Youth's Agitations

When I shall be divorced, some ten years hence,
From this poor present self which I am now;
When youth has done its tedious vain expense
Of passions that for ever ebb and flow;

Shall I not joy youth's heats are left behind,
And breathe more happy in an even clime?—
Ah no, for then I shall begin to find
A thousand virtues in this hated time!

Then I shall wish its agitations back,
And all its thwarting currents of desire;
Then I shall praise the heat which then I lack,
And call this hurrying fever, generous fire;

And sigh that one thing only has been lent
To youth and age in common—discontent.

Austerity Of Poetry


That son of Italy who tried to blow,
Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song,
In his light youth amid a festal throng
Sate with his bride to see a public show.

Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow
Youth like a star; and what to youth belong—
Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong.
A prop gave way! crash fell a platform! lo,

'Mid struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she lay!
Shuddering, they drew her garments off—and found
A robe of sackcloth next the smooth, white skin.
Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse! young, gay,
Radiant, adorn'd outside; a hidden ground
Of thought and of austerity within.

Worldly Place


Even in a palace, life may be led well!
So spake the imperial sage, purest of men,
Marcus Aurelius. But the stifling den
Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell,

Our freedom for a little bread we sell,
And drudge under some foolish master's ken.
Who rates us if we peer outside our pen—
Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell?

Even in a palace! On his truth sincere,
Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came;
And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame

Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win,
I'll stop, and say: "There were no succour here!
The aids to noble life are all within."

East London


'Twas August, and the fierce sun overhead
Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green,
And the pale weaver, through his windows seen
In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.

I met a preacher there I knew, and said:
"Ill and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene?"—
"Bravely!" said he; "for I of late have been,
Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, the living bread."

O human soul! as long as thou canst so
Set up a mark of everlasting light,
Above the howling senses' ebb and flow,

To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam—
Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night!
Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home.

West London


Crouch'd on the pavement, close by Belgrave Square,
A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied.
A babe was in her arms, and at her side
A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare.

Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there,
Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied
Across and begg'd, and came back satisfied.
The rich she had let pass with frozen stare.

Thought I: "Above her state this spirit towers;
She will not ask of aliens but of friends,
Of sharers in a common human fate.

"She turns from that cold succour, which attends
The unknown little from the unknowing great,
And points us to a better time than ours."

Memorial Verses
April, 1850


Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remain'd to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb—
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bow'd our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watch'd the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.

When Goethe's death was told, we said:
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on the place,
And said: Thou ailest here, and here!
He look'd on Europe's dying hour
Of fitful dream and feverish power;
His eye plunged down the weltering strife,
The turmoil of expiring life—
He said: The end is everywhere,
Art still has truth, take refuge there!
And he was happy, if to know
Causes of things, and far below
His feet to see the lurid flow
Of terror, and insane distress,
And headlong fate, be happiness.

And Wordsworth!—Ah, pale ghosts, rejoice!
For never has such soothing voice
Been to your shadowy world convey'd,
Since erst, at morn, some wandering shade
Heard the clear song of Orpheus° come
Through Hades, and the mournful gloom.
Wordsworth has gone from us—and ye,
Ah, may ye feel his voice as we!
He too upon a wintry clime
Had fallen—on this iron time
Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.
He found us when the age had bound
Our souls in its benumbing round;
He spoke, and loosed our heart in tears.
He laid us as we lay at birth
On the cool flowery lap of earth,
Smiles broke from us and we had ease;
The hills were round us, and the breeze
Went o'er the sun-lit fields again;
Our foreheads felt the wind and rain.
Our youth returned; for there was shed
On spirits that had long been dead,
Spirits dried up and closely furl'd,
The freshness of the early world.

Ah! since dark days still bring to light
Man's prudence and man's fiery might,
Time may restore us in his course
Goethe's sage mind and Byron's force;
But where will Europe's latter hour
Again find Wordsworth's healing power?
Others will teach us how to dare,
And against fear our breast to steel;
Others will strengthen us to bear—
But who, ah! who, will make us feel
The cloud of mortal destiny?
Others will front it fearlessly—
But who, like him, will put it by?

Keep fresh the grass upon his grave
O Rotha, with thy living wave!
Sing him thy best! for few or none
Hears thy voice right, now he is gone.

The Scholar-Gipsy

Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill;
Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes°!
No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,
Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,
Nor the cropp'd herbage shoot another head.
But when the fields are still,
And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,
And only the white sheep are sometimes seen;
Cross and recross the strips of moon-blanch'd green,
Come, shepherd, and again begin the quest!

Here, where the reaper was at work of late—
In this high field's dark corner, where he leaves
His coat, his basket, and his earthen cruse,
And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,
Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use—
Here will I sit and wait,
While to my ear from uplands far away
The bleating of the folded flocks is borne,
With distant cries of reapers in the corn—
All the live murmur of a summer's day.

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field,
And here till sun-down, shepherd! will I be.
Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see
Pale pink convolvulus in tendrils creep;
And air-swept lindens yield
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
And bower me from the August sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers.

And near me on the grass lies Glanvil's book°—
Come, let me read the oft-read tale again!
The story of the Oxford scholar poor,
Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,
Who, tired of knocking at preferment's door,
One summer-morn forsook
His friends, and went to learn the gipsy-lore,
And roam'd the world with that wild brotherhood,
And came, as most men deem'd, to little good,
But came to Oxford and his friends no more.

But once, years after, in the country-lanes,
Two scholars, whom at college erst° he knew,
Met him, and of his way of life enquired;
Whereat he answer'd, that the gipsy-crew,
His mates, had arts to rule as they desired
The workings of men's brains,
And they can bind them to what thoughts they will.
"And I," he said, "the secret of their art,
When fully learn'd, will to the world impart;
But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill."

This said, he left them, and return'd no more.—
But rumours hung about the country-side,
That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray,
Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied,
In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey,
The same the gipsies wore.
Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring;
At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors,
On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock'd boors
Had found him seated at their entering.

But, 'mid their drink and clatter, he would fly.
And I myself seem half to know, thy looks,
And put the shepherds, wanderer! on thy trace;
And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooks
I ask if thou hast pass'd their quiet place;
Or in my boat I lie
Moor'd to the cool bank in the summer-heats,
'Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills.
And watch the warm, green-muffled° Cumner hills,
And wonder if thou haunt'st their shy retreats.

