HOW TO BECOME A POET.

Of all the sayings which have misled mankind from the days of Adam to Churchill, not one has been more harmful than the old Latin one, “A poet is born, not made.”

The human intellect, it is said, may, by patient toil and study, gather laurels in all fields of knowledge save one—that of poesy. You may, by dint of hard work, become a captain in the Salvation Army, a corporation crossing-sweeper—ay, even an unsuccessful Chief Secretary for Ireland; but no amount of labour or perseverance will win you the favour of the Muses unless those fickle-minded ladies have presided at your birth, wrapped you, so to speak, in the swaddling clothes of metre, and fashioned your first yells according to the laws of rhythm and rhyme.

Foolish, fatal fallacy! How many geniuses has it not nipped in the bud—how many vaulting ambitions has it not brought to grief, what treasures of melody has it not shut up for ever to mankind!

Hence the paucity of poetical contributions to the press, the eagerness of publishers to secure the slightest scrap of verse, the bashfulness and timidity of authors, who yet in their hearts are quite confident of their ability to transcend the best efforts of the “stars” of ancient or modern song.

Now the first thing that will strike you in reading poetical pieces is the fact that nearly all the lines end in rhymed words, or words ending in similar sounds, such as “kick, lick, stick,” “drink, ink, wink,” etc.

This constitutes the real difference between prose and poetry. For instance, the phrase, “The dread monarch stood on his head,” is prose, but

is undeniable poetry.

Rhyme is, in fact, the chief or only feature in modern poetry. Get your endings to rhyme and you need trouble your head about little else. A certain amount of common sense is demanded by severe critics; the general public, however, never look for it, would be astonished to find it, and, as a matter of fact, seldom or never do find it.

By careful study of the best authors you will soon discover what words rhyme with each other, and these you should diligently record in a small note-book, procurable at any respectable stationers for the ridiculously small sum of one penny.

Few researches afford keener intellectual pleasure than the discovery of rhymes, in such words, say, as “cat, rat, Pat, scat”; “shed, head, said, dead,” and it is excellent elementary training for the young poet to combine such words into versed sentences, and even sing them to a popular operatic air.

For example——

These first efforts of your muse are of high interest, and, although it would not be advisable to rush to press with them, they should be sedulously preserved for the use of future biographers, when fame, honours, and emoluments shall have showered in upon you.

A little caution is needed in the use of such rhymes as “fire, higher, Maria,” “Hannah, manner, dinner,” “fight, riot, quiet.” There is excellent authority for these, but it is well to recognise that an absurd prejudice does exist against them.

You will soon make the profitable discovery that there is a host of words, the members of which run, like beagles, in couples, the one invariably suggesting the other, such as “peeler, squealer”; “lick, stick”; “Ireland, sireland”; “ocean, commotion,” and so on.

Were it not for such handy couplets as these, most of our modern bards would be forced to earn their bread honestly.

Of equal importance is “alliteration’s artful aid.” It consists in stringing together a number of words beginning with the same letter. A large school of our bards owe their fame to this figure. You should make a free use of it. How effective are such phrases as, “For Freedom, Faith, and Fatherland we fight or fall”; “Dear Dirty Dublin’s damp and dreary dungeons”; “Softly shone the setting sun in Summer splendour”; “Blow the blooming heather”; “Winter winds are wailing wildly.”

Of great effect at this stage of your progress will be the adroit and unstinted employment of such phrases as “I wis,” “I wot,” “I trow,” “In sooth,” “Methinks,” “Of yore,” “Erstwhile,” “Alack,” a plentiful sprinkling of which, like currants in a cake, will impart a quaint poetical flavour to your verses, making up for a total want of sense and sentiment. Observe their effect in the following admirable lines from Skott:—

Of like value are words melodious in sound or poetical in suggestion, like “nightingale,” “moonlight,” “roundelay,” “trill,” “dreamy,” and so on, which, freely used, throw a glamour over the imagination and lull thought, the chiefest value of verse nowadays.

