POETRY IN NAMES.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 772, 22 March 1910, Page 4

POETRY IN NAMES.

Sir, —There is one sentence in "J.Q.X.'s" pleasant article on "Place Names" with which I desire to express disagreement. "Moat of tho Maori names," he says, "have poetical meanings, but they require translation, tho names themselves being poetical only to those who know tho language." I understand this to mean, or to imply, that a name is without poetical charm until it is "looked up" in a dictionary. Mmn<&aha (not specially pretty to me) moans Laughing Water. The charm of "Laughing Water" then transfuses "Minnehaha." But suppose that Minnehaha meant Boiled Maize—would a reference to the dictionary instantly set the Indian word aglow with beatuy?

Now, I am sure that "J.Q.X." thrills to many names the actual significance of which may be coarse, common, or very horrid. ..Does "J.Q.X." know the meaning, or evoii the whereabouts of Silken Samarcand or cedared Lebanon? Does he—let him tell ine honestly— does he need a gazetteer and a bunch of dictionaries to appreciate such passages as. these?— •

Him the Ammonite Worshipped in Kabba. and her watery plain, : In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon. : , In Hesebon . And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, And Eleale. And all who since, baptised or infidel, Jousted -in Aspramont, or Mont.tlban, Uamasco, or Marocco, or. Trebisond, 'Or- whom Biserta sent from Afrie shore When Charleniaia. with all his peerage fell ■ By Pontarabia. . . I don't quote "Vallombrosa," because the meaning (I always call it "Snadow Valley," and not "the Leafy Vale") assists the long, luxurious 'vocable.*- But when, as a small boy, I'first met Vallombrosa, I did not know what it meant. It was to me simply a ,city in the kingdom of . .dreams, and I would say it over and over again to my self for the pure joy of the sound. -. . .■'...

I have a theory that words can be magnificent of. themselves, without -.reference. to their meaning. A clear chord on the organ—is it of no beauty apart from tho whole movement that gives it exact meaning? The beat pf tho wooden dnrm "in the heart of Africa thrijls the hearts of'the savage hearers. Sir Philip Sidney said "the blast" of a trumpet—just the ringing element tal sound. What "J. Q.X.'s" statement implies is that poetry is invisible, or insensible, except to the intellect. From this I dissent. For if his stater mont were correct, the finest poem in tho world would be the first proposition of Euclid. My theory is that when I thrill at a beautiful name some sarage ancestor of mino who "felt good" in his dim Neanderthal fashion at . the whistle of a bird or tho tinklo of a stream, or the crashing diminuendo of the thunder, has turned in his sleep "in me. The boy's love of sonorous names.; Oscar Wilde's delight when his friends, hunting up strmge .words . fori>his. "Sphinx," brought him: "nenuphar"; the savage's passion for tho thumping drum in the forests behind . Sierra Leone; Sir Joseph Ward's love for" certain stately platitudes; the.American's delight in the thought that "the United> States is- bounded on <the s east by the rising the west by the eternal' procession of God's equinoxes, on the north by the aurora borealis, and the south by the' Day of' Judgment"; myown affection for "Hinemoa," of whichI have never known, and will never seek, the meaning; everybody's sensation of depth and immeasurable power and of a great wave bursting when they speak of "the- Pacific , ' —all of these things are disproofs of "J.Q.X.'s" theory,—l am, ■etc., . X.Y.Z.