For most, I know, thou lov'st retired ground!
Thee at the ferry Oxford riders blithe,
Returning home on summer-nights, have met
Crossing the stripling Thames at Bab-lock-hithe,
Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,
As the punt's rope chops round;
And leaning backward in a pensive dream,
And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowers
Pluck'd in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers
And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream.

And then they land, and thou art seen no more!—
Maidens, who from the distant hamlets come;
To dance around the Fyfield elm in May,
Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam
Or cross a stile into the public way.
Oft thou hast given them store
Of flowers—the frail-leaf'd, white anemony,
Dark bluebells drench'd with dews of summer eves
And purple orchises with spotted leaves—
But none hath words she can report of thee.

And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time's here
In June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames,
Men who through those wide fields of breezy grass
Where black-wing'd swallows haunt the glittering Thames,
To bathe in the abandon'd lasher pass,
Have often pass'd thee near
Sitting upon the river bank o'ergrown;
Mark'd thine outlandish° garb, thy figure spare,
Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air—
But, when they came from bathing, thou wast gone!

At some lone homestead in the Cumner hills,
Where at her open door the housewife darns,
Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gate
To watch the threshers in the mossy barns.
Children, who early range these slopes and late
For cresses from the rills,
Have known thee eying, all an April-day,
The springing pastures and the feeding kine;
And mark'd thee, when the stars come out and shine,
Through the long dewy grass move slow away.

In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood—
Where most the gipsies by the turf-edged way
Pitch their smoked tents, and every bush you see
With scarlet patches tagg'd° and shreds of grey,
Above the forest-ground called Thessaly°—
The blackbird, picking food,
Sees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all;
So often has he known thee past him stray
Rapt, twirling in thy hand a wither'd spray,
And waiting for the spark from heaven to fall.

And once, in winter, on the causeway chill
Where home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,
Have I not pass'd thee on the wooden bridge,
Wrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow,
Thy face tow'rd Hinksey° and its wintry ridge?
And thou hast climb'd the hill,
And gain'd the white brow of the Cumner range;
Turn'd once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall
The line of festal light in Christ-Church hall—
Then sought thy straw in some sequester'd grange.

But what—-I dream! Two hundred years are flown
Since first thy story ran through Oxford halls,
And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribe
That thou wert wander'd from the studious walls
To learn strange arts, and join a gipsy-tribe;
And thou from earth art gone
Long since, and in some quiet churchyard laid—
Some country-nook, where o'er thy unknown grave
Tall grasses and white-flowering nettles wave
Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree's°shade.

—No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours!
For what wears out the life of mortal men?
'Tis that from change to change their being rolls
'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,
Exhaust the energy of strongest souls
And numb the elastic powers.
Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,
And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,
To the just-pausing Genius we remit
Our worn-out life, and are—what we have been.

Thou hast not lived, why should'st thou perish, so?
Thou hadst one aim, one business, one desire;
Else wert thou long since number'd with the dead!
Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire!
The generations of thy peers are fled,
And we ourselves shall go;
But thou possessest an immortal lot,
And we imagine thee exempt from age
And living as thou liv'st on Glanvil's page,
Because thou hadst—what we, alas! have not.

For early didst thou leave the world, with powers
Fresh, undiverted to the world without,
Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;
Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,
Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.
O life unlike to ours!
Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,
Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,
And each half lives a hundred different lives;
Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.

Thou waitest for the spark from heaven! and we,
Light half-believers of our casual creeds,
Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will'd,
Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,
Whose vague resolves never have been fulfill'd;
For whom each year we see
Breeds new beginnings, disappointments new;
Who hesitate and falter life away,
And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day—
Ah! do not we, wanderer! await it too

Yes, we await it!—but it still delays,
And then we suffer! and amongst us one,
Who most has suffer'd, takes dejectedly
His seat upon the intellectual throne;
And all his store of sad experience he
Lays bare of wretched days;
Tells us his misery's birth and growth and signs,
And how the dying spark of hope was fed,
And how the breast was soothed, and how the head,
And all his hourly varied anodynes.

This for our wisest! and we others pine,
And wish the long unhappy dream would end,
And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear;
With close-lipp'd patience for our only friend
Sad patience, too near neighbour to despair—
But none has hope like thine!
Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray,
Roaming the country-side, a truant boy,
Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,
And every doubt long blown by time away.

O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,
And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;
Before this strange disease of modern life,
With its sick hurry, its divided aims,
Its head o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife—
Fly hence, our contact fear!
Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!
Averse, as Dido did with gesture stern
From her false friend's approach in Hades turn,
Wave us away, and keep thy solitude!

Still nursing the unconquerable hope,
Still clutching the inviolable shade,
With a free, onward impulse brushing through,
By night, the silver'd branches of the glade—
Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue,
On some mild pastoral slope
Emerge, and resting on the moonlit pales
Freshen thy flowers as in former years
With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,
From the dark dingles, to the nightingales!

But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!
For strong the infection of our mental strife,
Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;
And we should win thee from thy own fair life,
Like us distracted, and like us unblest.
Soon, soon thy cheer would die,
Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix'd thy powers,
And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made;
And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,
Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.

Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!
—As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,
Descried at sunrise an emerging prow
Lifting the cool-hair'd creepers stealthily,
The fringes of a southward-facing brow
Among the Ægæan isles;
And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,
Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,
Green, bursting figs, and tunnies steep'd in brine—
And knew the intruders on his ancient home,

The young light-hearted masters of the waves—
And snatch'd his rudder, and shook out more sail;
And day and night held on indignantly
O'er the blue Midland waters with the gale,
Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,
To where the Atlantic raves
Outside the western straits; and unbent sails
There, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,
Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;
And on the beach undid his corded bales.

Thyrsis
A Monody, To Commemorate The Author's Friend
Arthur Hugh Clough, Who Died At Florence, 1861


How changed is here each spot man makes or fills!
In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same;
The village street its haunted mansion lacks,
And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name,
And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks—
Are ye too changed, ye hills?
See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men
To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays!
Here came I often, often, in old days—
Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm,
Past the high wood, to where the elm-tree crowns
The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames
The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs?
The Vale, the three lone weirs, the youthful Thames?—,
This winter-eve is warm,
Humid the air! leafless, yet soft as spring,
The tender purple spray on copse and briers!
And that sweet city with her dreaming spires,
She needs not June for beauty's heightening,

Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night!—
Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power
Befalls me wandering through this upland dim,
Once pass'd I blindfold here, at any hour;
Now seldom come I, since I came with him.
That single elm-tree bright
Against the west—I miss it! is it gone?
We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said,
Our friend, the Gipsy-Scholar, was not dead;
While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on.

