The human touch!
Warm, vital, close, life’s symbols dear,—
These need I most, and now, and here.
XIV
CLINTON SCOLLARD
THAT genial and delicate satirist, Miss Agnes Repplier, laments in one of her clever essays that our modern poets incline to dwell upon the sombre side of things, and hence contribute so little to the cheer of life. One cannot but wonder what poetry Miss Repplier has been reading, for our own acquaintance with the song of to-day has been so much the opposite that it is difficult on the spur of the moment to recall any poet of the present group in America whose work is not in the main wholesome and heartening and who is not facing toward the sun. To be sure, there must be the relief of shade, lest the light glare; but they who journey to Castaly are in general cheerful wayfarers, taking gladly the gift of the hours and rendering the Giver a song, and among the blithest of them is Clinton Scollard, to whom life is always smilingly envisaged, and to whom, whether spring or autumn betide, it is still the “sweet o’ the year.”
If Mr. Scollard’s way has ever been “through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses,” he is too much the optimist to let the fact be known, or, better still, to recognize it as such; for we see what our own eyes reflect from within, and it is certain that Mr. Scollard’s outlook upon life is governed by the inherent conviction that her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. Possibly this conviction would have more value to the less assured nature if the testimony of its winning were set down as a strength-giving force by the way, as we incline in daily life to undervalue the amiability and cheer which are matters of birthright rather than of overcoming; but this is a standard narrow in itself and wide of the issue at stake, which is so much cheer per se, whether the fortunate dower of nature, or the alchemic result of experience; nor may one draw too definite a line between the temperamental gift and the spiritual acquisition, especially when the psychology of literature furnishes the only data. It is sufficient to note the result in the work, and its bearing upon the art which shapes it. To Mr. Scollard, then, “Life’s enchanted cup” not only “sparkles at the brim;” but when he lifts it to his lips a rainbow arches in its depths, and he has communicated to his
song the flash of sunshine and color sparkling in the clearness of his own draught of life.
