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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;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest,

For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care
To stay at home is best.

Weary and homesick and distressed,
They wander east, they wander west,

And are baffled and beaten and blown about
By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;
To stay at home is best.

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;
The bird is safest in its nest;

O'er all that flutter their wings and fly
A hawk is hovering in the sky;

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,
And I wish from my heart it's there I was to-day;
I wish from my heart I was far away from here,
Sitting in my parlour and talking to my dear.

For it's home, dearie, home-it's home I want to be.
Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea.
O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree
They're all growing green in the old countrie.

O, there's a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west,
And that of all the winds is the one I like the best,
For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon free,
And it soon will blow us home to the old countrie.

For it's home, dearie, home-it's home I want to be.
Our topsails are hoisted, and we'll away to sea.

O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree
They're all growing green in the old countrie."

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,
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer,"

and Allan Cunningham's

"Hame, hame, hame, O hame fain I wad be
O hame, hame, hame to my ain countree!"

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
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,

While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England-now!"

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
The sacred altar blossom'd white with May,
The sun of May descended on their King,
They gazed on all earth's beauty in their Queen,

Then while they paced a city all on fire
With sun and cloth of gold, the trumpets blew,
And Arthur's Knighthood sang before the King:
'Blow trumpet, for the world is white with May!'"

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.
The damp hill-slopes were quicken'd into green,
And the live green had kindled into flowers,
For it was past the time of Easter-day."

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
Blood-red, and in the sleeping mere below
Blood-red."

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
Or shield of knight, only the rounded moon
Thro' the tall oriel on the rolling sea."

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
To ears but half-awaked, then one low roll
Of autumn thunder, and the jousts began;
And ever the wind blew, and yellowing leaf,
And gloom and gleam, and shower and shorn plume
Went down it.

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,
The stairway to the hall, and look'd and saw
The great Queen's bower was dark,-about his feet
A voice clung sobbing till he question'd it,
'What are thou?' and the voice about his feet
Sent up an answer, sobbing, 'I am thy fool
And I shall never make thee smile again.

In Guinevere,

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"One low light betwixt them burn'd Blurr'd by the creeping mist, for all abroad, Beneath a moon unseen albeit at full,

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