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here,
But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick;
And with the country-folk acquaintance made
By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick.
Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay'd.
Ah me! this many a year
My pipe is lost, my shepherd's holiday!
Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart
Into the world and wave of men depart;
But Thyrsis of his own will went away.

It irk'd him to be here, he could not rest.
He loved each simple joy the country yields,
He loved his mates; but yet he could not keep,
For that a shadow lour'd on the fields,
Here with the shepherds and the silly° sheep.
Some life of men unblest
He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head.
He went; his piping took a troubled sound
Of storms that rage outside our happy ground;
He could not wait their passing, he is dead.

So, some tempestuous morn in early June,
When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er,
Before the roses and the longest day—
When garden-walks and all the grassy floor
With blossoms red and white of fallen May
And chestnut-flowers are strewn—
So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry,
From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees,
Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze:
The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I!

Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go?
Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on,
Soon will the musk carnations break and swell,
Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon,
Sweet-William with his homely cottage-smell,
And stocks in fragrant blow;
Roses that down the alleys shine afar,
And open, jasmine-muffled lattices,
And groups under the dreaming garden-trees,
And the full moon, and the white evening-star.

He hearkens not! light comer, he is flown!
What matters it? next year he will return,
And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days.
With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern,
And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways,
And scent of hay new-mown.
But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see;
See him come back, and cut a smoother reed,
And blow a strain the world at last shall heed°—
For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer'd thee!

Alack, for Corydon no rival now!—
But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate,
Some good survivor with his flute would go,
Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate;
And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow,
And relax Pluto's brow,
And make leap up with joy the beauteous head
Of Proserpine, among whose crowned hair
Are flowers first open'd on Sicilian air,
And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead.

O easy access to the hearer's grace
When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine!
For she herself had trod Sicilian fields,
She knew the Dorian water's gush divine,
She knew each lily white which Enna yields,
Each rose with blushing face;
She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain.
But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard!
Her foot the Cumner cowslips never stirr'd;
And we should tease her with our plaint in vain!

Well! wind-dispersed and vain the words will be,
Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour
In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill!
Who, if not I, for questing here hath power?
I know the wood which hides the daffodil,
I know the Fyfield tree,
I know what white, what purple fritillaries
The grassy harvest of the river-fields,
Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields,
And what sedged brooks are Thames's tributaries;

I know these slopes; who knows them if not I?—
But many a dingle on the loved hill-side,
With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom'd trees
Where thick the cowslips grew, and far descried
High tower'd the spikes of purple orchises,
Hath since our day put by
The coronals of that forgotten time;
Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team,
And only in the hidden brookside gleam
Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime.

Where is the girl, who by the boatman's door,
Above the locks, above the boating throng,
Unmoor'd our skiff when through the Wytham flats,
Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among
And darting swallows and light water-gnats,
We track'd the shy Thames shore?
Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell
Of our boat passing heaved the river-grass,
Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass?—
They all are gone, and thou art gone as well!

Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night
In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade.
I see her veil draw soft across the day,
I feel her slowly chilling breath invade
The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent° with grey;
I feel her finger light
Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train;—
The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew,
The heart less bounding at emotion new,
And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again.

And long the way appears, which seem'd so short
To the less practised eye of sanguine youth;
And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air,
The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth,
Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare!
Unbreachable the fort
Of the long-batter'd world uplifts its wall;
And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows,
And near and real the charm of thy repose,
And night as welcome as a friend would fall.

But hush! the upland hath a sudden loss
Of quiet!—Look, adown the dusk hill-side,
A troop of Oxford hunters going home,
As in old days, jovial and talking, ride!
From hunting with the Berkshire° hounds they come.
Quick! let me fly, and cross
Into yon farther field!—'Tis done; and see,
Back'd by the sunset, which doth glorify
The orange and pale violet evening-sky,
Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree! the Tree!

I take the omen! Eve lets down her veil,
The white fog creeps from bush to bush about,
The west unflushes, the high stars grow bright,
And in the scatter'd farms the lights come out.
I cannot reach the signal-tree to-night,
Yet, happy omen, hail!
Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno-vale
(For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep
The morningless and unawakening sleep
Under the flowery oleanders pale),

Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our tree is there!—
Ah, vain! These English fields, this upland dim,
These brambles pale with mist engarlanded,
That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him;
To a boon southern country he is fled,
And now in happier air,
Wandering with the great Mother's train divine
(And purer or more subtle soul than thee,
I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see)
Within a folding of the Apennine,

Thou hearest the immortal chants of old!—
Putting his sickle to the perilous grain
In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king,
For thee the Lityerses-song again
Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing;
Sings his Sicilian fold,
His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes—
And how a call celestial round him rang,
And heavenward from the fountain-brink he sprang
And all the marvel of the golden skies.

There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here
Sole in these fields! yet will I not despair.
Despair I will not, while I yet descry
'Neath the mild canopy of English air
That lonely tree against the western sky.
Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear,
Our Gipsy-Scholar haunts, outliving the
Fields where soft sheep from cages pull the hay,
Woods with anemonies in flower till May,
Know him a wanderer still; then why not me?

A fugitive and gracious light he seeks,
Shy to illumin; and I seek it too.
This does not come with houses or with gold,
With place, with honour, and a flattering crew;
'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold—
But the smooth-slipping weeks
Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired;
Out of the heed of mortals he is gone,
He wends unfollow'd, he must house alone;
Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired.

Thou too, O Thyrsis, on like quest was bound;
Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour!
Men gave thee nothing; but this happy quest,
If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power
If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest.
And this rude Cumner ground,
Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields,
Here cam'st thou in thy jocund youthful time,
Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime!
And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields.

What though the music of thy rustic flute
Kept not for long its happy, country tone;
Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note
Of men contention-tost, of men who groan,
Which task'd thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat—
It fail'd, and thou wast mute!
Yet hadst thou alway visions of our light,
And long with men of care thou couldst not stay,
And soon thy foot resumed its wandering way,
Left human haunt, and on alone till night.

Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here!
'Mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore,
Thyrsis! in reach of sheep-bells is my home.
Then through the great town's harsh, heart-wearying roar,
Let in thy voice a whisper often come,
To chase fatigue and fear:
Why faintest thou? I wandered till I died.
Roam on! The light we sought is shining still.
Dost thou ask proof? our tree yet crowns the hill,
Our scholar travels yet the loved hill-side.

