such a traveler, as the crowded, noisy years went on, cease trying to explain to anyone that strange vision, even while in his heart the picture of that midnight village grew always more vivid, more arresting? To one traveler turned aside last Christmas time from the clamourous streets of today, to walk for a little while the Christmas road through old Salem, the memory of the Christmas city grows ever more significant, more challenging. The glory of imperial Rome has faded into darkness, but does the road to Bethlehem still lie silver clear, beckoning to wise men? As long as little children shall be born, shall there be reborn each Christmas the faith in a God who became a baby? Ringing through midnight streets, echoed among the black overshadowing branches of mystery, shall there sound forever, as always at Christmas time in old Salem, the praise of a great light? Thy glad beams, Thou morning Star, Thee we own, Lord alone, Man's great Saviour, God's dear Son. WINIFRED KIRKLAND. A PRINCE OF LIGHT VERSE BY ARNOLD WHITRIDGE MR. CARL Sandburg has never been accused of slavish imitation. He may admit the sway of Walt Whitman, but otherwise we gather that he is proud to have eschewed the past. We hear him referred to sometimes as the most autochthonous of contemporary American poets. Not for him the primrose path of Keats and Shelley or the desiccated atmosphere of New Englandhe sings of delicatessen clerks, of Chicago, "hog butcher of the world," and of slabs from the sunburnt West. Whether he is really more American or only more modern than Longfellow and James Russell Lowell is of no great consequence, but it is interesting to note that it is his vocabulary rather than his ideas that commands our attention. His poetry finds utterance in words that have hitherto been regarded as the more or less exclusive property of essentially unpoetic prose. Not long ago we came across a passage from Ronsard's Abrégé d'Art Poétique which might have been written to vindicate Sandburg's additions to poetic phraseology. "Je t'ordonne," says Ronsard to the young poets of the sixteenth century, “de fréquenter les artisans de tous mestiers comme de Marine, Vénerie, Fauconnerie, et principalement les artisans de feu, Orfèvres, Fondeurs, Mareschaux, Minérailleurs et de là tirer mainte belle et vive comparaison avecques les noms propres des métiers." Probably Carl Sandburg is unconscious of the long arm of Ronsard reaching out through the centuries and directing him in the way he should go. The total rupture with tradition, however, is inconceivably difficult. Theories of poetry strew the ages and the most iconoclastic of moderns always runs the risk of devoting himself to some creed repudiated by his grandfather as a vulgar error. This constant straining to break the fetters of tradition is just as evident in French literature of the nineteenth century as in contemporary American letters. The literary Radical invariably concentrates his contempt upon his immediate forbears. The further they recede the more innocuous they become. In another generation or two we shall not be surprised if even the New Englanders emerge from the shadows. So it was with the romantic poets under the ægis of Victor Hugo. They indignantly spurned the pseudo-classic poetry so beloved by their fathers and set out to win their laurels by a direct assault upon feeling. Close upon their heels came the Parnassians with a different theory of poetry founded entirely upon form. They were followed by the Symbolists, who like every literary or political régime in France during the last hundred years withered under the scorn of the opposition. In its anxiety to escape the thraldom of eighteenth century reason and to cater to the insistent demand for novelty, Poetry found its way back to Ronsard. Sainte-Beuve had already called attention to his flexibility, to his variety of metre and to the essentially musical note in his verse. The great critic pointed the way to the promised land but he never penetrated into it himself. It was left to his admirer, Théodore de Banville, to recapture the full flower of Ronsard for French poetry. Without surrendering himself to Ronsard's archaic charm, Banville emulated his suppleness and his love of words for their own sake. As he was born in 1823, the fashion of celebrating centenaries would earn him a cursory nod even if he were not the literary ancestor of a large and ever growing family. Every man who wrestles with the demon Rhyme in the frantic effort to produce a graceful ballade struggles in the chains forged by Banville. He did not invent the form, to be sure, but