Are veiled in amethyst.
The trees spread grateful branches
Above a smiling sod,
For thirsting slaked, for hunger fed,
All things are praising God.
Huntly Carter, London:
The letter by C. Smith of Chicago, in the October issue of The Little Review, is so phenomenally stupid and so intellectually dishonest that it is almost beneath notice. If I consent to notice it, I do so in order to warn Smithsonian understudies that they will be severely dealt with if they attempt to repeat Smith’s brazen offence of writing to a significant journal and coolly suggesting that a single and relatively unimportant wrong attribution is to be regarded as a fair and honest sample of the whole subject matter of an article occupying several pages and mainly devoted to a metaphysical explanation of the origin and nature of poetry. Furthermore, suggesting that I am applying to a poet (Browning) a rigid test of poetry, seeking to prove his words poetically good or bad by my poetical experience, when as a matter of fact I am offering certain words, some of which are wrongly attributed to Browning, as indisputable evidence that in venting the emotions versifiers find descriptive figures efficacious.
No doubt some of the words flaunted by Smith are wrongly attributed to Browning. They are so wrongly attributed that anyone can see they are wrongly attributed. And any “sane, intelligent and decently responsible man” (to use Smith’s yellow press tautology) would have given me an opportunity of saying they are wrongly attributed before venturing to put on silly airs of hypercriticism. Then he would have learnt that the first and third line of the quotation belong oddly enough, to another piece of poetry, and have got mixed up with Browning’s stuff in some unaccountable way. I have not the least idea how the mix took place. All I know is that my article was finished off in great haste to catch the mail. It was sent in handscript and not typescript. And there was no time to send me a proof; otherwise the quotation would certainly have been corrected, and the many errors which now appear in my article would have disappeared. I feel I am justified in saying it was not my intention to send the words which have crept into print by the discovery that I have actually written down Browning’s very words. Here is Browning:
And the sun looked over the mountain’s rim:
And straight was a path of gold for him,