Rugby Chapel
November 1857

Coldly, sadly descends
The autumn-evening. The field
Strewn with its dank yellow drifts
Of wither'd leaves, and the elms,
Fade into dimness apace,
Silent;—hardly a shout
From a few boys late at their play!
The lights come out in the street,
In the school-room windows;—but cold,
Solemn, unlighted, austere,
Through the gathering darkness, arise
The chapel-walls, in whose bound
Thou, my father! art laid.

There thou dost lie, in the gloom
Of the autumn evening. But ah!
That word, gloom, to my mind
Brings thee back, in the light
Of thy radiant vigour, again;
In the gloom of November we pass'd
Days not dark at thy side;
Seasons impair'd not the ray
Of thy buoyant cheerfulness, clear.
Such thou wast! and I stand
In the autumn evening, and think
Of bygone autumns with thee.

Fifteen years have gone round
Since thou arosest to tread,
In the summer-morning, the road
Of death, at a call unforeseen,
Sudden. For fifteen years,
We who till then in thy shade
Rested as under the boughs
Of a mighty oak, have endured
Sunshine and rain as we might,
Bare, unshaded, alone,
Lacking the shelter of thee.

O strong soul, by what shore
Tarriest thou now? For that force,
Surely, has not been left vain!
Somewhere, surely, afar,
In the sounding labour-house vast
Of being, is practised that strength,
Zealous, beneficent, firm!

Yes, in some far-shining sphere,
Conscious or not of the past,
Still thou performest the word
Of the Spirit in whom thou dost live—
Prompt, unwearied, as here!
Still thou upraisest with zeal
The humble good from the ground,
Sternly repressest the bad!
Still, like a trumpet, doth rouse
Those who with half-open eyes
Tread the border-land dim
'Twixt vice and virtue; reviv'st,
Succourest!—this was thy work,
This was thy life upon earth.

What is the course of the life
Of mortal men on the earth?—
Most men eddy about
Here and there—eat and drink,
Chatter and love and hate,
Gather and squander, are raised
Aloft, are hurl'd in the dust,
Striving blindly, achieving
Nothing; and then they die—
Perish;—and no one asks
Who or what they have been,
More than he asks what waves,
In the moonlit solitudes mild
Of the midmost Ocean, have swell'd,
Foam'd for a moment, and gone.

And there are some, whom a thirst
Ardent, unquenchable, fires,
Not with the crowd to be spent,
Not without aim to go round
In an eddy of purposeless dust,
Effort unmeaning and vain.
Ah yes! some of us strive
Not without action to die
Fruitless, but something to snatch
From dull oblivion, nor all
Glut the devouring grave!
We, we have chosen our path—
Path to a clear-purposed goal,
Path of advance!—but it leads
A long, steep journey, through sunk
Gorges, o'er mountains in snow.
Cheerful, with friends, we set forth—
Then, on the height, comes the storm.
Thunder crashes from rock
To rock, the cataracts reply,
Lightnings dazzle our eyes.
Roaring torrents have breach'd
The track, the stream-bed descends
In the place where the wayfarer once
Planted his footstep—the spray
Boils o'er its borders! aloft
The unseen snow-beds dislodge
Their hanging ruin; alas,
Havoc is made in our train!

Friends, who set forth at our side,
Falter, are lost in the storm.
We, we only are left!
ith frowning foreheads, with lips
Sternly compress'd, we strain on,
On—and at nightfall at last
Come to the end of our way,
To the lonely inn 'mid the rocks;
Where the gaunt and taciturn host
Stands on the threshold, the wind
Shaking his thin white hairs—
Holds his lantern to scan
Our storm-beat figures, and asks:
Whom in our party we bring?
Whom we have left in the snow?

Sadly we answer: We bring
Only ourselves! we lost
Sight of the rest in the storm.
Hardly ourselves we fought through,
Stripp'd, without friends, as we are.
Friends, companions, and train,
The avalanche swept from our side.

But thou would'st not alone
Be saved, my father! alone
Conquer and come to thy goal,
Leaving the rest in the wild.
We were weary, and we
Fearful, and we in our march
Fain to drop down and to die.
Still thou turnedst, and still
Beckonedst the trembler, and still
Gavest the weary thy hand.

If, in the paths of the world,
Stones might have wounded thy feet,
Toil or dejection have tried
Thy spirit, of that we saw
Nothing—to us thou wast still
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm!
Therefore to thee it was given
Many to save with thyself;
And, at the end of thy day,
O faithful shepherd! to come,
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand.

And through thee I believe
In the noble and great who are gone;
Pure souls honour'd and blest
By former ages, who else—
Such, so soulless, so poor,
Is the race of men whom I see—
Seem'd but a dream of the heart,
Seem'd but a cry of desire.
Yes! I believe that there lived
Others like thee in the past,
Not like the men of the crowd
Who all round me to-day
Bluster or cringe, and make life
Hideous, and arid, and vile;
But souls temper'd with fire,
Fervent, heroic, and good,
Helpers and friends of mankind.

Servants of God!—or sons
Shall I not call you? becaus
Not as servants ye knew
Your Father's innermost mind,
His, who unwillingly sees
One of his little ones lost—
Yours is the praise, if mankind
Hath not as yet in its march
Fainted, and fallen, and died!

See! In the rocks of the world
Marches the host of mankind,
A feeble, wavering line.
Where are they tending?—A God
Marshall'd them, gave them their goal.
Ah, but the way is so long!
Years they have been in the wild!
Sore thirst plagues them, the rocks,
Rising all round, overawe;
Factions divide them, their host
Threatens to break, to dissolve.
—Ah, keep, keep them combined!
Else, of the myriads who fill
That army, not one shall arrive;
Sole they shall stray: in the rocks
Stagger for ever in vain,
Die one by one in the waste.

Then, in such hour of need
Of your fainting, dispirited race,
Ye, like angels, appear,
Radiant with ardour divine!
Beacons of hope, ye appear!
Languor is not in your heart,
Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow.
Ye alight in our van! at your voice,
Panic, despair, flee away.
Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, re-inspire the brave!
Order, courage, return.
Eyes rekindling, and prayers,
Follow your steps as ye go.
Ye fill up the gaps in our files,
Strengthen the wavering line,
Stablish, continue our march,
On, to the bound of the waste,
On, to the City of God.

