Page:Adams - Songs of the Army of the Night.djvu/27

Rh omission to conform with these supposed obligations was evidently deliberate, and in harmony with the whole purpose which he had in view; he felt, and felt rightly, that a work which was in substance a direct defiance of orthodox culture must similarly emancipate itself, in expression, from the trammels of orthodox rhyming. The new wine of revolutionary thought cannot be put in the old bottles of academical versification, and those readers who wish to form a fair judgment of the literary value of the poems must have the courage to regard them not from the standpoint of the conventional critic (who invariably fails to appreciate the true significance of any new and genuine poetry), but from that of the author himself, who knew exactly what he had to say, and how he could say it with most effect.

In the case of writings of this sort, the measure of the critic's antipathy is often the measure of the poet's success. It is not suprising that these revolutionary songs have aroused, and will continue to arouse, misunderstanding and reprobation, for they have an incisivəincisive [sic] and trenchant quality which seldom fails to make itself felt; whatever else they do, or fail to do, they strike home. The hilt of the dagger may not be carved in the most approved method of ornamentation; but the blade is keen and deadly, and its mark will not be easily concealed. Viewed in this light, many of the phrases and cadences, which according to ordinary canons of art are certainly formless and unmusical, are seen to be appropriate and inevitable; and the reader who turns away from the book on account of these peculiarities will be simply repeating the errors of those literary purists who have been successively unable to read Shelley, unable to read Whitman, unable to read Carpenter—in a word, unable to read any new great writer whose style was as novel and unfamiliar as his ideas.

Yet, all such disabilities being allowed for, it is difficult to believe that any candid reader, who has a true love of poetry in his heart, can fail to