ARCHITECTURE AND THE POETS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 776, 28 March 1910, Page 8

ARCHITECTURE AND THE POETS.

A paper by Mr. Charles Ower, F.S.A.. (Scot.), architect, Dundee, on "Architecture and the Poets" was read before the Edinburgh Architectural Association recently. Mr. Ower said it would do them good to consider what poets thought of architecture and how it struck them. Their ideas might serve to make them better men, better architects, and better artists, and promote among them that loving feeling for their art which sprang from a sense of its true greatness to ennoble it into a passion, to make them feel if possible more strongly than they did that it was not a mere means of livelihood. Pihythm was not a necessity of poetic, expression, and when an appeal was.made to the finer emotions and the sense of ideal beauty, and was clothed in appropriate language, it was as well fitted for their consideration as though it had been in the rhythmical form, as for instance some of the passages in Holy Writ, in many paintings, and in Ruskin's prose writings. That being so, thoy need not be surprised when they found in the poets passages in which their art was drawn on for its imagery, its appropriateness acknow-; ledged in combination with natural 1 beauty, the materials they used set forth in order to emphasise the highest' ideals of grandeur and permanence, when Heaven itself was referred' to by the Great Idealist as "My Father's House" in which "mansions" are preSared for the spirits of the blest. Mr. war proceeded to deal with the poets who have used architectural symbols, and commenced by stating that Homer and Virgil in their description of Troy described palaces with "silver columns and lintels," "brass bases and walls," and brass-covered doors. He pointed out that in the Old Testament they had many descriptions which were almost architectural specifications, but besides that they had in the purely poetic books architectural imagery used in the finest way. It was due to the poets to point out that at no period had architecture been despised by them. The greater the man and the higher his art the more did architecture appeal to him. Detail might not be given or attempted, but the grandeur and the mass were given by all the immortals. Architects as architects were little noticed, but their work was shown to be an essential in the economy of the world, as it had existed in all time past, and it was likely that in all time to come it might servo to inspire and delight such minds as contemplated the beautiful, both in art and idea.