[PHELPS] THE POEFRY OF TODAY 493 
blade on a sandy sea shore blown in the wind; a child playing in the 
slums (and then a child playing in a summer meadow with daisies) ; 
street cars full of people, a tree in a storm, and a man walking. Now 
I ask you to feel with me as I feel concerning these things, as we felt 
that day driving along the windy shore of the Bay of Quinte seeing the 
wild horses and the still ducks. Who but the writer of poems can say 
for us the ultimate word about all these things? The writer of poems 
alone can come nearest to telling us what our vague uneasiness about 
them means. He can usher us into the realm of which they are a 
symbol for he lives in that realm and knows it. He extricates meanings 
for us from that dim precious country where so much of our significant 
life is stored away. It is this view of the poet as one who extricates, 
delivers, emancipates upon which I wish specially now to remark. 
I believe the true poet lives in a land where lie all the significances 
of this everyday world and life of ours. He is a sojourner amongst 
us here but his citizenship is in that other country. And now and then 
he gives us messages of the fullness of whose meaning he himself is 
unaware because he is, among us, human. He speaks for the Divine 
in measure as did Christ the greatest of poets in fullness. He is a 
Voice of that vast reality which lies about every one of us, of whose 
existence in spiritual ecstasy we are at times vaguely aware. A phrase 
suddenly is in the air before his eyes. As it is studied it yields meaning 
slowly, as a rainbow examined manifests hues. But just as often, I 
think, the poet knows immediately whereof he speaks. He realizes 
the freighted meaningful weight of his own words. Then it is that 
we, if we listen carefully to his speech, will have revelations of many 
things. We shall discern with sympathetic insight into human 
moods; we shall see a flower, and a sky, and feel an understanding 
intimacy with them. A street turn in a small town will be full of 
meaning by virtue of what a poet said. Here is a poem by T. E. 
Brown called “Dora :” 
“She knelt upon her brother’s grave, 
My little girl of six years old— 
He used to be so good and brave, 
The sweetest lamb of all our fold; 
He used to shout, he used to sing, 
Of all our tribe the little king— 
And so unto the turf her ear she laid, 
To hark if still in that dark place he played. 
No sound! No sound! 
Death’s silence was profound; 
And horror crept 
Into her aching heart, and Dora wept. 
If this is as it ought to be, 
My God, I leave it unto Thee.” 
