“Seriously, however, the problem of adequately recording and interpreting the aspects of the sea is as fascinating as it is difficult. The best media are, of course, sculpture for its form and substance, painting for its light and color, music for its movement and sound. Poetry and prose reflect something of all of these, poetry more suggestively, prose more accurately. The poets, however, turn so quickly from actual aspects and impressions to their mental and emotional accompaniments, that they seem devoted rather to exploiting their own poetic gifts than the richness of their subject. Their observation is usually sensitive and keen, but it is quickly checked and often distorted by the action of fancy. Accuracy of expression is frequently disturbed by spontaneous or deliberate search for the picturesque or figurative utterance, made so easy by the enormous vocabulary that the sea has impressed upon our language. Poets who are gifted with rhythmical or harmonic power habitually exceed in those directions also. Happily there are some sea poems that are true as well as beautiful, but it seems quite too bad that such masters as Shelley, Arnold, and Emerson should intellectualize, and Coleridge, Rossetti, and Poe should dream, about the sea until they make it appear merely a minister to their moods rather than the immense, unspoiled, cosmic thing it really is.”
“Man overboard?” said Professor Maturin suddenly, as he halted abruptly before me in the perambulation he had begun after rising to secure the manuscript of his poetic fragment, and had slowly continued ever since back and forth along the long rug that he calls his “beat”—“I have flowed in good earnest. Your submerged appearance indicates that you agree with me that my experience was well-nigh overwhelming.”
Accepting his helping hand, I pulled myself out of the depths of the huge leather chair into which I had sunk, and expressed my genuine appreciation by saying, along with my good-nights, “The next time we meet, I should like just such another dip.”
VII
Christmas
IT is always possible to divine something of the state of Professor Maturin’s mind from the order or the congestion of his books and papers. When, therefore, the other day, I found him behind a perfect rampart of volumes bristling with paper-markers, I knew that he was loading with some new knowledge or other, and meditated how I might draw his fire. But he anticipated my efforts by sallying from his fortification, dishevelled but beaming, with the salvo:
“God rest you, merry gentleman;
Let nothing you dismay!—
“What will you give for the Christmas spirit?” he continued. “I have been seeking it, seasonably, and believe that I have found it.”
I capitulated immediately, and we sat down by the fire for a parley, which he began promptly.
“The Christmas spirit appears to be inherent in human nature, in the climatic change from summer seed-time, through autumn harvest, to hearty winter relaxation and cheer over the garnered fruits of husbandry or art. In the South it began as the winter feast of Saturn, celebrated with masking and gifts. In the North it was Odin’s, with log fires and feasting. Then the early Christian fathers chose it for celebrating their Founder’s new teaching of peace and good-will.