Читать книгу Freedom, Truth and Beauty - Edward Doyle - Страница 9

Table of Contents

From town and village to a wood, stript bare,

As they of their possessions, see them throng.

Above them grows a cloud; it moves along,

As flee they from the circling wolf pack's glare.

Is it their Brocken-Shadow of despair,

The looming of their life of cruel wrong

For countless ages? No; their faith is strong

In their Jehovah; that huge cloud is prayer.

A flash of light, and black the despot lies.

What thunder round the world! 'Tis transport's strain

Proclaiming loud: "No righteous prayer is vain

No God-imploring tears are lost; they rise

Into a cloud, and in the sky remain

Till they draw lightening from Jehovah's eyes."

The author of this superb little gem, like Homer, is blind; but, like Homer, his mental vision is clear, and broad, and deep. President Schurman, of Cornell University, commenting on Doyle once said: "It is as true today as of yore that the genuine poet, even though blind, is the Seer and Prophet of his generation." The poem here printed illustrates the point. Did we not know that it was published some fifteen years ago in a volume entitled "The Haunted Temple," we should assume that it was written on the occasion of the fall of the Czar. In fact, however, it merely foretells this event by some dozen years. And how terribly applicable are the lines to the facts of today! The prophecy is one capable of repeated fulfillment.

But it is as a prophet of nationalism that this man compels our particular attention. The prophecy is embodied in a play entitled "The Comet, a Play of Our Times," brought out as far back as 1908. The play is a microcosm of American life. The chief character is a college president, and he it is that is chosen to expound the true nature of nationalism and to give voice and utterance to the principle of self-determination. (Is it merely a coincidence that at that time Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton, or is it a case of poetic vision. Wilson, be it remembered, was already a national figure, and there were already glimmerings that he was destined to usher in a new era in politics.) According to the protagonist, America is not "a boiling cauldron in which the elements seethe, but never settle," but rather a college where every class is taught to translate—

"Into the common speech of daily life

The country's loftiest ideals—"

and any body of citizens form a part of our republic only in so far—

"As they contribute to its character

As leader of the nations unto Right

By thought or deed, in service for mankind."

We must lead the peoples of the world to freedom. And what is freedom?

"'Tis intelligence

Aloof from harm and hamper, grandly circling

Its native sun-lit peaks, the highest hopes

Heaved from the heart of man upon the earth,

In ranges long as time and soul endure."

What, then, is America's duty to the oppressed race or the small nation? It is to "wake and disabuse it of false hope"—

"and urge it on

To the development of its own powers,

The culmination of its own ideals,

The star seed sown by God—the only means

By which a tribe can thrive to its perfection."

To make this possible, civilization must be given a more human content. It is therefore necessary to awake human intelligence, "the godlike genius," to a realization of the fact—

"—that, on having brought

This world from out the chaos dark

Of waters and of woody wilderness,

And shaped it into hills of hope for man,

Must providence its beautiful creation

With altruistic love and tenderness;

So that all tribes of man, what'er their hue,

Have each a hill where it can touch the star

That it has followed with its mental growth."

Such a program is rendered imperative by the inexorability of the law of race, which nullifies any attempts to force assimilation:

"It is a foolish, futile thing

To try to shape society by codes,

Vetoed by Nature. Nature trumpets forth

No edict, through the instinct of a race,

Proclaiming certain territory hers

And warning all encroaching powers therefrom,

Without the ordering out of her reserves

To see to it the edict is enforced.

Let politics keep off forbidden shores."

If any powers preserve in a policy of oppression, our duty is plain:

"To teach the barbarous tribes throughout the globe,

Christian or Turk, that all humanity

Is territory sheltered by our flag;

That butchery must cease throughout the world;

That, having ended human slavery,

Old glory has a mission from on high

To stop the slaughter of the smiling babe,

The pale, crazed mother, weak, defenseless sire,

All places on the habitable globe."

Finally to render feasible the ideal development of all peoples, and put an end to war, America must bring about a league of all nations. It develops on us—

"To get the races by degrees together

To talk their grievance over, in a voice

As gentle as a woman's. …

There is no education in the world

Like human contact for mankind's advance;

All differences, then, adjust themselves;

But when two races are estranged by hate,

They grow so deaf to one another's rights,

That it soon comes to pass that either has

To use the trumpet of artillery

In order to be heard at all."

Recently, Doyle wrote the following lines. Their application is obvious:

"Vault Godward, Poet. What though few may climb

The mountain and the star on trail of thee?

Thy wing-flash beams toward man, and if it be

True inspiration—whether thought sublime,

Or fervor for the truth, or liberty—

Thy light will reach the earth in goodly time."

What wonder that from so lofty an outlook his searching eye should pierce the tragedy of "The Jews in Russia"—or elsewhere—should pierce even the revenges that Time would ring in, and rest on a vision of righteous peace!

DAVID KLEIN, PhD.

AUTHOR OF LITERARY CRITICISM, from the Elizabethian Dramatist.