Theories Of Literature And Criticism


Poetry And The Classics


In two small volumes of Poems, published anonymously, one in 1849, the
other in 1852, many of the Poems which compose the present volume have
already appeared. The rest are now published for the first time.

I have, in the present collection, omitted the poem[2] from which the
volume published in 1852 took its title. I have done so, not because the
subject of it was a Sicilian Greek born between two and three thousand
years ago, although many persons would think this a sufficient reason.
Neither have I done so because I had, in my own opinion, failed in the
delineation which I intended to effect. I intended to delineate the
feelings of one of the last of the Greek religious philosophers, one of
the family of Orpheus and Musæus, having survived his fellows, living on
into a time when the habits of Greek thought and feeling had begun fast
to change, character to dwindle, the influence of the Sophists[3] to
prevail. Into the feelings of a man so situated there are entered much
that we are accustomed to consider as exclusively modern; how much, the
fragments of Empedocles himself which remain to us are sufficient at
least to indicate. What those who are familiar only with the great
monuments of early Greek genius suppose to be its exclusive
characteristics, have disappeared; the calm, the cheerfulness, the
disinterested objectivity have disappeared; the dialogue of the mind
with itself has commenced; modern problems have presented themselves; we
hear already the doubts, we witness the discouragement, of Hamlet and of
Faust.

The representation of such a man's feelings must be interesting, if
consistently drawn. We all naturally take pleasure, says Aristotle,[4]
in any imitation or representation whatever: this is the basis of our
love of poetry: and we take pleasure in them, he adds, because all
knowledge is naturally agreeable to us; not to the philosopher only, but
to mankind at large. Every representation therefore which is
consistently drawn may be supposed to be interesting, inasmuch as it
gratifies this natural interest in knowledge of all kinds. What is _not_
interesting, is that which does not add to our knowledge of any kind;
that which is vaguely conceived and loosely drawn; a representation
which is general, indeterminate, and faint, instead of being particular,
precise, and firm.

Any accurate representation may therefore be expected to be interesting;
but, if the representation be a poetical one, more than this is
demanded. It is demanded, not only that it shall interest, but also that
it shall inspirit and rejoice the reader: that it shall convey a charm,
and infuse delight. For the Muses, as Hesiod[5] says, were born that
they might be "a forgetfulness of evils, and a truce from cares": and it
is not enough that the poet should add to the knowledge of men, it is
required of him also that he should add to their happiness. "All art,"
says Schiller, "is dedicated to joy, and there is no higher and no more
serious problem, than how to make men happy. The right art is that
alone, which creates the highest enjoyment."

A poetical work, therefore, is not yet justified when it has been shown
to be an accurate, and therefore interesting representation; it has to
be shown also that it is a representation from which men can derive
enjoyment. In presence of the most tragic circumstances, represented in
a work of art, the feeling of enjoyment, as is well known, may still
subsist: the representation of the most utter calamity, of the liveliest
anguish, is not sufficient to destroy it: the more tragic the situation,
the deeper becomes the enjoyment; and the situation is more tragic in
proportion as it becomes more terrible.

What then are the situations, from the representation of which, though
accurate, no poetical enjoyment can be derived? They are those in which
the suffering finds no vent in action; in which a continuous state of
mental distress is prolonged, unrelieved by incident, hope, or
resistance; in which there is everything to be endured, nothing to be
done. In such situations there is inevitably something morbid, in the
description of them something monotonous. When they occur in actual
life, they are painful, not tragic; the representation of them in poetry
is painful also.

To this class of situations, poetically faulty as it appears to me, that
of Empedocles, as I have endeavored to represent him, belongs; and I
have therefore excluded the poem from the present collection.

And why, it may be asked, have I entered into this explanation
respecting a matter so unimportant as the admission or exclusion of the
poem in question? I have done so, because I was anxious to avow that the
sole reason for its exclusion was that which has been stated above; and
that it has not been excluded in deference to the opinion which many
critics of the present day appear to entertain against subjects chosen
from distant times and countries: against the choice, in short, of any
subjects but modern ones.

"The poet," it is said,[6] and by an intelligent critic, "the poet who
would really fix the public attention must leave the exhausted past, and
draw his subjects from matters of present import, and _therefore_ both
of interest and novelty."

Now this view I believe to be completely false. It is worth examining,
inasmuch as it is a fair sample of a class of critical dicta everywhere
current at the present day, having a philosophical form and air, but no
real basis in fact; and which are calculated to vitiate the judgment of
readers of poetry, while they exert, so far as they are adopted, a
misleading influence on the practice of those who make it.

What are the eternal objects of poetry, among all nations and at all
times? They are actions; human actions; possessing an inherent interest
in themselves, and which are to be communicated in an interesting manner
by the art of the poet. Vainly will the latter imagine that he has
everything in his own power; that he can make an intrinsically inferior
action equally delightful with a more excellent one by his treatment of
it: he may indeed compel us to admire his skill, but his work will
possess, within itself, an incurable defect.

The poet, then, has in the first place to select an excellent action;
and what actions are the most excellent? Those, certainly, which most
powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections: to those
elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the race, and which are
independent of time. These feelings are permanent and the same; that
which interests them is permanent and the same also. The modernness or
antiquity of an action, therefore, has nothing to do with its fitness
for poetical representation; this depends upon its inherent qualities.
To the elementary part of our nature, to our passions, that which is
great and passionate is eternally interesting; and interesting solely in
proportion to its greatness and to its passion. A great human action of
a thousand years ago is more interesting to it than a smaller human
action of to-day, even though upon the representation of this last the
most consummate skill may have been expended, and though it has the
advantage of appealing by its modern language, familiar manners, and
contemporary allusions, to all our transient feelings and interests.
These, however, have no right to demand of a poetical work that it shall
satisfy them; their claims are to be directed elsewhere. Poetical works
belong to the domain of our permanent passions: let them interest these,
and the voice of all subordinate claims upon them is at once silenced.

Achilles, Prometheus, Clytemnestra, Dido[7]--what modern poem presents
personages as interesting, even to us moderns, as these personages of an
"exhausted past"? We have the domestic epic dealing with the details of
modern life, which pass daily under our eyes; we have poems representing
modern personages in contact with the problems of modern life, moral,
intellectual, and social; these works have been produced by poets the
most distinguished of their nation and time; yet I fearlessly assert
that _Hermann and Dorothea_, _Childe Harold_, _Jocelyn_, the
_Excursion_,[8] leave the reader cold in comparison with the effect
produced upon him by the latter books of the _Iliad_, by the _Oresteia_,
or by the episode of Dido. And why is this? Simply because in the three
last-named cases the action is greater, the personages nobler, the
situations more intense: and this is the true basis of the interest in a
poetical work, and this alone.

