The Worlds Best Poetry, Volume 3 | Page 6

of the reader's study.
If for example the student turns to such a volume as Newman Smyth's "Christian Ethics," he will find there a careful though condensed discussion of the right and wrong of suicide. It is cool, deliberate, philosophical. But it gives no slightest hint of the real state of the man who is deliberating within himself whether he will commit suicide or no; no hint of the real arguments that pass in shadow through his mind:--the weariness of life which summons him to end all; the nameless, indefinable dread of the mystery and darkness and night into which death carries us, which makes him hesitate. If we would really understand the mind of the suicide, not merely the mind of the philosopher coolly debating suicide, we must turn to the poet.
"To be, or not to be: that is the question:?Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer?The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,?Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,?And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;?No more; and by a sleep to say we end?The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks?That flesh is heir to, 't is a consummation?Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep;?To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;?For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,?Must give us pause: there's the respect?That makes calamity of so long life;?For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,?The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,?The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,?The insolence of office, and the spurns?That patient merit of the unworthy takes,?When he himself might his quietus make?With a bare bodkin! Who would fardels bear,?To grunt and sweat under a weary life,?But that the dread of something after death,?The undiscovered country from whose bourne?No traveller returns, puzzles the will?And makes us rather bear those ills we have?Than fly to others that we know not of??Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;?And thus the native hue of resolution?Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,?And enterprises of great pith and moment?With this regard their currents turn awry,?And lose the name of action."
This first the poet does: he draws aside the veil which hides the working of men's hearts, and lets us see their hidden life. But he does more. Not merely does he afford us knowledge, he imparts life. For we know feeling only by participating in the feeling; and the poet has the art not merely to describe the experiences of men but so to describe them that for the moment we share them, and so truly know them by the only process by which they can be known. Who, for instance, can read Thomas Hood's "The Bridge of Sighs" and not, as he reads, stand by the despairing one as she waits a moment upon the bridge just ready to take her last leap out of the cruelty of this world into, let us hope, the mercy of a more merciful world beyond?
"Where the lamps quiver?So far in the river,?With many a light?From window and casement,?From garret to basement,?She stood, with amazement,?Homeless by night.
"The bleak wind of March?Made her tremble and shiver;?But not the dark arch,?Or the black flowing river:?Mad from life's history,?Glad to death's mystery?Swift to be hurled--?Anywhere, anywhere?Out of the world.
"In she plunged boldly--?No matter how coldly?The rough river ran,--?Over the brink of it!?Picture it--think of it,?Dissolute man!?Lave in it, drink of it,?Then, if you can.
"Take her up tenderly,?Lift her with care;?Fashioned so slenderly,?Young, and so fair!"
No analysis of philosophy can make us acquainted with the tragedy of this life as the poet can; no exhortation of preacher can so effectively arouse in us the spirit of a Christian charity for the despairing wanderer as the poet.
Would you know the tragedy of a careless and supercilious coquetry which plays with the heart as the fisherman plays with the salmon? Read "Clara Vere de Vere." Would you know the dull heartache of a loveless married life, growing at times into an intolerable anguish which no marital fidelity can do much to medicate? Read "Auld Robin Gray." Who but a poet can interpret the pain of a parting between loving hearts, with its remorseful recollections of the wholly innocent love's joys that are past?
"Had we never loved sae kindly,?Had we never loved sae blindly,?Never met--or never parted,?We had ne'er been broken hearted."
Who but a poet can depict the perils of an unconscious drifting apart, such as has destroyed many a friendship and wrecked many a married life, as Clough has depicted it in "Qua Cursum Ventus"? If you would know the life-long sorrow of the blind man at your side, would enter into his life and for a brief moment share his captivity, read Milton's interpretation of that sorrow