But the gold was red with dead men's blood. And when he died he moaned aloud TO A YOUNG WRITER. "May I, an old teacher, in conclusion, lay down a lesson or two for the young in letters? After the grave of Burns, then a month at Byron's tomb, then Schiller, Goethe; before battlefields. Heed this. The poet must be loyal, loyal not only to his God and his country, but loyal, loving, to the great masters who have nourished him. "This devotion to the masters led me first to set foot in London near White Chapel, where Bayard Taylor had lived; although I went at once to the Abbey. Then I lived at Camberwell, because Browning was born there; then at Hemmingford Road, because Tom Hood died there. "A thin little book now, called 'Pacific Poems,' and my watch was in pawn before it was out, for I could not find a publisher. One hundred were printed, bearing the name of the printer as publisher. What fortune! With the press notices in hand, I now went boldly to the most aristocratic publisher in London. "As to the disposal of our dead, except so far as it tends to the good of the living, most especially the poor, who waste so much they can ill spare in burials, the young poet may say or do as he elects. But in the matters of resignation to the Infinite and belief in immortality, he shall have no choice. There never was a poet and there never will be a poet who disputed God," or so degraded himself as to doubt his eternal existence. "One word as to the choice of theme. First, let it be new. The world has no use for two Homers, or even a second Shakespeare, were he possible. "And now think it not intrusion if one no longer young should ask the coming poet to not waste his forces in discovering this truth: The sweetest flowers grow closest to the ground. We are all too ready to choose some lurid battle theme or exalted subject. Ex alt your theme rather than ask your theme to exalt you. Braver and better to celebrate the lowly and forgiving grasses under foot than the stately cedars and sequoias overhead. They can speak for themselves. It has been scornfully said that all my subjects are of the low or savage. It might have been as truly said that some of my heroes and heroines, as Reil and Sophia Petrowska, died on the scaffold. But believe me, the people of heart are the unfortunate. How unfortunate that man who never knew misfortune! And thank God, the heart of the world is with the unfortunate! There never has yet been a great poem written of a rich man or gross. And I glory in the fact that I never celebrated war or warriors. Thrilling as are war themes, you will not find one, purposely, in all my books. If you would have the heart of the world with you, put heart in your work, taking care that you do not try to pass brass for gold. They are much alike to look upon, but only the ignorant can be deceived. And what is poetry without heart! In truth, were I asked to define poetry I would answer in a single word, Heart. I "Let me again invoke you, be loyal to your craft, not only to your craft, but to your fellow scribes. To let envy lure you to leer at even the humblest of them is to admit yourself beaten; to admit yourself to be one of the thousand failures betraying the one success. Braver it were to knife in the back a holy man at prayer. plead for something more than the individual here. I plead for the entire Republic. To not have a glorious literature of our own is to be another Nineveh, Babylon, Turkey. Nothing ever has paid, nothing ever will pay a nation like poetry. How many millions have we paid, are still paying, bleak and rocky little Scotland to behold the land of Burns? Byron led the world to scatter its gold through the ruins of Italy, where he had mused and sang, and Italy was rebuilt. Greece survived a thousand years on the deathless melodies of her mighty dead, and now once again is the heart of the globe. "Finally, use the briefest little bits of Saxon words at hand. The world is waiting for ideas, not for words. Remember Shakespeare's scorn of 'words, words, words.' Remember always that it was the short Roman sword that went to the heart and conquered the world, not the long tasseled and bannered lance of the barbarian. Write this down in red and remember. "Will we ever have an American literature? Yes, when we leave sound and words to the winds. American science has swept time and space aside. American science dashes along at fifty, sixty miles an hour; but American literature still lumbers along in the oldfashioned English stage-coach at ten miles an hour; and sometimes with a red-coated outrider blowing a horn. We must leave all this behind us. We have not time for words. A man who uses a great big sounding word when a short one will do is to that extent a robber of time. A jewel that depends greatly on its settings is not a great jewel. When the Messiah of American literature comes he will come singing, so far as may be, in words of a single syllable. THE POET AT HOME. While traveling in California recently, the writer could not resist the temptation offered to visit the Recluse Poet in his home at Oakland Heights, where he dwells as Walt. Whitman and all true children of nature love to dwell, surrounded by rural scenes, in close communion with nature. The drive from East Oakland to the Heights, a distance of two miles, is beautiful in the extreme. Broad and smooth, the road skirts a ravine and winds about the hill; it is cool and refreshing, being shaded on either side by Monterey cyprus, eucalyptus, and acacia trees. On arriving at the Poet's home, the first sight one gets of the man is furnished by the home he has built for his mother. His father being long since dead, with loving hand the Poet has drawn his mother away from the more active struggles of life to spend her remaining days with him on the mountain, near the clouds. Then the conservatory filled with choice flowers speaks of him as a lover of nature, but the man-the lover of nature-the Poet himself-was found in bed, in a little cell whose dimensions and primitive simplicity. forcibly suggested the early settlement of the Coast. Although only three o'clock in the afternoon, he had retired to rest, but received us most graciously, without rising. The writer was invited to a seat on the bed at his feet. Here was a man who had received the hospitality of the most polished men and women of Europe; a man who had been a welcome guest in the most magnificent dwellings in the old world; a man whose attainments now entitle him to a welcome to any society he may enter; a man who had abandoned all to follow the bent of his genius and to live with the primitive surroundings of a pioneer, with wants as simple as those of a child. A survey of the apartment revealed a pair of trousers and high-heeled boots suspended from nails driven in the wall, an ancient bureau in one corner, a horse-hide rug on the floor, and a straw hat banded with a scarlet ribbon ornamenting one of the high posts of the bed. Then the eye catches a number of folded papers tacked to the wall above the Poet's head: these are letters received from distinguished literary persons. And, last, we were shown the photograph of an Indian maiden, daughter of Old John, Chief of the Rogue River Indians, whose subjugation in 1856 cost many lives and two million dollars. There were no lamps, candles, nor books to be seen. The Poet rises with the birds, and with them he retires. He never burns "the midnight oil" and complains that there are too many books. He declares that men rely too much on books; that they are valued by the number of books they carry with them, whether or not they know anything of nature or of nature's God of whom books should speak. Everything about the man is quaint, everything around him is curious. The rug on the floor is said to be the skin of a faithful steed which carried General Fremont across the plains in 1843. There seems to be nothing in him like other men except his care for flowers and his love for his mother. But the Poet-it is he of whom we now speak-once his lips move, and the little room with its quaint furniture, bare floor, bare walls and ceiling, disappear; and we stand |