It may be urged, however, that past actions may be interesting in
themselves, but that they are not to be adopted by the modern poet,
because it is impossible for him to have them clearly present to his own
mind, and he cannot therefore feel them deeply, nor represent them
forcibly. But this is not necessarily the case. The externals of a past
action, indeed, he cannot know with the precision of a contemporary; but
his business is with its essentials. The outward man of Oedipus[9] or of
Macbeth, the houses in which they lived, the ceremonies of their courts,
he cannot accurately figure to himself; but neither do they essentially
concern him. His business is with their inward man; with their feelings
and behavior in certain tragic situations, which engage their passions
as men; these have in them nothing local and casual; they are as
accessible to the modern poet as to a contemporary.

The date of an action, then, signifies nothing: the action itself, its
selection and construction, this is what is all-important. This the
Greeks understood far more clearly than we do. The radical difference
between their poetical theory and ours consists, as it appears to me, in
this: that, with them, the poetical character of the action in itself,
and the conduct of it, was the first consideration; with us, attention
is fixed mainly on the value of the separate thoughts and images which
occur in the treatment of an action. They regarded the whole; we regard
the parts. With them, the action predominated over the expression of it;
with us, the expression predominates over the action. Not that they
failed in expression, or were inattentive to it; on the contrary, they
are the highest models of expression, the unapproached masters of the
_grand style_:[10] but their expression is so excellent because it is so
admirably kept in its right degree of prominence; because it is so
simple and so well subordinated; because it draws its force directly
from the pregnancy of the matter which it conveys. For what reason was
the Greek tragic poet confined to so limited a range of subjects?
Because there are so few actions which unite in themselves, in the
highest degree, the conditions of excellence; and it was not thought
that on any but an excellent subject could an excellent poem be
constructed. A few actions, therefore, eminently adapted for tragedy,
maintained almost exclusive possession of the Greek tragic stage. Their
significance appeared inexhaustible; they were as permanent problems,
perpetually offered to the genius of every fresh poet. This too is the
reason of what appears to us moderns a certain baldness of expression in
Greek tragedy; of the triviality with which we often reproach the
remarks of the chorus, where it takes part in the dialogue: that the
action itself, the situation of Orestes, or Merope, or Alcmæon,[11] was
to stand the central point of interest, unforgotten, absorbing,
principal; that no accessories were for a moment to distract the
spectator's attention from this, that the tone of the parts was to be
perpetually kept down, in order not to impair the grandiose effect of
the whole. The terrible old mythic story on which the drama was founded
stood, before he entered the theatre, traced in its bare outlines upon
the spectator's mind; it stood in his memory, as a group of statuary,
faintly seen, at the end of a long and dark vista: then came the poet,
embodying outlines, developing situations, not a word wasted, not a
sentiment capriciously thrown in: stroke upon stroke, the drama
proceeded: the light deepened upon the group; more and more it revealed
itself to the riveted gaze of the spectator: until at last, when the
final words were spoken, it stood before him in broad sunlight, a model
of immortal beauty.  This was what a Greek critic demanded; this was
what a Greek poet endeavored to effect. It signified nothing to what
time an action belonged. We do not find that the _Persæ_ occupied a
particularly high rank among the dramas of Æschylus because it
represented a matter of contemporary interest: this was not what a
cultivated Athenian required. He required that the permanent elements of
his nature should be moved; and dramas of which the action, though taken
from a long-distant mythic time, yet was calculated to accomplish this
in a higher degree than that of the _Persæ_, stood higher in his
estimation accordingly. The Greeks felt, no doubt, with their exquisite
sagacity of taste, that an action of present times was too near them,
too much mixed up with what was accidental and passing, to form a
sufficiently grand, detached, and self-subsistent object for a tragic
poem. Such objects belonged to the domain of the comic poet, and of the
lighter kinds of poetry. For the more serious kinds, for _pragmatic_
poetry, to use an excellent expression of Polybius,[12] they were more
difficult and severe in the range of subjects which they permitted.
Their theory and practice alike, the admirable treatise of Aristotle,
and the unrivalled works of their poets, exclaim with a thousand
tongues--"All depends upon the subject; choose a fitting action,
penetrate yourself with the feeling of its situations; this done,
everything else will follow."

But for all kinds of poetry alike there was one point on which they were
rigidly exacting; the adaptability of the subject to the kind of poetry
selected, and the careful construction of the poem.

How different a way of thinking from this is ours! We can hardly at the
present day understand what Menander[13] meant, when he told a man who
enquired as to the progress of his comedy that he had finished it, not
having yet written a single line, because he had constructed the action
of it in his mind. A modern critic would have assured him that the merit
of his piece depended on the brilliant things which arose under his pen
as he went along. We have poems which seem to exist merely for the sake
of single lines and passages; not for the sake of producing any
total-impression. We have critics who seem to direct their attention
merely to detached expressions, to the language about the action, not to
the action itself. I verily think that the majority of them do not in
their hearts believe that there is such a thing as a total-impression to
be derived from a poem at all, or to be demanded from a poet; they think
the term a commonplace of metaphysical criticism. They will permit the
poet to select any action he pleases, and to suffer that action to go as
it will, provided he gratifies them with occasional bursts of fine
writing, and with a shower of isolated thoughts and images. That is,
they permit him to leave their poetical sense ungratified, provided that
he gratifies their rhetorical sense and their curiosity. Of his
neglecting to gratify these, there is little danger; he needs rather to
be warned against the danger of attempting to gratify these alone; he
needs rather to be perpetually reminded to prefer his action to
everything else; so to treat this, as to permit its inherent excellences
to develop themselves, without interruption from the intrusion of his
personal peculiarities: most fortunate when he most entirely succeeds in
effacing himself, and in enabling a noble action to subsist as it did in
nature.

