SCOTTISH POETRY OF TO-DAY. Many genuine lovers of Burns see little distinction between what is good and bad in their own Poet's work, and, consequently, cannot win from his best the highest pleasure that it gives. A simple illustration will prove that this must be so. In any craft that of joiner, mason, or plumber-only the man who understands good workmanship finds enjoyment in it, while the man who tolerates bad work spoils the workman. So in poetry; if we are content to accept as poetry anything that runs smoothly, rhymes passably, and expresses some simple human feeling, then we are demanding too little from the poet. But worse follows; for we lower the standard of production, breed poor poets, and discourage those who might be something better, when they discover that in their own country the fourth-rate versifier and the genuine poet are lumped together, with a local preference for the former. It is even more discouraging from the financial side, for it is safe to say that a local poet will probably clear expenses when a real poet will lose, for it is the miserable truth that in Scotland scarcely any publisher will publish poetry at his own risk. He dare not do so, for poetry is not bought in Scotland. But poets, unless they have private means, cannot go on publishing at their own expense indefinitely, and so, as their hoped-for public fails them, their early enthusiasm is crushed, and the vein of poetry within them is no longer worked. This is one simple explanation of the tragic poverty of Scottish poetry for scores of years. Yet during those years Scotland has gone on placidly satisfied with the accomplishment of Burns, as if a country had any right to pride when its present cannot match its past, as if monuments to the dead and praises of the dead were sufficient compensation for the lack of living men who might merit either monument or praise. That long period of stagnation is past, I trust; for, if poetry does not continue among us as a living force, as a newly created and freshly living thing, then poetically we shall be dead, whatever professions of reverence we make for a past which we no longer try to be worthy of. WHAT IS A POEM? I hope to give, in the course of this paper, some reason for that trust, but first I must state what demands I make from a poet's work before I accept it as poetry. First-what is a poem? It is the record of an experience which gives us the thrill of that experience. In actual practice it has been found that the poetic form is that which most perfectly creates in the reader the intensity and the reality of the experience itself. The first test, therefore, is the creation within us of the feeling that the poet is giving us something out of real life. But real life is a very varied thing, and experience may range from a mild flirtation to a love affair which means life and death, from a congregational meeting to a martyrdom, from voting at a School Board election to leading a revolution, from rowing in a boat to shipwreck, from the death of a sparrow to a mining disaster; and on all these subjects poems have been written, perfect in their way, and on all these hundreds of verses have been written, worse in their kind than the worst jerry-built house. When the work is poor, the subject does not matter; when the work is good, the thrill is measured by the greatness of the subject. Whoever is reading this paper may take his own life as a guide. He knows what have been the great, the exciting moments in it. Out of these, if he had been a poet, he might have wrought a poem which would have made other men feel his experience as their own-to the enriching of their own lives. That is the ultimate test. If a poem brings no imaginative enrichment of our experience, we might as well be watching a third-rate football match for all the good it does us. Contrariwise, that is why a great poem seems so wonderful. It is because it is a new experience to us. It is as surprising as a railway accident, or, rather, as first love or spiritual conversion. We are never entirely the same after it. But a still stranger thing happens: we do not need to think the poet right. He may be Christian, Turk, or atheist; saint or sinner; passionate Tory or passionate democrat; lover or hater: all that matters is the greatness of that experience and the intensity with which he makes it ours. And as death or heart-break is the most moving of all human experiences, we have in that fact the reason why tragic poetry is the greatest of all. That is why “Ye Banks and Braes "is of a loftier order of poetry than "A Man's a Man for a' that "; and why the lines "And ilka bird sang o' its Luve, are pure and great poetry. They are the cry of a shattering experience, and as we hear them-if we do hear them it is as if a lightning flash had revealed a tragedy in the dark. Yet there is nothing new in "Ye Banks and Braes": there is little new in the world. But every oldest delight or disaster is new to each man or woman who experiences it, and it is this sense of vivid newness that poetry gives to the imagination. If a poem does not give me that, I don't care a straw what it gives. It may be humorous, tender, satirical, or tragic, but I demand that it be as alive as I am when I am most alive. All other verse had best be flung into the ash-bucket of oblivion, for the more it abounds the more it dulls the flame of true poetry. I shall not attempt to appraise critically the poets whom I intend to deal with in this paper. I am writing here, not to criticise, not to try to fix the measure of their importance, but simply to show that genuine poetry, according to my standard, is being written to-day, and to prove that there are poets living who are not content merely to walk in the old furrows. If my standard is right, then whatever I quote should stir in my readers some pleasurable surprise. Why I do not know, but the first two poems that rise before me as I write are Pittendrigh Macgillivray's "Mercy o' Gode " and Edwin Muir's "Ballad of the Flood." They are as different as night from day, in subject and treatment; yet they are alike in their definiteness, alike in the singling out of folk who in brief space are endowed with life and character, alike in this, that we are shown a sharpened vision of a portion of life, or of life in one transcendent moment. "The Mercy o' Gode" tells of "twa bodachs," of the gangrel kind, who sat down one day on a table-stane in a Kirkyaird and started a discussion about a "First Cause": "Twa broken auld men wi' little but jaw- Aye-better awa': Yawmerin' ower things that nane can tell, "Dour Baldy he barkit in praise o' the Lord- An' the wull o' Gode '; But Stumpie believ't nor in Gode nor man, In darkness smored."* *The italics are mine. The poem dwells on the tragic irony of the picture presented by them, "twa dune auld men-naither bite nor bed," compelled by fate to rest among the deid—a life problem" ill to redd." It closes thus: "But as nicht drave on I had needs tak the road, The love o' ma dog: An' tho' nane wad hae me that day at the fair, In the poem there is not one forced note, not one that is not passionately alive, though the passion, being that of wondering pity, is deep, not clamorous. Its art is a powerful factor in the creation of the impression made: the lines come like spoken thought-it is a living voice we hear. "The Ballad of the Flood" is exactly what its title says, and is one of the few modern ballads I have read which make any approach to the visionary power of the old Scottish ballads. It is a singularly vivid telling of the Bible story. I select from its thirty-seven stanzas these six, which reveal one incident with startling distinctiveness "The first day that auld Noah sailed, The second day that auld Noah sailed, "And tables set wi' meats were there, And twa lovers on a silken couch "They soomed upon the hameless sea, |
