The Worlds Best Poetry, Volume 3 | Page 2

LIFE

By
LYMAN ABBOTT


NOTICE OF COPYRIGHTS.
I.
American poems in this volume within the legal protection of copyright are used by the courteous permission of the owners,--either the publishers named in the following list or the authors or their representatives in the subsequent one,--who reserve all their rights. So far as practicable, permission has been secured also for poems out of copyright.
PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. 1904.
Messrs. D. APPLETON & Co., New York.--W.C. Bryant: "Blessed are They that Mourn," "The Conqueror's Grave," "Thanatopsis."
Messrs. E.P. DUTTON & Co., New York.--Mary W. Howland: "Rest."
The FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, New York.--John W. Palmer: "For Charlie's Sake."
Messrs. HARPER & BROTHERS, New York.--Will Carleton: "Over the Hill to the Poor House."
Messrs. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co., Boston.--Margaret Deland: "Love and Death;" John Hay_: "A Woman's Love;" _O.W. Holmes: "The Last Leaf," "The Voiceless;" Mary Clemmer A. Hudson_: "Something Beyond;" H.W. Longfellow_: "Death of Minnehaha," "Footsteps of Angels," "God's Acre," "The Rainy Day," "The Reaper and the Flowers," "Resignation;" _J.R. Lowell_: "Auf Wiedersehen," "First Snow Fall," "Palinode;" _Harriet W. Preston_: "Fidelity in Doubt;" Margaret E. Sangster: "Are the Children at Home?" E.R. Sill_: "A Morning Thought;" _Harriet E. Spofford: "The Nun and Harp;" Harriet B. Stowe: "Lines to the Memory of Annie." "Only a Year;" J.T. Trowbridge_: "Dorothy in the Garret;" _J.G. Whittier: "To Her Absent Sailor," "Angel of Patience," "Maud Muller."
Mr. JOHN LANE, New York.--R. Le Gallienne: "Song," "What of the Darkness?"
Messrs. LITTLE, BROWN & Co., Boston.--J.W. Chadwick: "The Two Waitings;" Helen Hunt Jackson: "Habeas Corpus."
The LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY, Boston.--Paul H. Hayne: "In Harbor."
Messrs. G.P. PUTNAM'S SONS, New York.--Elaine Goodale Eastman: "Ashes of Roses;" R.C. Rogers: "The Shadow Rose."
Messrs. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, New York.--_R. Bridges (Droch)_: "The Unillumined Verge;" Mary Mapes Dodge_: "The Two Mysteries;" Julia C.R. Dorr_: "Hush" (Afterglow).
II.
American poems in this volume by the authors whose names are given below are the copyrighted property of the authors, or of their representatives named in parenthesis, and may not be reprinted without their permission, which for the present work has been courteously granted.
PUBLISHERS OF THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY. 1904.
W.R. Alger; Mrs. Amelia E. Barr; Henry A. Blood (Mrs. R.E. Whitman); _Robert J. Burdette; John Burroughs; Mary A. De Vere; Nathan H. Dole; William C. Gannett; Dr. Silas W. Mitchell; Mrs. Sarah M. Piatt; Walt Whitman_ (H. Traubel, Literary Executor).

AN INTERPRETER OF LIFE.
BY LYMAN ABBOTT.
Poetry, music, and painting are three correlated arts, connected not merely by an accidental classification, but by their intrinsic nature. For they all possess the same essential function, namely, to interpret the uninterpretable, to reveal the undiscoverable, to express the inexpressible. They all attempt, in different forms and through different languages, to translate the invisible and eternal into sensuous forms, and through sensuous forms to produce in other souls experiences akin to those in the soul of the translator, be he poet, musician, or painter. That they are three correlated arts, attempting, each in its own way and by its own language, to express the same essential life, is indicated by their co-operation in the musical drama. This is the principle which Wagner saw so clearly, and has used to such effective purpose in his so-called operas, whose resemblance to the Italian operas which preceded them is more superficial than real. In the drama Wagner wishes you to consider neither the music apart from the scenery, nor the scenery apart from the acting, nor the three apart from the poetry. Poetry, music, and art combine with the actor to interpret truths of life which transcend philosophic definition. Thus in the first act of "Parsifal," innocence born of ignorance, remorse born of the experience of temptation and sin, and reverence bred in an atmosphere not innocent yet free from the experience of great temptation, mingle in a drama which elevates all hearts, because in some one of these three phases it touches every heart. And yet certain of the clergy condemned the presentation as irreverent, because it expresses reverence in a symbolism to which they were unaccustomed.
But while it is true that these three arts are correlative and co-operative, they do not duplicate one another. Each not only speaks in a language of its own, but expresses in that language a life which the others cannot express. As color and fragrance combine to make the flower, but the color expresses what the fragrance cannot express, and the fragrance expresses what the color cannot express, so in the musical drama, music, poetry, and painting combine, not by duplicating but by supplementing each other. One may describe in language a symphony;