But the modern critic not only permits a false practice: he absolutely
prescribes false aims. "A true allegory of the state of one's own mind
in a representative history," the poet is told, "is perhaps the highest
thing that one can attempt in the way of poetry." And accordingly he
attempts it. An allegory of the state of one's own mind, the highest
problem of an art which imitates actions! No assuredly, it is not, it
never can be so: no great poetical work has ever been produced with such
an aim. _Faust_ itself, in which something of the kind is attempted,
wonderful passages as it contains, and in spite of the unsurpassed
beauty of the scenes which relate to Margaret, _Faust_ itself, judged as
a whole, and judged strictly as a poetical work, is defective: its
illustrious author, the greatest poet of modern times, the greatest
critic of all times, would have been the first to acknowledge it; he
only defended his work, indeed, by asserting it to be "something
incommensurable."

The confusion of the present times is great, the multitude of voices
counselling different things bewildering, the number of existing works
capable of attracting a young writer's attention and of becoming his
models, immense: what he wants is a hand to guide him through the
confusion, a voice to prescribe to him the aim which he should keep in
view, and to explain to him that the value of the literary works which
offer themselves to his attention is relative to their power of helping
him forward on his road towards this aim. Such a guide the English
writer at the present day will nowhere find. Failing this, all that can
be looked for, all indeed that can be desired, is, that his attention
should be fixed on excellent models; that he may reproduce, at any rate,
something of their excellence, by penetrating himself with their works
and by catching their spirit, if he cannot be taught to produce what is
excellent independently.

Foremost among these models for the English writer stands Shakespeare: a
name the greatest perhaps of all poetical names; a name never to be
mentioned without reverence. I will venture, however, to express a doubt
whether the influence of his works, excellent and fruitful for the
readers of poetry, for the great majority, has been an unmixed advantage
to the writers of it. Shakespeare indeed chose excellent subjects--the
world could afford no better than _Macbeth_, or _Romeo and Juliet_, or
_Othello_: he had no theory respecting the necessity of choosing
subjects of present import, or the paramount interest attaching to
allegories of the state of one's own mind; like all great poets, he knew
well what constituted a poetical action; like them, wherever he found
such an action, he took it; like them, too, he found his best in past
times. But to these general characteristics of all great poets he added
a special one of his own; a gift, namely, of happy, abundant, and
ingenious expression, eminent and unrivalled: so eminent as irresistibly
to strike the attention first in him and even to throw into comparative
shade his other excellences as a poet. Here has been the mischief. These
other excellences were his fundamental excellences, _as a poet_; what
distinguishes the artist from the mere amateur, says Goethe, is
_Architectonicè_ in the highest sense; that power of execution which
creates, forms, and constitutes: not the profoundness of single
thoughts, not the richness of imagery, not the abundance of
illustration. But these attractive accessories of a poetical work being
more easily seized than the spirit of the whole, and these accessories
being possessed by Shakespeare in an unequalled degree, a young writer
having recourse to Shakespeare as his model runs great risk of being
vanquished and absorbed by them, and, in consequence, of reproducing,
according to the measure of his power, these, and these alone. Of this
prepondering quality of Shakespeare's genius, accordingly, almost the
whole of modern English poetry has, it appears to me, felt the
influence. To the exclusive attention on the part of his imitators to
this, it is in a great degree owing that of the majority of modern
poetical works the details alone are valuable, the composition
worthless. In reading them one is perpetually reminded of that terrible
sentence on a modern French poet,--_il dit tout ce qu'il veut, mais
malheureusement il n'a rien a dire._[14]

Let me give an instance of what I mean. I will take it from the works of
the very chief among those who seem to have been formed in the school of
Shakespeare; of one whose exquisite genius and pathetic death render him
forever interesting. I will take the poem of _Isabella, or the Pot of
Basil_, by Keats. I choose this rather than the _Endymion_, because the
latter work (which a modern critic has classed with the Faery Queen!),
although undoubtedly there blows through it the breath of genius, is yet
as a whole so utterly incoherent, as not strictly to merit the name of a
poem at all. The poem of _Isabella_, then, is a perfect treasure-house
of graceful and felicitous words and images: almost in every stanza
there occurs one of those vivid and picturesque turns of expression, by
which the object is made to flash upon the eye of the mind, and which
thrill the reader with a sudden delight. This one short poem contains,
perhaps, a greater number of happy single expressions which one could
quote than all the extant tragedies of Sophocles. But the action, the
story? The action in itself is an excellent one; but so feebly is it
conceived by the poet, so loosely constructed, that the effect produced
by it, in and for itself, is absolutely null. Let the reader, after he
has finished the poem of Keats, turn to the same story in the
_Decameron_:[15] he will then feel how pregnant and interesting the same
action has become in the hands of a great artist, who above all things
delineates his object; who subordinates expression to that which it is
designed to express.

I have said that the imitators of Shakespeare, fixing their attention on
his wonderful gift of expression, have directed their imitation to this,
neglecting his other excellences. These excellences, the fundamental
excellences of poetical art, Shakespeare no doubt possessed them--
possessed many of them in a splendid degree; but it may perhaps be
doubted whether even he himself did not sometimes give scope to his
faculty of expression to the prejudice of a higher poetical duty. For we
must never forget that Shakespeare is the great poet he is from his
skill in discerning and firmly conceiving an excellent action, from his
power of intensely feeling a situation, of intimately associating
himself with a character; not from his gift of expression, which rather
even leads him astray, degenerating sometimes into a fondness for
curiosity of expression, into an irritability of fancy, which seems to
make it impossible for him to say a thing plainly, even when the press
of the action demands the very directest language, or its level
character the very simplest. Mr. Hallam,[16] than whom it is impossible
to find a saner and more judicious critic, has had the courage (for at
the present day it needs courage) to remark, how extremely and faultily
difficult Shakespeare's language often is. It is so: you may find main
scenes in some of his greatest tragedies, _King Lear_, for instance,
where the language is so artificial, so curiously tortured, and so
difficult, that every speech has to be read two or three times before
its meaning can be comprehended. This over-curiousness of expression is
indeed but the excessive employment of a wonderful gift--of the power
of saying a thing in a happier way than any other man; nevertheless, it
is carried so far that one understands what M. Guizot[17] meant when he
said that Shakespeare appears in his language to have tried all styles
except that of simplicity. He has not the severe and scrupulous
self-restraint of the ancients, partly, no doubt, because he had a far
less cultivated and exacting audience. He has indeed a far wider range
than they had, a far richer fertility of thought; in this respect he
rises above them. In his strong conception of his subject, in the
genuine way in which he is penetrated with it, he resembles them, and is
unlike the moderns. But in the accurate limitation of it, the
conscientious rejection of superfluities, the simple and rigorous
development of it from the first line of his work to the last, he falls
below them, and comes nearer to the moderns. In his chief works, besides
what he has of his own, he has the elementary soundness of the ancients;
he has their important action and their large and broad manner; but he
has not their purity of method. He is therefore a less safe model; for
what he has of his own is personal, and inseparable from his own rich
nature; it may be imitated and exaggerated, it cannot be learned or
applied as an art. He is above all suggestive; more valuable, therefore,
to young writers as men than as artists. But clearness of arrangement,
rigor of development, simplicity of style--these may to a certain extent
be learned: and these may, I am convinced, be learned best from the
ancients, who, although infinitely less suggestive than Shakespeare, are
thus, to the artist, more instructive.

