University of Virginia Library

A SYMPOSIUM OF POETS.

Here, Lewis Morris, in this green and cosy umbrageous retreat, let's have a poet swing
And chat of every mortal thing—
We'll hold a brief Symposium.
And with a sonnet catch the shy bird Bridges,
Who writes so little and yet gives so much
And has, with you, the architekton's touch,
Serene, sedate,
And marches on to his predestinate
Goal, swerving not. And as June brings its midges,
With nightingales and roses, let me come—
Though scarce as finely feathered as are some
And not in favour,
Like our bold Laureate with his loyal jumping
And paid tub-thumping
Of courtly savour;
I may be tiny but I yet can sting,
And you must do the royal part and sing.
Beneath my beech-trees—sub tegmine fagi—
We well may pass a pleasant hour,
And fancy knowledge is a power
Or ignorance a costly plague; I,
As here delectably we sit,
Will gladly serve the wine if you the wit.
You two are scholars, with a broader ken
Than these poor Bumblepuppy babblers,
And like brave gentlemen
You take your learnèd leisure with the ease
Of conscious grace and strength,
And not as sordid scrabblers
Who smell of garlic and but write to please;
You please to write, in larger moods and strains,
And grandly utter in due time at length
The free and finished
And rounded orb of perfect pains,
With magic undiminished.
No gutter mark on your sweet toil,
Which breathes of moorlands and the fresh-turned soil
And mountain tops, and marries
Wide culture and virginity
Of all untrodden ways and higher air,
And carries
The seal of whatsoever is most fair
And true Divinity.
Mud-raking lurks not here, you love it not—
The reek of brothels and the blare of taverns,
Corruption gilt and glorified, the spot
Thrice-damned to splendour turned, and Lady Charlotte
Undressed in public and adored as harlot;
Your steps lie elsewhere, by the crystal caverns
And tumbling waves—
Afar from London gas and legs
And all the treasured dregs
Of pavements, music halls, and whited graves—
By breezy wood,
And flowers like flame that ravish and refine
Or pastures golden with the celandine,
Where womanhood
Retains the jewels of her purity
And prizes it, and deems not shame
Is honour. You, O Bridges,
Classic and calm upon the snowy ridges
Untravelled (yet your haunt) look down futurity,
And leave a heritage and name;
As you, dear Cymric Bard,
With the bright crown so regal and unmarr'd.
No futile shaping
Yours, and no mock-heroic fits,
The bastard blisses and sky-scraping,
The waxen lilies, paper passions,
And meretricious fires and fashions,
Of shoddy poets
And all the little-mighty Thundertits
Who rape the Muses and their manner,
Half Jingoes and half Jowetts,
Yet harping on the same dull string—
Who strut beneath their signboard banner,
But lack the vital thing.
Your silver converse breaks, like wimpling waters,
Upon my charmèd ears;
My spirit hears
Long cadences of time, that swoon and swell
With the low laugh of England's daughters
Among green clouds of trees
Touched by a gentle breeze,
Now infinite as ocean, now one shell;
In the calm measured fate
Of words that move to thought's own melody
In it's eternity,
Pure and proportionate.
Alas, that I may never dare to give
To others, to the world, a copy
Of catholic great notes
Which are your glory and prerogative;
To this false age, so sham and shoppy,
Which grabs at greasy votes
And hands of Demos (or Arithmos) drunk
With ignorance and wind and pelf,
And daily lower sunk
In Caliban brute worship of itself.
The universe beats in each little chime
Of yours, and music of all time;
While their cosmography,
May be summed up in one sick term pornography.
Ah, hear my bees in branches pendulous
Discoursing better
With their unstudied music murmurous
Among the flowers
Of rarer souls in dim forgotten bowers;
Than these that wear a fetter
And call it freedom, while they dance and gabble
To any tune that's set them by the Rabble
Of crowned stupidity,
Or insipidity,
And know no feeling and no aim
(Whate'er they speak and spoil and claim)
Beyond the malice sour
Or idle impulse of the hour.
For, ah, the moment of the mean has struck
The strumpet-call of lewdness,
And vermin revel in the mire and muck
Of unrenewedness.
Yes, this white port is famous
For twenty miles and more;
A precious German Prince, fat ignoramus,
With fifty pounds a year and rich in Rotdam
In search of English money and a bride,
Once tasted it and swore
He never drank such royal sherry—
Not he, “Ach, Gott dam!”
And much he maundered of his country's pride,
Her wars and Williams, and waxed merry;
And then, still praising his good cheer,
He asked me for cigars and beer!
It has a finer fragrance
Than any red, a delicate sweet note
Of warmer lands, the vagrance
Which comes not but from brighter suns,
Where beneath cloudless blue its epic runs
The stream of Camoens and he wrote.
Ah, here no politics,
No cant
Of party cries or candlesticks
And crosses or the everlasting sex!
