Tennyson was mere word music, Browning was unintelligible,
and so forth. And I remember how, with the insolence of youth, I
thought how dreadful it was that the old man should have lost all
sympathy and judgment; because poetry then seemed to me a really
important matter, full of tones and values. I did not understand
then, as I understand now, that it is all a question of signals and
symbols, and that poetry is but, as the psalm says, what happens
when one day telleth another and one night certifieth another. I
know now that there can be no deceit about poetry, and that no poet
can make you feel more than he feels himself, though he cannot
always make another feel as much; and that the worth of his art
exists only just in so far as he can say what he feels; and then I
thought of my old friend's mind as I might think of a scarecrow
among lonely fields, a thing absurd, ragged, and left alone, while
real men went about their business. I did not say it, but I thought
it in my folly. So I told my young friend that story; and I said:
"I know that it does not really matter what one loves and is moved
by as long as one loves something and is moved by its beauty. But,
still, I do not want that to happen to me; I do not want to be like
a pebble on the beach, when the water draws past it to the land. I
want to feel and understand the new signals. In the nursery," I
said, "we used to anger our governess when she read us a piece of
poetry, by saying to her, 'Who made it up?' 'You should say, "Who
wrote it?"' she would say.
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