Thomas Love Peacock, in his essay Four Stages of Poetry, said:
Poetry, like the world, may be said to have four ages, but in a different order: the first age of poetry being the age of iron, the second of gold, the third of silver and the fourth of brass. According to his classification, the rude bards in rough numbers celebrated the exploits of ruder chiefs in days when every man is a warrior and when the great practical maxim of every form of society to keep what we have and to catch what we can is not disguised under names of justice and forms of law but is the naked motto of the naked sword which is the only judge and jury in every question of meum and tuum.
Peacock is therefore of the view that poetry in its origin was mainly panegyrical. The materials for the golden age which comes next, he said, came from the iron age. Poetry became more and more retrospective in this age when rudiments of civil polity were established. The poetry of civilised society is categorised by him as of silver age. In this age,he continues, the poetry is imitative and original. The imitative consists in giving exquisite polish and recasting the poetry of the golden age and the originals are comic, didactic or satyric. The poetry of this age is characterised by an exquisite and fastidious selection of words and a laboured and somewhat monotonous harmony of expression. Lastly, the brass age. In this age, which Peacock describes as the second childhood of poetry, by rejection of polish and learning of the age of silver, and taking a retrograde stride to the barbarisms and crude traditions of the age of iron, professes to return to nature and revive the age of gold. He is of the view that poetry has no place in a civilised and developed society.
Peacock was not sparing in his words while criticising the poetry of his day, which obviously was of iron age. My attempt is not to write a critique on his essay. Shelley, his contemporary and close friend, joined issue with him and penned an essay, In defense of poetry. My purpose is to share with the readers a poem written by Cowper. Peacock had accused Cowper of having divested verse of its exquisite polish, for having thought in metre , for having paid more attention to his thoughts than his verse.
REPORT
of an adjudged Case, not to be found in any of the
Books
I
Between Nose and Eyes, a strange contest arose,
The spectacles set them unhappily wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said spectacles ought to belong.
REPORT OF A LAW CASE
II
So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause
With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning,
While Chief Baron Ear sat sat to balance the laws
So fam’d for his talent in nicely discerning.
III
In behalf of the nose, it will quickly appear,
And your lordship, he said, will undoubtedly find,
That the Nose has had always spectacles in wear,
Which amounts to possession time out of mind.
IV
Then, holding spectacles up to the court
Your lordship observes that they are made with a stradle,
As wide as the ridge of the nose is; in short,
Design’d to sit close to it, just like a saddle.
V
Again, would your lordship for a moment suppose,
(‘Tis a case that has happen’d, and may be again)
That the visage or the countenance had not a Nose,
Pray who would or who could, wear spectacles then?
VI
On the whole, it appears, and my argument shows,
With a reasoning the court will never condemn,
That the spectacles plainly made for the Nose,
And the Nose was as plainly intended for them.
VII
Then shifting his side ( as a lawyer now knows now,)
He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes:
But what were his arguments few people know,
For the court did not think them equally wise.
VIII
So his lordship decreed, with a grave solemn tone,
Decisive and clear, without one if or but-
That, whenever Nose put his spectacles on,
By daylight or candlelight, Eyes should be shut.
After reading the poem, consider this statement of Peacock: A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian,. He leaves in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings associations are all with barbarous manners, obsolete customs,and exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a crab-backward.
Contrast this view with the defence set forth by Shelley: A poet is a nightingale, who sits in the darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician who feels that they are moved and softened, yet not know whence and why.
The concluding words of his essay are an assertion that poets are here to stay and that the morality and goodness of the human race is dependent on their creations.
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts on the present; the wors which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sings to battle and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but move. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.
It was Alexis Carrel who said that poets and mystics know more of man than the psychologists. I would add that poets are to an extent mystics and unravel the hidden truths, the latent beauty of nature and universe and exert subtle but beneficial influence on our thoughts. To be good is to understand and appreciate poetry.
I would like to end this post with the scintillating exhortations of Longfellow, one of my favourite poets:
A Psalm of Life
What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
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