No hateful Socialistic sputter
Of unwashed orators who smell and pant,
No bread and butter
Problems to harry us and vex
The rates, no redolence of gas!
No schoolboards here,
To bring a red-tape atmosphere
Of musty rations
And all the last abominations—
But vinum et in vino Veritas!
Here's to a gayer earth, a broader sky
For grand old English letters,
And confusion
To those who cramp our New Academy
And their abettors
With squalid pale seclusion
And sickly art,
Which has each mortal trick except the heart—
The fringes down to the last tag,
The paint and powder
And every sort of purple rag,
Each loop and button—
Which, as it feebler wanes, yet scolds the louder.
O I am more than weary, sirs,
Of leperous loves and these anaemic stirs
In petticoats and pinched philosophers!
Art, for Art's sake, is dead as mutton—
Yes, dead and damned for ever and for ever,
And no endeavour
Will galvanise to life that nauseous mess
(Too mean for Adderlèy's gaunt clerics)
Of cheap hysterics,
And all imaginable filthiness.
So here we found—and on a wider basis
Than any passing phasis
Of fashion's folly—here we found
(In truth and sanity,
Whate'er is fresh and beautiful and fair
And walks on earth and breathes a heavenly air,
On sure and solid ground)
Our New Academy.
Hence no appeal to any further court—
This is the bar,
The final and the supreme central star
Which gives the first and last report,
And brooks no other.
For each of you will bring a brother,
The fittest that he knows to make
The living line of uttermost white finish
Which nought can add to or diminish,
In righteousness of art
And with the holy heart,
For love and beauty sake.
And each of them will guarantee one more,
Foredestined by the calling as of grace
And its election to an equal place,
Pre-eminent in sweet poetic lore,
Among the chosen Few.
And these will gather in yet two glad wearers
Of golden bloom and dawn and dew,
The radiant crown of song,
Most gentle and most strong,
Who will be too the guardians and the bearers
Of that most heavenly fire
Lit first at flaming founts
In lightning and on legendary mounts,
And handed down through ages
By reverence of the sages
In wonder and desire.
And were my own poor hearty wish opportune, which you deny,
We might have had a great Archbishop
To give his blessing and paternal pressing,
And the pure odour lent by sanctity;
For instance, that commander
Of faithful souls, the second Alexander,
Who conquers far more worlds and wins a pœan
Of wider praise than the Pellœan;
For he, in aching lives of dearth,
Has poured refreshing streams
Of all enchantments and all soothing dreams
And conquered Heaven as well as earth.
Nor will you suffer woman,
Whom I would warmly hail,
To blend her weakness rich and human
And perfect that which would be thus divine
With what is fairest and most feminine—
Although she shall prevail.
You dread the “Higher Morals,”
Which are a trade mark for triumphant lust
Perched on our social drains,
Playing with vice as babes with bells and corals,
And every Scatterbrains
Who would build Eve anew from dirt and dust,
And prurient madam
Who knows the first man was Macadam.
We'll lift Poetics to its proper seat,
The centre of our light and lore,
A mint for but refinèd ore;
No commerce whereby men do drink and eat
Who only care to cheat
Not charm, and fill the shop or belly
(Like the primæval protoplasmic jelly)
And curse our ethic ends and snore.
The minor key, you say is settled
For centuries, and subjectivity
Played sadly out;
And the new era, many-mettled,
With other eyes and pure proclivity
Dwells on the graces beyond doubt
And gifts of the external.
The pessimist is passing from the stage,
With all his moans and groans profuse
And self-abuse;
While on the joys of the Eternal,
We build the temple of a brighter age.
Your lofty level speech,
O Bridges, raises me in hopes
Away from this thin period and the screech
Of femininity
And forcible and feeble in-and-inity;
For like the heliotrope
You turn for ever to the sun,
And each fair end is a fresh work begun.
But, Morris, hear the stutter
Of the great owl that cannot tell the tale
Borne down the endless years
And big with grave arrears,
Which still he strives to utter;
And there the nightingale,
As jealous of your richer voice
And truer fiction
Pours out the tempest of his benediction,
And bids a better world rejoice.
My wine is good, you cry—celestial tonic;
I thank you much, yet yours is sweeter—
But see the moonlight on that mullion!—
And what Tertullian
Might well have called though in a nobler sense
A draught demonic
And in the taste and perfume meeter,
Not under-toned nor over-tense;
And in your music, with you both,
Nature rejected now renews her troth.
Lo, we have talked the evening out, and night
Has taken flight,
And a serener day
Is trembling in the East,
A glorious feast
Of gold and pearls in sweetest disarray.
We hail the omen,
And will accept the solemn charge
A better race to run,
In spite of hidden fears and many foemen—
To write our history large
In co-extensive thought and song,
And roll a happier earth along;—
Hail to the rising sun!