Arts and Letters

In paying this tribute to our colleague, one of America's foremost men of letters, I feel derelict, almost disloyal in its inadequacy. Woodberry's literary activity subtended so large an arc that I have only been able to encompass a small part of its flowing beauty. I am the more chagrined by knowing that, were the situation reversed, he would be more just and comprehensive in his judgment of me. I purpose however to do his memory at least one service: to quote a little of his engaging rhyme and a little of his mellifluous prose, so that, absent though he be, he may speak for himself.

I doubt if there ever was a poet, however distinguished by his prose—Shelley, Arnold, Emerson, Lowell, Stedman—who would not prefer to be judged by his verse. A wider appeal and a surer permanence are given to imagination and emotion by that form of music we call poetry. Knowledge and the power of presenting it in its relations to life carry immensely farther in meter than in criticism.

Woodberry had above everything else the conscientiousness and candor of the true critic, and this is felt in every line he wrote. He saw steadily and whole the authors of whom he wrote. He lived a life of frugality, knowing how

To scorn delight and live laborious days,

but with abundant joy, in Nature, in his art and in the passion of the spirit. Thus he touched and inspired all whom he taught.

His poetry is rich in the fortunate traits of imagination and emotion. Rereading it in part, I am struck particularly by the Elegy on the death of Edwin Booth, which I heard pronounced in the presence of the great Salvini. I recall that one of our colleagues,—not a poet,—spoke slightingly of it, and that, at that time, I thought it ineffective, this, as I now think, being chargeable to the author's weak delivery, which I am told was not characteristic of his lectures. I wish now to recant that impression of a dirge of rare nobility and feeling. Speaking of Booth's Othello he says:

Alas, our eyes have seen,
As if no other woe than this had been,
The heartbreak of the Moor, and, dark behind,
Traced frank Iago's intellectual stealth
And panther footfall in the generous mind.

How fine that is! Again after a masterly passage on Hamlet, and on the startling likeness between the tragedian and the character, he closes this strophe thus:

He held the mirror up within the soul,
And from his bosom read the part alone,
The infinite of man within him sealed,
And played himself—Oh, with what truth exprest!
He plucked the mystery from the master's breast,
But ah, what mortal plucks it from his own?

Once more he says with a burst of emotion that is more than glowing rhetoric:

Cease, flood of song, thy stream! now cease, and know
Thy silver fountains from all hearts do flow!
Cease now, my song, and learn to say goodnight
To him whose glory lends thy stream its light!
The last great heir of the majestic stage
Has passed, and with him passes a great age;
Low with his elders lies his honored head,
And in one voice are many voices dead.

Woodberry's sonnets are technically all that the sonnet should be—clear, firm, unified, moving easily to a climax of gentle surprise. Of the two entitled At Gibraltar, both already distinguished, the first shows the author at his best:

England, I stand on thy imperial ground,
Not all a stranger; as thy bugles blow,
I feel within my blood old battles flow—
The blood whose ancient founts in thee are found.
Still surging dark against the Christian bound
Wide Islam presses; well its peoples know
Thy heights that watch them wandering below;
I think how Lucknow heard their gathering sound.
I turn, and meet the cruel, turbaned face.
England, 'tis sweet to be so much thy son!
I feel the conqueror in my blood and race;
Last night Trafalgar awed me, and today
Gibraltar wakened; hark, thy evening gun
Startles the desert over Africa!

But he also knew how to adapt the sonnet to measures that rival his facile lyrics of love and regret. One of these songs may stand for many in its poignancy:

Why wilt thou make, O Wave,
Forever in from the bay?
Dost thou seek on the beaches' grave
To cast thy life away?

Why wilt thou blow, O Wind,
Forever out to sea?
Is it death thou, too, wouldst find,
O winged eternity?

I told my love unsped
To both in the eventide;
The wild Wind moaned, and fled,
The wild Wave sobbed, and died.

