful overflow.
Then choose what you cannot will but choose in their bounty of shades and shines,
From the glimpses of brooks' far silver threads to the glooms of austere pines;
From the heavenward hope of a neighbour hill to the storm-cloud's black despair;
From arrogances of the splintry crags to the meek sweet moss they wear;
From the sleepy calms (with their browsing goats) of the emerald vales and glades
To those pale perpetual suicides of the precipiced cascades.
You will find them all, for they all are merged, with their moods of peace or strife,
In the deeps and heights, in the lengths and breadths, of that Switzerland called Life. ...
Out of Life take phases you love the best—only these, if you are wise;
Through Inferno Dante walked like a god, but he stumbled in Paradise.
Yet be most of all your authentic self. Seek truth and beauty and power
By a straight road, not by sinuous ones. Disdain the ephemeral hour.
From the cavern of memory brush with zeal all the echoes that bat-like cling
Till the only echoes its walls throw back from your own voice rise and ring.
Academic? Gothic? Who cares which, so long as you shun mere sham?
If you long for a Parthenon, try it, lad. If you don't, try a Notre Dame.
But whatever conception you may plan, make sure it is crystal-clear.
Half a thought, half a brain. Besides, the obscure is mostly the insincere. ...
So, I'll read your novel. My eyes are poor, but I'll read it faithfully through—
A serious task, at my time of life, when I'm turning seventy-two.