NOTES

New Zealand Tablet, 3 October 1918, Page 26

NOTES

Cant One wonders if the war which is going to achieve so many revolutions will be able to kill cant. If it does not there will be so much insincerity left that it will quickly be time’ to have another war to reduce the number of those who are living by the law of cant. The root of cant is insincerity and hypocrisy. There are many persons well known to us who have not the least qualms of conscience about telling lies 6V committing gross sins, but who think it Ts the unpardonable offence should anyone have the moral courage to call a liar or a beast by his proper name. To such an extent has cant got hold of mankind that even decent people have fallen in with the hypocritical views that prevail : and even Christian ministers who are supposed to be familiar with the Gospel hold up their hands in horror if one imitates Christ, who was not mealymouthed and did not hesitate to call a liar or a hypocrite by his right name. Duty Cant reminds us of the German philosopher who, having undermined the foundations of belief and found himself face to face with a precipice of doubt from which he shrank, set about building up on floating clouds a system which should preserve the moral order which he had so far attacked indirectly and perhaps unwittingly. One of the finest pages written by Kant was on Duty ; and the only thing wrong about it was that he was endeavoring to hang this grave matter on cobwebs after he had removed the one sure sanction on which it rests. Pagans have also attempted to establish an ideal of Duty on foundations as insecure as those of Kant. _ The one thing that makes Duty a reality and not a poetic abstraction is its supernatural sanction. Take that away and Duty is but an empty name. Yet, they were right in teaching that a conception of Duty is of supreme importance: it was never more so than to-day when childi'en and old women babble of rights bub ignore their duties. The clamor for rights and the shirking of duties is but a manifestation of the effeminacy and degeneracy of the times. Even among our own people we find it. What priest does not know many silly young people who neglect

their morning and evening prayers, and who have not the backbone to keep a fast day properly ? They will tell you it was “Just carelessness,’’ or that they “Did not feel like it.” What they mean is that they are degenerates and cowards. You can’t make a, silk purse out of a sow’s ear* is an old saying. • What can you make out of people like those ? Who could trust them to perform any duty conscientiously ? What good will they ever be to themselves -or to anybody else ? How one admires the boy or girl who faces hard things and does unpleasant things exactly because they come in the way of Duty ! So close is glory to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low “Thou must,” The youth replies “1 can.’’

The Motive The motive of Duty must be supernatural. As we have said every other motive has been tried and found wanting. \V e must come back to this consideiation : I am here as a creature of God, not to do my own will, but to serve Him in the way He wills. He wills me to do my duty in whatever sphere of life mine is. If Ido it, He will reward me and I shall be happy because I have served Him: if I do it not, 1 shall become a failure, and He will punish me. The religious conception of man’s nature and of his relation to his Creator is the root of Duty. In a word we must do our dutv because God wills it. We must learn to say, as our fathers said in their sufferings, It is the will of God. That must be the mainspring of our lives and our thoughts, words, and actions ought to be regulated by that conception as regularly and effectively as the wheels ot a watch are driven by the spiing. One may do one’s dutv fairly well, or for a time, from other motives; but the supernatural motive is the only one that will endure always. What a diffeient world it would be if we could always be tilisted to do what we ought to do! How many vexations would disappear, and how many hours of misery would be saved

Love of Poetry In olden times almost every Irishman was a poet in an active way. To-day most of them have lost the active voice and use only the passive: that is still their prerogative. One thing that most Celts musthave felt is a sense of amazement at being unable to comprehend why certain lines praised much by English reviewers awaken no responsive chords in their hearts ; and upon examination it will be found that the untutored Celt is right, and that there is no poetry at all in the compositions, that they are but good prose over which much time has been lost in giving them a perfect metrical form. For this they are praised by those who have not the inward eye and can.never feel that poetry is poetry, no matter in what form it be written or spoken, and that prose is prose even if thrown into musical cadences and flawless lines. We have a broad mind as regards poetry. From Walter von der Vogelweide to Walt Whitman, from Virgil to Heine, we receive the singers of all the ages and climes with open arms; but we honestly confess that now and then a reviewer asks us to accept as a poet one in whom we can find little or no poetry at all. To make our confession more complete let us say that such a one is Katharine Tynan. We tried to like her. verses when we knew them first. We tried again when we heard what certain critics had to say of them. We tried later when she told us herself that they were good. And the more we knew of them the more we became convinced that they were no good at all. As academical exercises in metre and verse they are excellent. As poetry we beg to decline to accept them.

Rosa Mulholland Lady Gilbert, as she is now named, is a poet who has much less to say of herself than Katharine Tynan tells us of Katharine Tynan; but Rosa Mulholland

has written stories and poems which we believe to be far and away superior to any work done by her dogmatic fellow-countrywoman. Katharine Tynan could never have written the Wild Birds'of —which, by the way, will be our next serial story; —and there is more real poetry in this simple poem than in pages of Katharine’s well-reviewed verses: « My dewy fields are sad and lone, The mountain-top’s a frowning- stone, The rain rains tears, the sea is grey - For little children gone away. O wirrasthru! that I could see The little faces round my knee, That I could hear the running feet That ran between my hedges sweet! I’ll see no more your big blue eyes, No more I’ll hear your shouts and cries; You grow and turn to heartless men. Unlike the men that stepped the glen. You’re cradled .in the stranger’s land. The stranger takes your wedded hand, Your little children are not mine: By hill and glen I weep and pine. O sons of mine that leave me lone Your ears will never hear my moan : On alien hills, by alien streams Your mother’s face-will haunt your dreams. Rachel weeping for her children! There is the lonely plaint of Mother Eire for the young ones and the strong ones whom cruel foreign laws have torn from her bosom. No mere artificial writing this; but every word of it goes home to the Irish heart.