Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/229

 THE RANDALL FAMILY 221

Doric than of the Corinthian in his mind and in his works. Many graces and beauties and elegances which are sup- posed to be essential in modern poetry are very sparingly, if at all, presented here. But that highest beauty of all which consists in transparent truth to the highest ethical ideal, and by which all works of art must be at last measured, notwithstanding the frantic efforts made by some to emancipate art from the trammels of ethics, is not here lacking. Randall believed, as every fine spirit must, that the ethical ideal is itself the marriage of beauty and truth — that the unethical can never be other than the inartistic, intrinsically as ugly as it is false. To those who can appreciate a mind of this order, and sympathize with its free self-expression, it will be easy to overlook an excess of didacticism and pardon many real defects.

There is nothing, however, in Randall's poetry that could at any time dazzle a novelty-loving public or make him widely popular. It is far too severe and high, too exigent of loftiness in the minds of his readers, to permit even a hope that the name of these readers will prove to be legion. But I believe, nay, I know, that his message will reach some, if not many, whose need of it is great. Sim- plicity, sincerity, supreme truthfulness, proud directness as of a bullet speeding to its mark, — these are not qualities so common, in a modern literature which with some reason suspects itself of "decadence," that they should be con- signed to oblivion when they appear. Whoever is thought- ful, serious, earnest, hungry for light in an age when the torches of ancient religions are waxing smoky and dim, will be wise to make a friend of John Witt Randall — if not altogether as a poet (for I disguise not from myself that certain " decadent " schools will challenge his right to that title in a supreme sense), yet as a prophet of the

�� �