“Immortals! there is another false idea that should be given up by all sensible men. Every thing else that is made is made for some object, and its excellence is determined by its fitness for that object—why shouldn’t it be so with poetry. Cheese, for instance, in Connecticut, is made with especial reference to the time of its consumption, and one kind is labeled ‘to be eaten immediately,’ another, ‘in one year,’ ‘two years,’ and so on. So with poetry. Some of it is better to be kept some years and go down to posterity like ‘Paradise Lost’ and Shakspeare, that were not much esteemed at first, you know; other kinds, more fit for present consumption, may be read by moonlight, cried over, and applied to other purposes of poetry.”
“You remind me,” said I, “of a definition I heard the other day, which said, ‘poetry is only pleasant, metrical, musical, writing which amuses and astonishes one’s friends, makes one’s enemies bite their lips for envy, and may be counted on the fingers.’ ”
“That’s very good,” replied my brother, “but the easiest way to make poetry is to take prose and turn it. I was quite surprised, at an instance of this, I found yesterday, in reading Napier’s History of the Peninsula War. He had been describing the battle of Corunna, and in speaking of the death of Sir John More, he says, very nearly in these words: ‘it was thought best to retreat without waiting for the break of day. The body of Sir John was hurriedly deposited in the earth, near the rampart, without music or even a farewell shot being fired over his grave.’ Mr. Wolfe has immortalized himself, as it is called, by turning this account into verse; and just notice how closely he has followed the prose original:
“ ‘Not a drum was heard, nor a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot,
O’er the grave where our hero was buried.’ ”
“It is strikingly like,” said Hattie, “not even the usual descriptive adjectives, and very little amplification. That shows how easily pieces of poetry of great celebrity may have been written. Perhaps you and I may one day be famous. I have often thought how a pensive man, looking at the water in this river during a mild fall of snow, might say very naturally, in thinking of the transitoriness of the pleasures of this world,
‘Like snow falls in a river,
A moment white, then melts forever,’