CHAPTER IX

LIGHT VERSE

I would be the Lyric

Ever on the lip,

Rather than the Epic

Memory lets slip.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: "Lyrics and Epics"

IN "The Day is Done" which was prefixed to The Waif, a collection of poems by minor poets, Longfellow eloquently defended the humbler poets, whom we sometimes choose to read rather than "the grand old masters,"

the bards sublime

Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

Indeed, there is more than one kind of poetry in which the lesser poets, like Longfellow and Aldrich, are the masters. This, as we have seen, is true of patriotic songs and the French forms; and it is equally true of light verse. The great poet, Wordsworth or Milton for instance, is generally too deeply in earnest, too passionate, sometimes too unsocial to write what must seem to him mere literary small talk. In fact, the major poets who have tried to trip it on the light fantastic toe have nearly

always failed. In spite of an apparent ease, "the familiar [style] is," as Cowper pointed out, "of all styles the most difficult to succeed in." Only the poet who is also a man of the world like Holmes or Thackeray can produce these "immortal ephemera."

The most important form of lighter poetry is that usually called vers de société. Since an example is often more enlightening than a definition, let us first examine a fairly typical poem of this kind. Bret Harte, although most people remember him only for his stories, was also a poet of considerable importance. In "Her Letter" the daughter of a gold miner who has "struck it rich" is writing from New York to her sweetheart in California.

HER LETTER

I'm sitting alone by the fire,

Dressed just as I came from the dance,
In a robe even you would admire,-
It cost a cool thousand in France;
I'm be-diamonded out of all reason,
My hair is done up in a queue:
In short, sir, "the belle of the season"
Is wasting an hour upon you.

A dozen engagements I've broken;
I left in the midst of a set;
Likewise a proposal, half spoken,

That waits on the stairs-for me yet.
They say he'll be rich,-when he grows up,-
And then he adores me indeed.

And you, sir, are turning your nose up,

Three thousand miles off, as you read.

"And how do I like my position?"

"And what do I think of New York?” "And now, in my higher ambition,

With whom do I waltz, flirt, or talk?" "And isn't it nice to have riches,

And diamonds and silks, and all that?" "And aren't they a change to the ditches And tunnels of Poverty Flat?"

Well, yes, if you saw us out driving
Each day in the park, four-in-hand,—
If you saw poor dear mamma contriving
To look supernaturally grand,—
If you saw papa's picture, as taken
By Brady, and tinted at that,—
You'd never suspect he sold bacon
And flour at Poverty Flat.

And yet, just this moment, when sitting
In the glare of the grand chandelier,-
In the bustle and glitter befitting

The "finest soirée of the year,"-
In the mists of a gauze de Chambéry,

And the hum of the smallest of talk,— Somehow, Joe, I thought of the "Ferry," And the dance that we had on "The Fork";

Of Harrison's barn, with its muster

Of flags festooned over the wall;

Of the candles that shed their soft lustre
And tallow on head-dress and shawl;
Of the steps that we took to one fiddle;

Of the dress of my queer vis-à-vis;
And how I once went down the middle

With the man that shot Sandy McGee;

Of the moon that was quietly sleeping
On the hill when the time came to go;
Of the few baby peaks that were peeping
From under their bed-clothes of snow;
Of that ride, that to me was the rarest;
Of the something you said at the gate.
Ah, Joe, then I wasn't an heiress

To "the best-paying lead in the State."

Well, well, it's all past; yet it's funny
To think, as I stood in the glare
Of fashion and beauty and money,

That I should be thinking, right there,
Of some one who breasted high water,

And swam the North Fork, and all that, Just to dance with old Folinsbee's daughter, The Lily of Poverty Flat.

But goodness! what nonsense I'm writing!
(Mamma says my taste still is low,)
Instead of my triumphs reciting,

I'm spooning on Joseph,-heigh-ho!
And I'm to be "finished" by travel,-
Whatever's the meaning of that,-
Oh! why did papa strike pay gravel
In drifting on Poverty Flat?

Good night, here's the end of my paper;
Good night,-if the longitude please,-
For maybe, while wasting my taper,
Your sun's climbing over the trees.
But know, if you haven't got riches,
And are poor, dearest Joe, and all that,
That my heart's somewhere there in the ditches,
And you've struck it,-on Poverty Flat.

Francis Bret Harte (1836-1902)

Clearly this is not the poetry of passionate love; it is not the language of Burns's "Highland Mary" or of Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese. Nor is it the poetry of great thought or of lofty enthusiasm. Vers de société is to greater poetry what the miniature and the cameo are to the paintings of Raphael and the statues of Michael Angelo. One should not, however, make the mistake of regarding such poems as mere trifles. Vers de société, like the French forms, is one of the lesser divisions of poetry, but no lover of poetry should consider his taste wholly catholic until he can admire all kinds, small as well as great.

Although all the names which have been suggested for what the French call vers de société are unsatisfactory, it is worth while to mention some of them because each throws light on the nature of the type. The French phrase, for which society verse and social verse are inadequate translations, is doubly objectionable because it is foreign and because it leads one to draw the mistaken inference that French poetry is richer than English in poetry of this type. Lyra Elegantiarum, which LockerLampson used as the title of his famous anthology of English vers de société, is open to similar objections. Familiar verse, which Brander Matthews borrowed from Cowper for his excellent anthology, American Familiar Verse, is the least inadequate English name, but it too strongly suggests informality. Gentle verse, suggested by Carolyn Wells, and patrician rhymes, suggested by Edmund Clarence Stedman, emphasize the fact that vers de société is essentially the poetry of the salon, of wellbred society. Occasional verse is the least satisfactory