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030 - The Poets' Corner--I · Reviews

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  Speaker 1: Section twenty nine of reviews by Oscar Wilde. This is
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  Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Cory Samuel, Reviews by Oscar Wilde, edited by
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  Speaker 1: Robert Ross, Section twenty nine The Poet's Corner, one Pawmal Gazette,
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  Speaker 1: September twenty seventh, eighteen eighty six. Among the social problems
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  Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, the tramp has always held an
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  Speaker 1: important position, but his appearance among the nineteenth century poets
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  Speaker 1: is extremely remarkable. Not that a tramp's mode of life
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  Speaker 1: is at all unsuited to the development of the poetic faculty.
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  Speaker 1: Far from it. He, if anyone, should possess that freedom
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  Speaker 1: of mood which is so essential to the artist, for
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  Speaker 1: he has no taxes to pay and no relation to
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  Speaker 1: worry him. The man who possesses a permanent address, and
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  Speaker 1: whose name is to be found in the directory, is
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  Speaker 1: necessarily limited and localized. Only the tramp has absolute liberty
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  Speaker 1: of living. Was not Homer himself a vagrant, and did
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  Speaker 1: not thespis go about in a caravan? It is then
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  Speaker 1: with feelings of intense expectation that we open the little
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  Speaker 1: volume that lies before us. It is entitled Low Down
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  Speaker 1: by Two Tramps, and is marvelous even to look at.
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  Speaker 1: It is clear that art has at last reached the
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  Speaker 1: criminal classes. The cover is of brown paper, like the
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  Speaker 1: covers of mister Whistler's brochures. The printing exhibits every fantastic
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  Speaker 1: variation of type, and the pages range in color from
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  Speaker 1: blue to brown, from gray to sage green, and from
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  Speaker 1: rose pink to chrome yellow. The Philistines may sneer at
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  Speaker 1: this chromatic chaos, but we do not. As the painters
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  Speaker 1: are always pilfering from the poets, why should not the
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  Speaker 1: poet annex the domain of the painter and use colour
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  Speaker 1: for the expression of his moods and music. Blue for
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  Speaker 1: sentiment and red for passion, gray for cultured melancholy, and
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  Speaker 1: green for descriptions. The book, then, is a kind of
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  Speaker 1: miniature rainbow, and with all its varied sheets, is as
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  Speaker 1: lovely as an advertisement hoarding. As for the peripatetics, alas
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  Speaker 1: they are not nightingales, their note is harsh and rugged.
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  Speaker 1: Mister G. R. Simms is the god of their idolatry.
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  Speaker 1: Their style is the style of the Surrey theater, and
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  Speaker 1: we are sorry to see that disregard of the rights
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  Speaker 1: of property, which always characterizes the able bodied vagrant, is
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  Speaker 1: extended by our tramps, from the defensible pilfering from hen
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  Speaker 1: roosts to the indefensible pilfering from poets. When we read
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  Speaker 1: such lines as and builded him a pyramid four square,
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  Speaker 1: open to all the sky and every wind, we feel
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  Speaker 1: that bad as post aultry snatching is, plagiarism is worse
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  Speaker 1: vacilis des census averno. From highway robbery and crimes of violence,
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  Speaker 1: one sinks gradually to literary petty larceny. However, there are
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  Speaker 1: coarsely effective poems and volume such as a Super's Philosophy,
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  Speaker 1: Dick Hewlett, A Ballad of the Californian School, and Gentlemen Bill.
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  Speaker 1: And there is one rather pretty poem called the Return
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  Speaker 1: of Spring, when robins hop on naked boughs and swell
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  Speaker 1: their throats with song, while laborers trudge behind their plows
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  Speaker 1: and blithely whistle their teams along. One glimpse of summer
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  Speaker 1: sunshine chase park shadows on the distant hills, and scented
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  Speaker 1: tufts of Pansy's grace, moist grots that scape Rudborian chills.
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  Speaker 1: The last line is very disappointing. No poet nowadays should
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  Speaker 1: write of rude Boreus. He might just as well call
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  Speaker 1: the dawn Aurora, or say that Flora decks the enameled meds.
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  Speaker 1: But there are some nice touches in the poem, and
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  Speaker 1: it is pleasant to find that tramps have their harmless
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  Speaker 1: moments on the whole the volume, if it is not
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  Speaker 1: quite worth reading, is at least worth looking at the
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  Speaker 1: fool's motley in which it is arrayed, is extremely curious
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  Speaker 1: and extremely characteristic. Mister Irwin's muse comes to us more
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  Speaker 1: simply clad and more gracefully. She gains her color effect
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  Speaker 1: from the poet, not from the publisher. No cocknism or
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  Speaker 1: colloquialism marks the sweetness of her speech. She finds music
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  Speaker 1: for every mood and form for every feeling. In art
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  Speaker 1: as in life, the law of heredity holds good on
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  Speaker 1: a toujour fit de Caalcar, And so it is easy
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  Speaker 1: to see that mister Irwin is a fervent admirer of
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  Speaker 1: mister Matthew Arnold. But he is in no sense a plagiarist.
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  Speaker 1: He has succeeded in studying a fine poet without stealing
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  Speaker 1: from him, a very difficult thing to be do do.
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  Speaker 1: And though many of the reeds through which he blows
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  Speaker 1: have been touched by other lips, yet he is able
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  Speaker 1: to draw on new music from them. Like most of
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  Speaker 1: our younger poets, mister Irwin is at his best in
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  Speaker 1: his sonnets, and those entitled The Seeker after God and
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  Speaker 1: the Pillar of the Empire are really remarkable. All through
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  Speaker 1: this volume, however, one comes across good work, and the
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  Speaker 1: descriptions of Indian scenery are excellent. India, in fact, is
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  Speaker 1: the picturesque background to these poems, and her monstrous beasts,
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  Speaker 1: strange flowers, and fantastic birds are used with much subtlety
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  Speaker 1: for the production of artistic effect. Perhaps there is a
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  Speaker 1: little too much about the pipal tree, but when we
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  Speaker 1: have a proper sense of imperial unity, no doubt the
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  Speaker 1: pipal tree will be as dear and as familiar to
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  Speaker 1: us as the oaks and elms of our own woodlands.
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  Speaker 1: One low down Wayside thoughts in Ballad, another verse by
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  Speaker 1: two Tramps, Redway, Two rhymes and renderings by H. C
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  Speaker 1: Irwin David Stard end of Section twenty nine. The Poet's
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  Speaker 1: Corner one