Note that in poetic diction you must by no means “call a spade a spade.” The statement of a plain fact is highly objectionable, and a roundabout expression has to be resorted to. For example, if a girl have red hair, describe it as

or, if Nature has blest her with a “pug-nose,” you should, like Tennyson, describe it as

For similar reasons words of mean significance have to be avoided. For instance, for “dead drunk,” use “spirituously disguised”; for “thirty days in quad,” “one moon in durance vile.” You may now be said to have mastered the rudiments of modern poetry, and your future course is easy.

You may now choose, although it is not at all essential, to write on a subject conveying some meaning to your reader’s mind. You would do well to try one of a familiar kind, or of personal or everyday interest, of which the following are specimens:—“Lines on beholding a dead rat in the street”; “Impromptu on being asked to have a drink”; “Reverie on being asked to stand one”; “Epitaph on my mother-in-law”; “Ode to my creditors”; “Morning soliloquy in a police cell”; “Acrostic on a shillelah.” Through pieces of this character the soul of the writer permeates. Hence their abiding value and permanency on second-hand bookstalls; Then you may seek “fresh woods and pastures new,” and weave garlands in fields untrod by the ordinary bard. One of these is “Spring.” Conceive the idea of that season in your mind. Winter gone, Summer coming, coughs being cured, overcoats put up the spout, streets dryer, coals cheaper, or—if you love nature—the strange facts of the leaves budding, winds surging, etc. Then probably the spirit (waterproof) of poesy will take possession of you, and you will blossom into song as follows:—

Verses like the above have an intrinsic charm, but if you should think them too trivial, you may soar into the higher regions of thought, and expand your soul in epics on, say, “The Creation,” “The Deluge,” “The Fall of Rome,” “The Future of Man.” You possibly know nothing whatever of those subjects, but that is an advantage, as you will bring a fresh unhackneyed mind to bear upon them.

I need hardly tell you that there is one subject above all others whose most fitting garb is poetry, and that is—Love. Fall in love if you can. It is easy—nothing easier to a poet. He is mostly always in love, and with ten at a time. But if you cannot, or (hapless wretch!) if you find it an entirely one-sided affair—very little free trade, and no reciprocity—ay, even if you be a married man who walketh the floor of nights, and vainly seeketh to soothe the seventh olive-branch—despair not. To write of Love, needeth not to feel it. If not in love, imagine you are. Extol in unmeasured terms the beauty of your adored one—matchless, as the pipe-bearing stranger in the street—peerless, as the American House of Representatives. Safely call on mankind to produce her equal, and inform the world that you would give up all its honours and riches (of which you own none) for the sake of your Dulcinea; but tell them not the fact that you would not forego your nightly pipe and glass of rum punch for the best woman that ever breathed. Cultivate a melancholy mood. Call the fair one all sorts of names, heartless, cold, exacting—yourself, a miserable wight, hurrying hot haste to an early grave, and bid her come and shed unavailing tears there. At the same time keep your strength up, and don’t forget your four meals a day and a collation.

I need not touch on the number of feet required in the various kinds of verse, as if a verse lacks a foot anywhere you are almost sure to put yours in it.

And now to “cast your lines in pleasant places.”

Having fairly mastered the gamut of poetical composition, you will be open to a few hints as to the publication of your effusions. It is often suggested that the opinion of a friend should be consulted at the outset as to their value. Of course you may do so, but, as friends go nowadays, you must be prepared to ignore his verdict. It is now you will discover that even the judgment of your dearest and most intellectual friend is not alone untrustworthy, but really below contempt, and that what he styles his candour is nothing less than brutality. I have known the greatest coolnesses ascribable to this cause, and the noblest offspring of the muse consigned to oblivion in weak deference to a friendly opinion. On the other hand, it is often of great value to read aloud your longest epics to some one who is in any way indebted to you and cannot well resent it.

Where the poet’s corners of so many papers await you, the choice of a medium to convey your burning thoughts to the world will be easily made. You will scarcely be liable, I hope, to the confusion of mind of a friend of mine who, in mistake, sent his “Ode to Death” to the editor of a comic paper, and found it accepted as eminently suitable.

