Paganini

For lo! creation's self is one great choir, And what is Nature's order but the rhyme Whereto the worlds keep time, And all things move with all things from their prime? Who shall expound the mystery of the lyre? In far retreats of elemental mind Obscurely comes and goes The imperative breath of song, that as the wind Is trackless, and oblivious whence it blows.

--William Watson

Some time ago, after my lecture one night in Boston, I bethought me to call on my old friend Bliss Carman. I expected he would be sleeping the sleep of the just, but I was prepared to rout him out, for although my errand was from a fair, frail young thing, and trivial, yet I was bound to deliver the message--for that is what one should always do.

But the poet was not abed--he was pacing the room in a fine burst of poetic fervor, composing "More Songs From Vagabondia." The songs told of purling streams, hedgerows, bathers lolling on the river-bank, nodding wild flowers, chirping pewees, and other such poetic properties, which the singer conjured forth from boyhood's days, long since gone by.

This suite of rooms, where the poet worked, was in a fine house on a fashionable street, and I noticed the place bore every mark of elegant bachelor ease and convenience that good taste could dictate. The best "Songs From Vagabondia," I am told, are written in comfortable apartments, where there are a bath and a Whitely Exerciser; but patient, persistent effort and work overtime are necessary to lick the lines into shape so they will live. Good poets run their machinery in double shifts.

"Go away!" cried Bliss Carman, when he had opened the door in reply to my sprightly knock. "Go away! I am giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. This is my busy night--do you not see?" And fully understanding the conditions, for I am a poet myself, I went away and left the author to his labors.

It is a mistake to assume that genius is the capacity for evading hard work. "La Vie de Boheme" is a beautiful myth that was first worked out with consummate labor by a man of imagination named Murger, and told again with variations by Balzac and Du Maurier. Boheme is not down on the map, because it is not a money-order post-office. It is only a Queen Mab fairy fabric of a warm, transient desire; its walls being constructed of the stuff that dreams are made of, and its little life is rounded with a pipe and tabor, two empties and a brass tray. Yet the semblance of the thing is there and this often deceives the very elect. Around every art studio are found the young men in velveteen who smoke infinite cigarettes, and throw off opinions about this great man and that, and prate prosaically in blase monotone of the Beautiful. Sometimes these young persons give lectures on "Art as I Have Found It"; but do not be deceived by this--the art that lives is probably being produced by