Sonnet, lyric, dirge, ode, or epigram, whatever form Woodberry's poetic nature takes, one is impressed by its sincerity and its natural utterance. He never yields his conviction of the supremacy and permanence of the ideal. Let me quote one stanza—a poem in itself—from his beautiful dirge for a friend, The North Shore Watch. It is quite in the grand manner of Wordsworth or Shelley.

Beauty abides, nor suffers mortal change,
Eternal refuge of the orphaned mind;
Where'er a lonely wanderer, I range,
The tender flowers shall my woes unbind,
The grass to me be kind;
And lovely shapes innumerable shall throng
On sea and prairie, soft as children's eyes;
Morn shall awake me with her glad surprise;
The stars shall hear my song;
And heaven shall I see, whate'er my road,
Steadfast, eternal, light's impregnable abode.

That would not be out of place in the Adonais. Again and again I find myself thrilled with the felicity of such lines as this:

The Colors make the Country whatever be the sky;
or these
And sowing Persia through the world the rose
Reddens our Western vales.

Let us turn now to his prose,—an immense body of penetrating and inspiring writing. His amazing range of scholarship had the two indispensable qualities of profundity and precision. He is not merely an expositor of what lies before him, a commentator of intelligence whom one comes to trust implicitly, but a formulator of principles. Leaving aside his editing of Shelley and Poe, I take his essay on Virgil as an example of what literary criticism should be. It is so comprehensive in its view of the antique world and of humanity in many epochs that one may construct from it a sheer philosophy of life. Woodberry is not content with giving you an analysis of Virgil's poetry, the alliances of his mind and the sweep of his emotions; he makes you feel the background of character, mind, and emotion in the old world and the new. One is reminded of what Froude said of history, that its chief value consists in "sounding across the centuries the eternal note of Right and Wrong." Woodberry shows us not merely Virgil but all that he stood for.

This power of generalization I take to be the test of a critic. Woodberry gives us not only the facts concerning the Roman poet, but also the atmosphere and background of Poetry itself, of subtle and perennial interest. He says of Virgil's universality:

"Of no other poet can it be said that his lines are a part of the biography of the great: of emperors like Augustus and Hadrian, of fathers like Jerome and Augustine, of preachers like Savonarola, churchmen like Fénelon, statesmen like Pitt and Burke; and among the host of humble scholars, of schoolmasters, the power he has held in their bosoms is as remarkable for its personal intimacy as for its universal embrace. No fame so majestic has been cherished with a love so tender. Virgil thus blends in a marvelous manner the authority of a classic with the direct appeal to life."

He goes on to say of Virgil's method what might almost be said of his own:

"He used for his artistic method a selective, partial description, subordinating individuality and detail to social and general presentation, and he employed episode, suggestion, and the emphasis that lies in enthusiasm to enlarge the theme and qualify it with greatness; in particular, he intended no exhaustion of the subject, but only of the feeling of the subject, which is the method of great poetry, and hence come the rapidity, the variety, the completeness of impression which are the most obvious traits of the changeful lines."

This essay alone might well be recommended for college and university education, whether in the study of Latin verse or of English prose composition.

In conclusion I wish to say what I believe Woodberry would wish to have said. In common with many other American poets, he was so sincere in his art that he threw his leaves upon the stream of Time without any care whether they were found by the public or not. He was not a self-advertiser, but left to the future the appreciation of his verse. This very modesty of the poets of the Academy who have passed away puts upon it, in my conviction, an obligation to do what it can to see that they are not forgotten. We carry as our insignia the figure of Pegasus: what are we doing to fortify in the minds of an eager but bewildered public the fine traditions of Poetry which that figure implies? These colleagues of ours have poured out their heart's blood in patriotism and emotion. Even though

Things are in the saddle
And ride mankind

I believe a better day is coming. We can do much to hasten it by laying public emphasis upon their best achievement, and in thus honoring them we shall honor the Academy, and promote the purposes, intellectual and spiritual, for which it was founded.

These lines are not a farewell but a greeting to a knightly gentleman, a tender lover of children, a devoted friend, a conscientious artist, a captain of the soul. Let us thank Heaven that he has lived and that he has contributed so much of beauty and inspiration to the world.