Love often reveals itself in sorrow and in humor. Though the poet need not be a humorist, must not be at all times, as the term is used, it is nevertheless essential that he have a lively appreciation of the ludicrous, lest he fall into grave errors of thought and expression. But the humor must not be the all-pervading element of his poetry; it should be simply a check, a guide, or sometimes a spur. A keen sense of humor should be to him the lash that whips thought out of its self-constituted morbid glooms, in which it appears ridiculous, into a lively harmony with things as they really are to the hearts of men. It were, indeed, a nice question to determine how far the grave or the humorous should enter poetic composition to the exclusion of the other. Certainly the most felicitous poetry is not all rain nor all shine, but the iris of Ulloa struck out of the depths of tears by the happy, hopeful shine of laughter.
But if the poet laugh, he must also love; for he laughs because he loves. This is the divine law. The man who hates never laughs; he may mock. Well may we ponder that. Indeed, tears and laughter, sometimes blended, are but forms of love. If laughter is music, certainly love, that divine gift in the human heart, love of the good, the beautiful, and the true, love of home, of country, of mankind, of God, or of a beautiful image of God, the one who is the heart’s ideal, divine immortal love, is perfect harmony. If the poet’s theme is of the good, the beautiful, and the true, so must his love be. If these dwell not in his heart, he shall search the world and the ages through and not find them; and if love dwell not there with them, his themes shall never touch our hearts.
But the poet, to be appreciated, is not the only one that must possess these qualities. It is the beauty and the love in the soul of him who is touched by the statue, the painting, the melody, the poem, that makes it beautiful to him. It is thus that we help the poet make the poem. Love makes poets of us all.
With our hearts thus tuned to the touch of the Maker’s hand, we may often hold sweet communion with our poet-friends whose love still reaches out to us through the mists of ages and beckons us to the Valhalla of the happy. We may stand alone in the stern, inquisitorial presence of self under the eye of Almighty God, and think thoughts our tongues can never tell.
Strolling arm in arm with good Dan Chaucer as
“... fiery Phœbus riseth up so bright
That all the orient laugheth of the light,”
we may meet and join company with immortal Shakespeare, where
“... the morn, in russet mantle clad,