Show Mother Gooia In oar Poetry It is a very pathetic thing to see the efforts some of our industrious young poets make to write something good They appear to gird up their lions and rake the dictionary and crowd their verses with all the choicest kind of language all to no avail Majora cana must they constantly exclaim but they somehow continue to be minor poets It has occurred to me that they might do well to risk an opposite course Instead In-stead of attempting any longer to make their erse mean something for in this they do not seem fitted b nature to succeed let them trjjto richit with passages of melodious idiocy Like the wretched prisoners in the elevatorsince the thing wont go up why not try it down For it has been borne in on me lately thatjpeople like a little Mother Goose in their poetry I notice that some of the stanzas most quoted from our best poets I are those of whose real meaning the quoters plainly have not the remotest idea It is not merely that the verseis liked in spite of its having to them no meanmg but just because of this fact I can remember that I used to be fond of chanting Corn iljs and barley rigs And corn rigs are bonnie before I had any notion whatever of the sense of rigs bince the time of learn ing the meaning of the word I observe that I do not seem to care half so much for the song There is a verse of Maud that I used to rave over continually when a boy It runs The slender scads would not share One oag milkbloom on the tree The white lakeblossom fell into the late Aud theiMnnernel dozed on the Jea I Now this pimpernel was not a flower familiar to my chHdhoodandl actually supposed Was a bird I can see now the picture as my incocent youthful mind conceived Ittbe pimpernel standing gravely on one long and stilt like leg at the margin of the lake well out ofthe cold wind on the lee side fast asleep and probably dreaming of more polliwogs When the halcyon bird flapped his wings of fancy and soared away on a gale of truth the charm of the stanza was gone for me Is th era any Jim i of Auld Lang Syne that simple people sing with such apprecia tive fervor as that of Pning the gowans fine And what idea have they when they declaim shuffling this mortal I coil And what feline melodiousness issupgestcd to them bW Miltonte ° Eaglemewing hermighty I youth And how nonplussed they would be Ifiuddenlycalled Quito expound r ex-pound in their true relation to The thought those lices so charming in their simplicity i f f L For the soul Is dead that slumbers And tbtnpaarenotwhatthey seeing 1 How many times have well pard some 1 r poem of Browning df Emerson de = livered with ingenuous enthusiasmaSS ° selection at some rending club or i r circle when to hare stopped thei reader and naively inquired mean I ing would have brought oDamostpl > situation l Depend upon f Jhere Is 1 nothing that so lends 1 charm to verse as the line that Is perfect nonsense tons so long as Ve donot notice that it lacks sense Even pas age that we frankly and avowedlynonsense meat a feltwant Is it not oatfjil the < harms orthe old ballads that they refresh intellects now add again with thdr0h anus Sand and Oh bntsand their Hayoioj nonnvsl What a terrible line is that in the grand old ballad 6f Sir + Patrtcs Spens I V Vnd utlj grew tho seal > c These meaningless refroms and rinintelV ligible words are llke the parenthetical twirls and warbles of the bagpipe As the Bumper of milk fefreshesAtne weary pedestrian so dothese dashes of nonsensethe mind by a return to the diet of infancy Decemtie tlalttic J |