not criticised for not being what it was never intended to be. An excellent opportunity for studying the relative depths of the emotional appeal in poetry is to be found in two poems dealing with the love of home, one by Longfellow and one by William Ernest Henley. Longfellow's is a quiet, pleasant little lyric with a gentle fluttering of dove-like feeling. "Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest; For those that wander they know not where Weary and homesick and distressed, And are baffled and beaten and blown about Then stay at home, my heart, and rest; O'er all that flutter their wings and fly To stay at home is best." As you see, this is not a very profound feeling nor is it intended to be. The meter and the rhymes are suggestive of no deeper agitation than a quiet rustling of wings to rest. But the other poem, a more passionate variation of the same general theme, has all the throbbing eagerness of the homesick heart. It runs, in part, as follows: "O, Falmouth is a fine town with ships in the bay, For it's home, dearie, home-it's home I want to be. O, there's a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west, For it's home, dearie, home-it's home I want to be. O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree When you have studied a bit more the details of poetic technique, you will be able to pick more than one flaw in this little poem, but you will never be able to challenge the conviction of the homesick pound of its rhythm and its yearning refrain. If you would carry the comparison further, there are many other poems which afford excellent opportunity for studying the depth of emotional appeal and the power with which it is expressed in poetry. Among these are Burns's "My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here, and Allan Cunningham's "Hame, hame, hame, O hame fain I wad be and that famous section from Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel beginning "Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, "This is my own, my native land!'" and, perhaps best of all, Browning's "O, to be in England Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in England Sees, some morning unaware, That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough In this last poem the meter, pounding in a steady crescendo up to the breathless climax, shows how the poet creates feeling. A comparison of this sort is sure to sharpen your powers of critical discrimination, and increase your capacity for appreciation. WAYS IN WHICH A POEM MAY AROUSE FEELING There are many ways in which emotional effects in poetry are secured, four of which deserve special consideration. The first of these is by pictures. Read The Feeling created Idylls of the King, noticing how faithfully through pictures the word-pictures not merely reflect, but actually create the mood of the story. In The Coming of Arthur, when all were transfigured by "a momentary likeness to the King," the Knights stood rejoicing: "Far shone the fields of May thro' open door Then while they paced a city all on fire And in Gareth and Lynette, when the kingdom is in the heyday of its glory, we find that: "The birds made Melody on branch and melody in mid air. In the later idylls the pictures reflect the sultry heat of summer and the electric stillness that foretells the coming storm. In Lancelot and Elaine "tremulous aspen-trees And poplars made a noise of falling showers," the casement stood wide for heat, and the dawn "shot red fire and shadows" flaring blood-red on Elaine's face; and "she mixt Her fancies with the sallow-rifted gloom Of evening and the moanings of the wind." Later, in The Holy Grail, the landscape takes on an unearthly gloom lighted only by the Holy Vessel: "Fainter by day, but always in the night Blood-red, and sliding down the blacken'd marsh Blood-red, and on the naked mountain top Lancelot's mad, remorseful quest takes place over waste fields and on "the naked shore, Wide flats, where nothing but coarse grasses grew," and in lonely mystic castles, where he saw "No bench nor table, painting on the wall Still later, in The Last Tournament, the morning of the tournament of Dead Innocence and "Brake with a wet wind blowing," "The sudden trumpet sounded as in a dream Then fell thick rain, plume droopt and mantle clung, And pettish cries awoke, and the wan day Went glooming down in wet and weariness." And when Arthur returned from his heartsick quest against the Red Knight, "he climb'd All in a death-dumb autumn-dripping gloom, In Guinevere, "One low light betwixt them burn'd Blurr'd by the creeping mist, for all abroad, Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full, |