Converse, C. C.

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MISCELLANEOUS.THE VERSE OF THE FUTURE, WITH TWO PROPOSED ILLUS-TRATIONS.BY C. CROZAT CONVERSE.The Parnassian poet, when the gods practised poetry and physic, never—it is said—gave a prescription in rhyme; and the Verse-Of-The-Futurist,when inditing recipes for the sane, will—I think—be under this Parnassianinfluence; finding Apothecarus Hall and the muses as separable as did theEnglish poet, Keats, who—in his Hyperion—removed his pen from even therestrictions of ten-syllabled blankverse, apparently fearing—as, it is said, theParnassian poet feared—the perverting effects of rhymed medicine or, ofHyperion, cut to meter. Or, let this Futurist take encouragement from Aris-tophanes's spondaic exuberances, in evidence in that poet's grandest verse.De Maistre's dictum that—"thought and language are only two magnificentsynonyms"—may be cited in the Futurist's favor. For, if man thinks hiswords before he speaks, he surely does not think in rhyme,—as every speakerwho thinks must confess—rhyme being weaker word-play than the sanest,simplest mental acts, the strongest verse : such—for example—as Shelley's:"Life, like a dome of many-colored glassStains the white radiance of eternity.Until death tramples it to fragments ;"which clearly would not be saner, if rhymed, or its syllables wore the ten-uniform.Matthew Arnold truly says : "For poetry the idea is everything." Tlienlet the idea be expressed euphoniously, and not put in metrical harness, whichartificializes it. Let it be expressed as in Homer's lines, to which, Arnold says,supreme praise is due:"So said she ; they, long since, inEarth's soft arms were reposing;There, in their dear land, theirFatherland, Lacedsemon."The easy rhymester would walk the streets for hours in laboring to versifyand metricize this idea, and—perhaps—take the liberty the poet Burns relishedof giving one-syllabled words two syllables.If Burns's vocabulary had to be thus mended, to meet the demands of hismuse, the Futurist may felicitate himself on being enabled to take his Englishi)i puris naturalibus.504 THE OPEN COURT,THE CLOUDS.BY C. CROZAT CONVERSE.Idlers of sky:Idleness apotheosized.Sculpture-ghosts, taking formsOf life-dreams in marble.Self-conscious;Self-serving;Fancying the world's eyesOnly, and ever, on them:On them in adulation.Scurrying everywhere;Eager, ever and everywhere,To hide some rising star from view,As envious mortals would hide rising souls:Quite as blindly;Quite as ineffectually.Idlers of sky:Spoiled sky-children.Sulking;Frowning;Weeping.In their esteem Sun and MoonWere born of the world's need,For light to showNo charms save theirs.THE WIND.BY C. CROZAT CONVERSE.The wind is a devil:A whining, whistling, gibbering devil.Crying threateningly at the door.His vassals, the rain, hail, sand and snow.Razing the helpless village;Showing no mercyTo babe or widow.Sick or needy.Frolicking with frost and fire,In Bacchic orgy;Finding sweet musicIn burning, crackling timber;In snapping, bursting girder;In plunging, crashing car.And smothered death-groan.A fellow-feeling has he fox Mammon;A devil's respect for plans of gain.Mayhap he thinks the city's throng,Of high and low seekers for gold,Inhumanly rival his human deeds.MISCELLANEOUS. 505An over-handed devilIs this "prince of the power of the air";Working without man's mean disguise.An honest devil is he—as devils go;Seeming to be what he really is:Noisy, rough, capricious, remorseless:A prince, indeed.Of limitless wantonness.A prince for that manWho bends the kneeTo all gods of pretense:A prince to fawn toAs worthy of Satan's crown.DR. OTTO PFLEIDERER.With deep regret we learn from a cablegram of the death of Dr. OttoPfleiderer which took place on July 20. As The Open Court goes to pressnothing is yet known of the details of his illness. Professor Pfleiderer wasone of the leading theologians of Germany, and combined deep personalpiety with the spirit of fearless research. In fact he has been one of theleaders in investigations with regard to the history of the primitive Churchand the origins of Christianity. He has written important books on philo-sophical topics, but his three latest publications have been on the origin anddevelopment of Christianity, Die Entstehung des Christentiims, Religion undReligionen, and Die Entzvicklung des Christentums. A translation of the In-troduction to his last work on "The Evolution of Christianity," which is reallya condensation of Professor Pfleiderer's whole position, appeared in TheMonist, of October, 1907. Another important article by Professor Pfleidererappeared in the same magazine in the last two numbers of 1904, under thetitle "The Christ of Primitive Christian Faith in the Light of Religio-Histor-ical Criticism." Dr. Pfleiderer has many friends among students of religionin America and was a prominent figure at the Congress of Liberal Religionsheld at Boston last summer.SISTER SANGHAMITTA'S EXPERIENCE WITH VOICES.To the Editor of The Open Court:After reading in The Open Court an article entitled "The History of aStrange Case," I am prompted to tell you something that I have never toldany one before. I too have heard voices in my own ears. When I was achild and until recently, I have heard voices coming from within my brain,similar to those emanating from the head of Mrs. Blake; however with thisdifference : I never heard what is commonly supposed to be communicationsfrom the dead. Sometimes these voices annoy me ; it is as though I was ina crowd of people all talking at once, and being obliged to listen, I becomeweary.Only in three instances has anything of importance been communicated tome through these voices; the first time was when a voice in my ear told me inclear loud tones of an accident that had happened to my mother. At this timeI was in California and my mother in Mexico, and the voice told me of theaccident on the same day it happened. Another time was on the occasion of

The Verse of the Future with Illustrations.

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The Verse of the Future with Illustrations.

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