1915] on Music and Poetry 515 



This carol they began that hour, 



With a hey and a ho and a hey nonny no, 

 How that a life is but a flower 

 In spring time, in spring time, 

 The only pretty ring time, 

 AVhen birds do sing. 

 Hey ding a ding a ding, 

 Sweet lovers love the spring. 



{From " As You Like It,'" Act v, Scene Hi.) 



I.— Prelimixaeies. 



The relation between music and poetry is of very wide interest, 

 because song is to be found everywhere — in homes, in fields, in places 

 of work and of recreation, in places of worship, and on battlefields. For 

 good or ill, poetry and music are put into double harness daily. When 

 melody and words get into each other's stride, when they have unity 

 and even identity of interests, it is obviously a most happy partner- 

 ship. But there is sometimes conflict between them. Tennyson, 

 we are told, was annoyed with music that " went up when it ought 

 to go down, and down when it ought to go up." On the other 

 hand. Canon Ainger remarked that he supposed it did not matter in 

 the least what the words were provided the music was beautiful. 



Tennyson and Ainger were not alone in finding music and poetry 

 but little help to each other on occasion. A listener may find it a 

 good working plan to ignore one art and centre attention upon the 

 other. Yet it may be questioned whether the patient acceptance of 

 misfits as between words and music has not become far too patient. 

 A few days ago 1 read in a London paper of very wide circulation 

 the following : 



Britain's answer to the crime of the Lusitania and Germany's other 

 atrocities, has found expression in a stirring song. By permission of the 

 publishers, we give above the words and music of the chorus. 



The excerpt contained words which had energy strong enough to 

 start a lofty strain of music, and which had a rhythm and accent of 

 their own. But in this setting was to be found a rigid musical 

 rhythm so violently and conflictingly superimposed upon the verbal 

 rhythm that the reply to German atrocities became a very question- 

 able one. (The instance was quoted.) In the larger spheres of 

 musical and verbal partnership— in cantata, oratorio and opera— are 

 incongruities less regrettable ? They were, it is true, more violent 

 in earlier times ; and we, being removed from eighteenth and 

 nineteenth century conventions, are able to see their absurdities 

 very clearly. The great Handel was not immune, though, perhaps, 

 his mightiest gift lay precisely in this, that at a stroke he could 

 brino^ into being: a musical theme which was the inevitable counter- 



