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TECHNIQUE
COULD but this be brought | |
| Into your ken,—that the technique is thought! | |
| Escape from “Style,” the notion men can use | |
| Words without thoughts,—so wrench and so abuse | |
| The innocent language to their ends that they | 5 |
| Will seem to be respectful, honest, gay, | |
| Grave, or what else—and all the glorious while | |
| The authors’ selves sit with the wise and smile: | |
| “’T is but a trick, ’t is words, it is a style!” | |
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| Your technique, then, is thought, just as I say. | 10 |
| And if you ’ll write a poem, there ’s no way | |
| But first to think it clearly; pin your mind | |
| Upon your thought; fasten it there, and bind | |
| The thought into your heart: when your veins burn and flow | |
| With love or hate, the thoughts to music go, | 15 |
| Melt into music, and pour fully out | |
| In a rich flood;—but to take thought about | |
| The “music” of your words, ’t is matter quite | |
| Beyond your conscious power! For rhymes, they ’re right | |
| Or wrong according as they hear, not look | 20 |
| When printed by a printer in a book! | |
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| And their “correctness” may be measured best, | |
| And indeed only, by a certain test: | |
| That, namely, for rebellions,—which are so | |
| Until they have succeeded, when they go | 25 |
| By quite another name. Forget not, too, | |
| That every English poet known to you, | |
| That is to say all of them, rhymed just as | |
| The spirit took them and their pleasure was, | |
| And, masters that they were, rhymed “falsely,” so | 30 |
| As now no poetaster dares to do! | |
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PURPOSE
So then, at last, let me awake this sleep | |
| And languor of yourself: it is too deep, | |
| And ’t is too long! | |
| Oh, I would have you look | 35 |
| With judgment on your life, and not to brook | |
| The less in art, as not in truth;—forgive | |
| Much in you now I can, never that you less live! | |
| I may put by whatever choice of themes, | |
| But not this air of being by rich dreams | 40 |
| Roofed over, and floored under, and walled in. | |
| As Eastern princes in a palanquin | |
| Luxuriously ride, by eunuchs round | |
| Held and supported, lifted from the ground, | |
| And softly borne,—so you, on the mild shoulders, | 45 |
| Effeminate, of dreams!—Your spirit moulders; | |
| The freshness of your soul withers away | |
| As roses do that cannot find the day. | |
| Oh, free yourself!—take up your life and share | |
| The splendor of this day, the world’s great air, | 50 |
| And this new land’s delight,—this land that we | |
| Adore, this people, this great liberty | |
| Of nations in new birth,—a happy shower | |
| Of golden States,—a many-blossomed flower!— | |
| Now grown a Commonwealth, whose strength and state | 55 |
| And health are dangerous to all that hate | |
| Freedom, and fatal to all those who’d be | |
| Sunk in the dark of Time’s abysmal sea, | |
| Safe anchored in the past—safe dead!—that none | |
| Might longer make them fear a change beneath the sun, | 60 |
| To fright them with new good.—But oh, to those | |
| Whose blood within them leaps and laughs and flows; | |
| To all who proudly hope; to all who fain | |
| With their right hands and with their heart and brain | |
| Would throne the right, and make the good to reign; | 65 |
| To all who’d lift man up, and who, heart-free, | |
| Haste toward the light,—this Land and State should be | |
| Dear as their life!—And to her sons should she | |
| Be born again in love, since with her noblest blood | |
| And her right hand of youth she smote the brood | 70 |
| Of her own loins, nested in servitude, | |
| Shadowing the world’s detraction with fair peace. | |
| Dear mother of her sons, whose wealth is these; | |
| Her more than gold, their valor, mercy, truth; | |
| Her mighty age, immortal in their youth:— | 75 |
| Dear light of hope, oh, needs she not to be | |
| Forever saved into new liberty? | |
| The fallen blood of martyrs is in vain | |
| If ours be not as free to fall again! | |
| But her salvation is a rigorous task, | 80 |
| Eternally accomplishing.—I ask | |
| You, therefore, as one owing more than most | |
| To her, who is your happiness and boast, | |
| That you cast from you all that will not wake | |
| Men’s hearts from sensual sleep:—for her great sake | 85 |
| Put by the velvet touch, the easy grace, | |
| The fingers dreaming on the lyre, the face | |
| Forgetful, listening to light melodies; | |
| Cease thou thy toying with the hours, and cease | |
| This riot of thy youth, this wantoning | 90 |
| With all the sap and spirit of thy Spring. | |
| Not twice that vendure’s given thee; the Tree | |
| Of Life not twice shall blossom; and to be | |
| Young, ’t is to be in heaven, ’t is to be | |
| Full of ambition, filled with hot desire, | 95 |
| Pregnant with life, and steeped in such a fire | |
| AS sets a world in hope!—Oh, could I say | |
| That which I would, you could not say me nay. | |
| But let your country plead with you; give heed | |
| To her dumb call; sow the eternal seed | 100 |
| Of Truth, and Righteousness, and Love;—though you | |
| Shall be, as poets should, known to but few, | |
| Yet your reward is great: it is to be | |
| Sown in the hearts of men, to make men free; | |
| And in your thoughts to be your land’s firm stay, | 105 |
| And her salvation in a falling day, | |
| More than dread cannon, than bright thousands more: | |
| For thoughts, like angels, wage eternal war. | |
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