Poetry to the Uttermost
We are afraid. We are all horribly afraid. The seal of poetic propriety is laid upon our lips, the burden of tradition bows us down. Crouched and abject beneath the dominance of the slave-driver, gap-toothed Custom, we set our shoulders to the toil—the useless toil—of dragging through the mile-years of simoom-whipped sand the impassive statue of Mediocrity.
What, if the vulture scream above us, can we dare to tell the meaning of its cry? Sharp will descend the whip of circumstance to warn that otherwhere the nightingales are singing under a full-orbed moon and we must sing of them.
Does an all-reckless slave defy his Maker with a thunderbolt of blasphemy, forged in the furnace of his agony? Straight comes the penalty decreeing silence and neglect unless we chant apocalyptic anodynes.
If the challenge of the blood outbeats the clanging of the bonds and in the glowing dusk man and woman cling to each other until the uttermost is won, shall this be told in paean and in song? Not unless social usage has been satisfied and it be ascertained that desire has given place to design, that love has been exchanged for lucre, and that marriage has been substituted for mating; then are we bidden cull from the common-casket of permitted phrases the veil, the orange-flower wreath, and all the weary paraphernalia of convention, and write an epithalamium to the plaudits of the admiring throng.
Rituals began in poetry. And since all rituals today have lost most of their ancient power, serving to soothe and charm instead of to stir and challenge, we look to the poetry of today to lay the web whereon the rituals of the future shall be spun. Let not that web possess one strand of mediocrity. Platitudinizing is no pattern for the future. If we are fain to cry aloud, let our throats crack thereat; if we would hurl defiance, let us not fear to charge after our javelins and find our freedom in the breach ourselves have made.
Every true poet has the uttermost within, if he or she will but give it voice. Oh, poets of every craft, give of the uttermost! Better a single cry like The Ballad of Reading Gaol, like Bianca, like When I am dead and sister to the dust—to touch on a few moderns only—than a lumber-loft of pretty and tuneful voicings of the themes that please but do not satisfy. There are those of us who read whose blood runs hot and red as well as yours. Dare, O you poets of every craft! Rise to the cry! Your hearts are high and full of gallantry, the world is waiting to be led by you to heights before unscaled. Shake cowardice away and dare!
Francis Rolt-Wheeler.