I wrote in the last sketch but one of the villager with a literary gift
who composes the epitaphs in rhyme of his neighbours when they pass
away and are buried in the churchyard.
This has served to remind me of
a kindred subject - the poetry or verse (my own included) of those who
are not poets by profession: also of an incident. Undoubtedly there is
a vast difference between the village rhymester and the true poet, and
the poetry I am now concerned with may be said to come somewhat between
these two extremes. Or to describe it in metaphor, it may be said to
come midway between the crow of the "tame villatic fowl" and the music
of the nightingale in the neighbouring copse or of the skylark singing
at heaven's gate. The impartial reader may say at the finish that the
incident was not worth relating. Are there any such readers? I doubt
it. I take it that we all, even those who appear the most matter-of-
fact in their minds and lives, have something of the root, the
elements, of poetry in their composition. How should it be otherwise,
seeing that we are all creatures of like passions, all in some degree
dreamers of dreams; and as we all possess the faculty of memory we must
at times experience emotions recollected in tranquillity. And that, our
masters have told us, is poetry.
It is hardly necessary to say that it is nothing of the sort:
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 238 of 244
Words from 64468 to 64723
of 66164