What then, it will be asked, are the ancients to be our sole models? the
ancients with their comparatively narrow range of experience, and their
widely different circumstances? Not, certainly, that which is narrow in
the ancients, nor that in which we can no longer sympathize. An action
like the action of the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, which turns upon the
conflict between the heroine's duty to her brother's corpse and that to
the laws of her country, is no longer one in which it is possible that
we should feel a deep interest. I am speaking too, it will be
remembered, not of the best sources of intellectual stimulus for the
general reader, but of the best models of instruction for the individual
writer. This last may certainly learn of the ancients, better than
anywhere else, three things which it is vitally important for him to
know:--the all-importance of the choice of a subject; the necessity of
accurate construction; and the subordinate character of expression. He
will learn from them how unspeakably superior is the effect of the one
moral impression left by a great action treated as a whole, to the
effect produced by the most striking single thought or by the happiest
image. As he penetrates into the spirit of the great classical works, as
he becomes gradually aware of their intense significance, their noble
simplicity, and their calm pathos, he will be convinced that it is this
effect, unity and profoundness of moral impression, at which the ancient
poets aimed; that it is this which constitutes the grandeur of their
works, and which makes them immortal. He will desire to direct his own
efforts towards producing the same effect. Above all, he will deliver
himself from the jargon of modern criticism, and escape the danger of
producing poetical works conceived in the spirit of the passing time,
and which partake of its transitoriness.

The present age makes great claims upon us: we owe it service, it will
not be satisfied without our admiration. I know not how it is, but their
commerce with the ancients appears to me to produce, in those who
constantly practise it, a steadying and composing effect upon their
judgment, not of literary works only, but of men and events in general.
They are like persons who have had a very weighty and impressive
experience; they are more truly than others under the empire of facts,
and more independent of the language current among those with whom they
live. They wish neither to applaud nor to revile their age: they wish to
know what it is, what it can give them, and whether this is what they
want. What they want, they know very well; they want to educe and
cultivate what is best and noblest in themselves: they know, too, that
this is no easy task--[Greek: Chalepon] as Pittacus[18] said,[Greek:
Chalepon esthlonemmenai]--and they ask themselves sincerely whether
their age and its literature can assist them in the attempt. If they are
endeavoring to practise any art, they remember the plain and simple
proceedings of the old artists, who attained their grand results by
penetrating themselves with some noble and significant action, not by
inflating themselves with a belief in the preëminent importance and
greatness of their own times. They do not talk of their mission, nor of
interpreting their age, nor of the coming poet; all this, they know, is
the mere delirium of vanity; their business is not to praise their age,
but to afford to the men who live in it the highest pleasure which they
are capable of feeling. If asked to afford this by means of subjects
drawn from the age itself, they ask what special fitness the present age
has for supplying them. They are told that it is an era of progress, an
age commissioned to carry out the great ideas of industrial development
and social amelioration. They reply that with all this they can do
nothing; that the elements they need for the exercise of their art are
great actions, calculated powerfully and delightfully to affect what is
permanent in the human soul; that so far as the present age can supply
such actions, they will gladly make use of them; but that an age wanting
in moral grandeur can with difficulty supply such, and an age of
spiritual discomfort with difficulty be powerfully and delightfully
affected by them.

A host of voices will indignantly rejoin that the present age is
inferior to the past neither in moral grandeur nor in spiritual health.
He who possesses the discipline I speak of will content himself with
remembering the judgments passed upon the present age, in this respect,
by the men of strongest head and widest culture whom it has produced; by
Goethe and by Niebuhr.[19] It will be sufficient for him that he knows
the opinions held by these two great men respecting the present age and
its literature; and that he feels assured in his own mind that their
aims and demands upon life were such as he would wish, at any rate, his
own to be; and their judgment as to what is impeding and disabling such
as he may safely follow. He will not, however, maintain a hostile
attitude towards the false pretensions of his age; he will content
himself with not being overwhelmed by them. He will esteem himself
fortunate if he can succeed in banishing from his mind all feelings of
contradiction, and irritation, and impatience; in order to delight
himself with the contemplation of some noble action of a heroic time,
and to enable others, through his representation of it, to delight in it
also.

I am far indeed from making any claim, for myself, that I possess this
discipline; or for the following poems, that they breathe its spirit.
But I say, that in the sincere endeavor to learn and practise, amid the
bewildering confusion of our times, what is sound and true in poetical
art, I seemed to myself to find the only sure guidance, the only solid
footing, among the ancients. They, at any rate, knew what they wanted in
art, and we do not. It is this uncertainty which is disheartening, and
not hostile criticism. How often have I felt this when reading words of
disparagement or of cavil: that it is the uncertainty as to what is
really to be aimed at which makes our difficulty, not the
dissatisfaction of the critic, who himself suffers from the same
uncertainty. _Non me tua fervida terrent Dicta; ... Dii me terrent, et
Jupiter hostis._[20]  Two kinds of _dilettanti_, says Goethe, there are
in poetry: he who neglects the indispensable mechanical part, and thinks
he has done enough if he shows spirituality and feeling; and he who
seeks to arrive at poetry merely by mechanism, in which he can acquire
an artisan's readiness, and is without soul and matter. And he adds,
that the first does most harm to art, and the last to himself. If we
must be _dilettanti_: if it is impossible for us, under the
circumstances amidst which we live, to think clearly, to feel nobly, and
to delineate firmly: if we cannot attain to the mastery of the great
artists--let us, at least, have so much respect for our art as to prefer
it to ourselves. Let us not bewilder our successors: let us transmit to
them the practice of poetry, with its boundaries and wholesome
regulative laws, under which excellent works may again, perhaps, at some
future time, be produced, not yet fallen into oblivion through our
neglect, not yet condemned and cancelled by the influence of their
eternal enemy, caprice.