LIBERTY AND LITERATURE

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 1 June 1915, Page 3

LIBERTY AND LITERATURE

'■, ■♦': •' ' '." "TAKE LONG VIEWS." One of the maxims winch will be tesiAjcL iiiosst severely daring these months is (says the Sydney Morning Herald) ttatwhicn bias us remember that to sustain and to console is the function of great literature. Liberty is the chief gift of England to the world, and after liberty literature; these are the test 3by which the greatness of that country would be proved in any comparison with other nations, before the courts of civilisation. In English literature^ if anywhere, we shall find the thoughts which will console the grief and sustain the resolution of the whole British people in such a crisis as this. It may be said that nothing could be found by turning to such a source, since no war has ever impiessed its terrors on a people or afflicted *hem so greatly las this. The Napoleonic wars, though f'they threatened to destroy the power of England,, left the general life of the country almost untouched. Yet it is in the long struggle against Napoleon that we find the closest parallel to our present case and the wisest counsel for doubts or fears .The dangers and the ultimate triumph of England, though they w.er.3 unheeded by mairy mindr, both great^ arid small, profoundly ira- i pressed the most English of £11 the poets.. In Wordsworth's .verse there is a reflection of all the alternating- moods j of disappointment, of resolution, of! pride in and ?ov*> of country whip** have been known by British subjects all over the world since the war began. lo Wordsworth the outbreak of war was at j tragedy as the outbreak of this war! has been to many of those Englishmen who have served iheir. country best. There were many occasions between the [beginning of last century and the final j victory when the'danger of defeat was i greater than it has ever been or can ! ever be to-day England for a time stood alone against the world, whereas now slue is the ally of f-vro great Powers and the hope of civilisation. But though the parallel is nob exact, the circumstances are so nearly alike and there is so larsre a universal,element in the po^'s work that the thoughts expressed in it ?>e 110 less relevant to the war against-. Germany than they were to the England of his own day." In his roble series of sonnets, Wordsworth reflects- all the doubts and the hopes which can pass through the«mind of an Englishman as he thinks of the history of his country and of the dangers now before it. The lesson of Wordsworth, however., is not to! be gathered from a reading of detached sonnets or from an attempt to match any singe one with a contemporary event. Wordsworth, by his whole tone, has shown Englishmen how they should face their enemies, and what it is they have to defend. These sonnets have lived and will live because they are concerned only with great ideas and are free from appeals to small passions. There is no abuse of the enemy. There is nothing but an insistence on the greatness of the traditions of Englishmen and an exhortation never to despair. The phrase "the healing power" of Wordsworth wa3 used of the nature poems rather than of these. But times such as ours have shown us that there is no less healing power in these appeals to Englishmen to remerrber the true greatness of their country and the greatness which it confers on themselves. We find no such power in Shakespeare, nor even in that "God-gifted organ voice of England" which Wordsworth *so revered. The don bis and fears of Wordsworth bring him nearer to the average man than supreme greatness has ever reached. He has the faculty of returning on himself, which is denied to onmiscence and yet is tho one convincing proof of sincerity. The messa.ee of the sonnets at lenst is not for those only who know the English country, but for every one of us who speaks "the tongue that Shakespeare spoke, the faith and morals hold that Milton held." His appeals touch the henrfc of everyone who inherits tbo traditions which Englishmen have handed on to their descendants all over, the world He bids them believe in their country whatever mpy come, because it is built on a foundation of justice. He bids them in the fnee of personal crief to remember that the stream of a' great tradition must flow on, bearing with it and enriched by the bravest and the noblest of individual lives. For backward, Duddon, as I cast my eyes

I see what was, and is, and will abide; Still glides tV>o. stream, and shall for ever £lide. The for.ni remains, the function never dies. Enough, if something from our hands have power To live, and act, and serve the future hour:

And if as toward the silent tomb we go Through

love, through hope, and

faith's transcendent, dowe'% We feel that we are greater than we know.