The pupils in our schools are very capable in realizing visual imagery. They can see the visual image very readily with its colour, form, and movement. They can arrange the objects in the picture with foreground, background, light, and shade.
But it is quite a different matter when they try to realize auditory imagery. In the poem Waterloo, Fourth Reader, p. 311, they can see the picture in "bright the lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men". They see the large ball-room with its glass chandeliers, the costumes of handsome ladies, the scarlet uniforms and the decorations of the officers and the nobility. But can they realize the next imagery, that of sound, "and when music arose with its voluptuous swell"? Do they hear the squeaking of one or two fiddles or do they hear the voluminous sound of regimental bands? Do they notice the varying metre from the stately iambic to the sudden "voluptuous swell" of the foot of three syllables in waltz time?
These images of sight and sound picture the gaiety and magnificence of this festive scene, in order to make more marked the contrast with the fear and pathos of the farewells. This contrast is enforced by the two auditory images:
And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
Can your pupils image the wedding-bells chiming from the cathedral some afternoon in June, when suddenly the ear catches the sound of a death-bell tolling from another church? Any reader who cannot realize the sounds of those two bells with their discordant effects will miss the intention of Byron.
The pupils, through the stimulation of their senses, must have experienced the luxurious effects of orchards, flower gardens, and clover fields; the odours of apple blossoms and the smell and taste of the "full-juiced apple waxing over-mellow"; the perfumes and temperatures of spring, midsummer, and winter if they are to read nature literature intelligently and feel its charm. The words must have meaning if they are to awaken the feeling that was part of the original experience.
THE LITERATURE OF NOBLE THOUGHT
In literature, as in other arts, there is a great deal that is merely decorative. It is not the purpose here to disparage this form of art. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. Its loveliness increases." Some of the most famous portraits and landscapes in the picture galleries afford infinite pleasure to the student of art by the technique in colour, drawing, and arrangement. They are greater than photography. "The light that never was on sea or land, the consecration and the poet's dream" have given them a beauty that is greater than the realism of the actual person or natural scene. It is the same in literature. The author's feelings, his language, the rhythm of his words, and his delicate fancy afford the reader greater delight than he has ever known when he has met similar persons, scenes, or actions in real life. This is genuine æsthetic pleasure, similar to the pleasure that people derive from china, music, or landscape gardening.
There is, however, a higher form of art in both pictures and literature. There are pictures that suggest some noble aspiration, some great universal truth, some great conflict between duty and interest. We feel instinctively that these are greater than pictures possessing mere masterly technique. It is the same in literature. There are poems in which we feel that the thoughts and feelings are sublime. Perhaps the technique of these is not equal to that of the poetry described in the preceding paragraph, but the experienced teacher has felt his pupils lifted above mundane affairs, when they begin to grasp the true significance of such poems. The youngest pupils show their appreciation by wide open eyes, when these are read. They instinctively feel that this work is better than the merely pretty and dainty things in poetry.
In the Ontario Readers we have numerous poems of this nature. In the First Reader, the pupils instinctively feel that Piping Down the Valleys Wild is of different calibre from Three Little Kittens. The Lord is my Shepherd, Lead, Kindly Light, and To a Waterfowl, are examples of this class.