he restored it to fashion after it had been lying idle for two hundred years. The learned ladies of the Hotel de Rambouillet had long ago delighted in ballades. Unluckily, when the sway of the Précieuses Ridicules was broken by the overpowering common sense of Molière, the ballade had become too much associated with their name to continue an independent existence. English poetry has twice transplanted this measure from France. In the fourteenth century Chaucer borrowed it from Eustache Deschamps, and fifty years ago Swinburne and Austin Dobson selected it among other literary wares that were being exhibited by Théodore de Banville as worthy of reimportation. We are apt, however, to think of Banville too much as a mere master of technique. Certainly he carried to perfection the art of the ballade, the triolet, and the rondeau, but he was not styled the legislator of the new Parnassus on the strength of these accomplishments. His Petit Traité de Poésie Française is the codification of the Parnassian theories of poetry. Anatole France dismissed it summarily as expressing a nightingale's metaphysics, and no doubt Banville's conception of poetry is curiously unintellectual. He staked everything on what he called richesse implacable de la rime. By richness he meant repetition not only of the vowel but of the supporting consonant. "Breeze" and "freeze" for instance, would be a respectably affluent rhyme, whereas "breeze" and "squeeze" is obviously a poor, poverty-stricken thing. The poet's inspiration must find its vent in such rhymes and the reader must seek enjoyment in his perception of the ingenuity displayed. Banville also insisted on the importance of utilizing the musical resources of the language by recognizing the sonority of certain words and calculating their æsthetic effect. It is easy to see how Mallarmé, following in his footsteps, arrived at the conclusion that the value of poetry lay more in the sound of words than in their sense. Arthur Rimbaud carried the flag of sensuousness even further by allotting specific colors to each vowel. He was no doubt convinced that the poor limited creatures who did not see that “i” was red or that "o" was blue were quite incapable of appreciating great poetry. Banville's poetic theories might well be ignored if they did not happen to go hand in hand with his sense of humour. We have mentioned his connection with the Parnassians. As a young man he wrote a vast amount of statuesque poetry, but in the mythical desert island library which all of us are forever envisaging Banville will be represented by his one volume of Odes Funambulesques. In this collection of parody and lyric satire rhyme again plays the leading part. We have nothing in English that quite compares with it. Bergson's philosophic treatise on laughter explains humour as a sudden jerk to the imagination. This definition would seem to fit the average parody which relies on the constant juxtaposition of the trivial and the sublime. But parody for the most part confines itself to ridiculing an idea, whereas Banville always strives for the double jerk of sense plus sound. He never forgets that he is primarily a lyric poet, and his satire consequently exhibits his own dexterity more than the absurdities of his victim. Take, for instance, his gentle burlesque of Victor Hugo's poem, Sara la Baigneuse. Here are the first stanzas of the original and the parody. Sara, belle d'indolence, se balance Dans un hamac, au-dessus Toute pleine D'eau puisée a l'Ilissus. Veron, tout plein d'indolence Se balance, Aussi ventru qu'un tonneau, O Barège, Plein jusqu'au bord de ton eau. For Sara, belle d'indolence, Banville has substituted Veron, the director of the Opera, whose portly figure would be familiar to most of his readers. The jest is perhaps not one to endure the ravages of time, but we can still appreciate the deftness of the versification. The Odes Funambulesques are, unfortunately for the casual reader, stuffed with topical allusions. Banville wrote for the Paris of Gavarni and Balzac, and unless we know that delectable city we must fall back on the precious prerogative of youth which, according to Anatole France, differs from old age in its capacity for admiration without understanding. There are no doubt people to whom the skill of the tight rope walker does not appeal. We beg them not to waste their time on Banville's odes. They will only gaze with compassion tinged with wonder upon his feats of equilibrium. That a human being should spend so much time and industry on an accomplishment that at its best is only curious, will strike them as incomprehen |