Notes: Life and Song
`Life and Song' is the fifth of a series of seven poems
published under the general heading of `Street-cries',
with the two stanzas following as an introduction:
"Oft seems the Time a market-town
Where many merchant-spirits meet
Who up and down and up and down
Cry out along the street
"Their needs, as wares; one THUS, one SO:
Till all the ways are full of sound:
-- But still come rain, and sun, and snow,
And still the world goes round."
The remaining numbers of the series are: 1. `Remonstrance',
given in this volume; 2. `The Ship of Earth'; 3. `How Love Looked for Hell';
4. `Tyranny'; 6. `To Richard Wagner'; 7. `A Song of Love'.
I can think of no more helpful comment on the subject of our poem
than this sentence from Milton's `Apology for Smectymnuus',
already alluded to in the `Introduction' (p. liv [Part VI]):
"And long it was not after, when I was confirmed in this opinion,
that he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter
in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem; that is,
a composition and pattern of the best and honorablest things;
not presuming to sing high praises of heroic men or famous cities,
unless he have in himself the experience and the practice of all that
which is praiseworthy.
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