C. Day Lewis Speaks About Town and Country Muses

The audience in Sanders Theater sathunched forward slightly, listening intently as Cecil Day Lewis last night began the second half of the Charles Eliot Norton lectures by tracing the history of the English street ballad.

"I just want to sing one stanza of this ballad, since it's so beautiful," Lewis said, his precise diction changing to a soft, rather melodious song. The audience satback, quietly charmed by the distinguished, white-haired poet. A few men put their arms around their dates.

This reaction to Lewis' song stressed his belief that affection, although mute in modern poetry, is not dead in man. "The simple wish to be alive is the inarticulate man's hope and the poet's Iyric impulse," he said.

The poet of the industrial society, Lewis said, has not achieved the "imaginative understanding" of his environment which is the basis of Iyric poetry, "The contemtemporary poet instinctively distrusts the present. Poetry," he said, "must come to terms with the urban-industrial landscape or else fade away with a long sigh of nostalgia."

Lewis noted that a lack of tenderness has always characterized the poetry of the city. He quoted numerous English and Irish ballads, speaking with Midland and Irish accents when appropriate, to show that the street song is more often comic or dramatic than tender. "The golden age of innocence and love was in the country," he said. He added that if using the street ballad as social criticism requires "marking the literary muse into the literary prostitute, I'm in favor of it."

Lewis also described the street ballad's abundant subject matter. "The ballads, like modern newspapers, were filled with sex encounters, battles, and murders," he said. "The poor man then, as today, relished the predicaments of his superiors, whether of the gallows or in the bed."