You should write your poem carefully on superfine paper with as little blotting, scratching, and bad spelling as you can manage.

To smooth the way to insertion, you might also write a conciliatory note to the editor, somewhat in this vein:—

“Respected Sir,—It is with much diffidence that a young poet of seventeen (no mention of the wife and five children) begs to send you his first attempt to woo the Muses (it may be your eighty-first, but no matter). Hoping the same may be deemed worthy of insertion in the widely-read columns of your admirable journal, with whose opinions I have the great pleasure of being in thorough accord (you may have never read a line of it before), I have the honour to be, respected sir, your obedient, humble servant,

“Homer.

“P.S.—If inserted, kindly affix my full name as A. B.; if not, my nom-de-plume, ‘Homer.’

“N.B.—If inserted send me twenty copies of your valuable paper.—Homer.”

It will be vain to attempt to describe your feelings from the time you post that letter until you know the result of your venture. Your reason is unhinged; you cannot rest or sleep. You hang about that newspaper office for hours before the expected edition is out of the press. At last it appears. Trembling with eagerness you seize the coveted issue, and disregarding the “Double Murder and Suicide in——,” the “Collapse of the Bank of——,” the “Outbreak of War between France and Germany,” you dash to the poet’s corner and search with dazed eyes for your fate.

You may have vaguely heard, at some period of your life, of the mean, petty jealousies that befoul the clear current of journalism, and frown down new and aspiring talent, however promising, and you may have indignantly refused to believe such statements. Alas! now shall you feel the full force of their truth in your own person.

You look for your poem blindly, confusedly—amazed, bewildered, disgusted! You turn that paper inside out, upside down; you search in the Parliamentary debates, in the Money Market, in the Births, Deaths, and Marriages, in the advertisements—everywhere. No sign of it!

With your heart in your boots you turn to the “Answers to Correspondents,” there to find your nom-de-plume heading some scurrilous inanity from the editorial chair, of one or other of the following patterns:—

“Homer—Don’t try again!”

“Homer—Sweet seventeen. So young, so innocent. Hence we spare you.”

“Homer—Have you no friends to look after you?”

“Homer—Do you really expect us to ruin this paper?”

“Homer—Send it to the Telegraph man. We have a grudge against him?”

“Homer—The 71st Ode to Spring this year! And yet we live.”

While it would be quite natural to indulge in any number of “cuss” words, your best plan will be to veil your wrath, and, refraining from smashing the editorial windows, write the editor a studiously polite letter, asking him to be good enough to point out for your benefit any errors or defects in the poem submitted to him. This will fairly corner him, and he will probably be driven to disclose his meanness in the next issue:—

“Homer—If you will engage to pay for the working of this journal during the twelve months it would take us to explain the defects in your poem, we are quite willing to undertake the job.”

Insults and disappointments like these are the ordinary lot of rising genius, and should only nerve you to greater efforts. Perseverance will ultimately win, though it may not deserve, success.

And who shall paint the joy that will irradiate life when you find yourself in print for the first time? who shall describe the delirium of reading your own verses? a delight leading you almost to forgive the printer’s error which turns your “blessed rule” into “blasted fool,” and your “Spring quickens” into “Spring Chickens”; who will count the copies of that paper you will send to all your friends?

By-and-by your fame spreads and you rank of the élite; you assume the air and manners of a poet. You wear your hair long (it saves barber’s charges). You are fond of solitary walks, communing with yourself (or somebody else). You assume a rapt and abstracted air in society (when asked to stand a drink). You despise mere mundane matters (debts, engagements, and the like). Your eyes have a far-away look (when you meet a poor relation). When people talk of Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, etc., you smile pityingly, and say: “Ah, yes! Poor Alfred (or Robert or Algernon, as the case may be); he means well—he means well;” and you ask your friends if they have read your “Spirit Reveries,” and if not, you immediately produce it from your pocket, and read it (never be without copies of your latest pieces for this purpose).

And now farewell and God-speed. You are on the high road to renown.

Francis A. Fahy.