152 BIRDS AND POETS 



out of and reaches back again to the hones and the 

 digestion. There is no grace like the grace of 

 strength. What sheer muscular gripe and power 

 lie back of the iirm, delicate notes of the great vio- 

 linist! "Wit," says Heine, — and the same thing 

 is true of beauty, — " isolated, is worthless. It is 

 only endurable when it rests on a solid basis. " 



In fact, beauty as a separate and distinct thing 

 does not exist. Neither can it be reached by any 

 sorting or sifting or clarifying process. It is an 

 experience of the mind, and must be preceded by 

 the conditions, just as light is an experience of the 

 eye, and sound of the ear. 



To attempt to manufacture beauty is as vain as 

 to attempt to manufacture truth; and to give it us 

 in poems or any form of art, without a lion of some 

 sort, a lion of truth or fitness or power, is to emas- 

 culate it and destroy its volition. 



But current poetry is, for the most part, an at- 

 tempt to do this very thing, to give us beauty with- 

 out beauty's antecedents and foil. The poets want 

 to spare us the annoyance of the beast. Since 

 beauty is the chief attraction, why not have this 

 part alone, pure and unadulterated, — why not pluck 

 the plumage from the bird, the flower from its stalk, 

 the moss from the rock, the shell from the shore, 

 the honey-bag from the bee, and thus have in brief 

 what pleases us ? Hence, with rare exceptions, one 

 feels, on opening the latest book of poems, like ex- 

 ■ claiming, Well, here is the beautiful at last divested 

 of everything else, — of truth, of power, of utility. 



