The Spring Poet.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXVII, Issue XXIII, 7 December 1901, Page 1069

The Spring Poet.

The spring- poet is not a creation of the comic journals, lie is a flesh and blood reality, as every editor knows to his sorrow. The spring time of the year does seem to have some strange stimulating- influence on poetaster as well as poet. At that season more than at any other the verse-makers are more than ever rampant. In sympathy with nature, they put forth their leaves in prodigal abundance, and drop them on poor editors’ tables, who in turn probably drop them in the waste paper basket. 1 believe that'if t ime . tatistician would examine into the matter it would be found that more bad rhymes are produced in this quarter of the year than during- the other three. The public don't quite understand this. They are saved the infliction by the interposition of a special providence in the shape of the humble editor. They make the acquaintance of those verses chiefly which have just enough poetical weight to deliver them from the editor’s winnowing- pen. If they only knew the material among- which fl at pen has laboured like a flail! Rejection may discourage the true poet, but never the poetaster. A more Self-sufficient mortal than the man or woman who writes bad "poetry”--to miscall the stuff—it would be impossible to And. And the trouble is i hat they are not confined to the intducated. People of education and, one would expect, a certain amount of culture, are constantly writing verses which have little rhyme or reason in them. ] read the other day in a, small church magazine a semi-re-ligious effusion by the minister—a singularly thin production, with little music and no noctrv in it. That an

educated and presumably busy man should write that sort of stuff is not a little surprising, but that he should publish it is unpardonable. It cither betrays a sad absence of poetic judgment, or what is much worse, a cruel indifference to the poetic tastes of others. Yet, Istay, what does the poetic taste of most amount to? Is it not singularly raw and unformed? ’s it not the case that ten people cut of every dozen will prefer the jii gling, inconsequential rhymes >f t’ e local poet to the noblest verse? For that very reason is the sin of Idm who writes bad verse, and of him who publishes it, all the greater? They set a low standard, which is worse than none at all. The conceited inepitude of ; such writers, and the foolish complaisance of such editors are alike to be condemned.