Glass W lW j 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
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STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 CRITICAL, ANALYTICAL, 
 INTERPRETA TIVE 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS O'HAGAN, M.A., Ph.D. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 MARLIER & COMPANY, Limited, 
 
 173 Tremont Street. 
 

 C\0 
 
 o^ 
 
 Copyright, 1900, 
 By Thomas O'Hagan 
 
 kor 
 
 LC Control Number 
 
 tmp96 031296 
 
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 TO ALL WHO DREAM AND BUILD AND DWELL IX THE 
 ENCHANTED REALMS OF POESY 
 
 £ijts bohime is inscribed frg 
 
 The Author. 
 
THE STUDY OF POETRY 
 
 Art has its root in the spiritual, and poetry, which 
 is in many ways the greatest of the arts, cannot 
 be properly studied or interpreted save through 
 the spiritual. 
 
 Now, as the first function of any piece of art is 
 to give delight in some form, the reader of poetry 
 must seek for this delight and joy, which should 
 flow from every true poem. 
 
 The primary and chief purpose in the study of 
 poetry is not discipline and instruction, but exalta- 
 tion and inspiration, — the liberation of the im- 
 agination and enrichment of the spirit. 
 
 For poetry, which is the flowering of the soul, 
 the golden ear of the century, the summit of 
 thought, is something more than thought. It is, 
 as Dr. Hamilton Mabie says, "thought plus the 
 personality of a man of genius." 
 
 The insulated intellect cannot get the best out 
 of a poem, for poetry appeals to the whole man as 
 a thinking, rational, moral, and spiritual being. 
 
THE STUDY OF POETRY 
 
 All poetry, too, is written to be read, to be 
 voiced, and only through vocal interpretation can 
 the indefinite element in a poem be reached. 
 
 Nor should any analytical exegesis be entered 
 upon till the poem as a Avork of art, as an artistic 
 unit, has impressed itself upon the mind and soul. 
 
 Let both teacher and student have a care, too, 
 that they pause not at the threshold of the temple 
 of poetry, lest they catch not a vision of the glory 
 upon the altar within ! 
 
 T. OTI. 
 
 Toronto, Canada, May 1, 1900. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Tennyson's "In Memoriam " 1 
 
 Browning's "A Death in the Desert" ... 24 
 
 Mrs. Browning's "Sonnets from the Portu- 
 guese " 38 
 
 Wordsworth's Ode " On Intimations of Immor- 
 tality" 51 
 
 Coleridge's "Ancient Mariner" 70 
 
 Shelley's "Prometheus Unbound" 81 
 
 Keats's "Eve of St. Agnes" 92 
 
 Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" . . 102 
 
STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 TENNYSON'S "IN MEMORIAM" 
 
 Like Dante's " Divina Commedia " and Goethe's 
 " Faust," Tennyson's " In Memoriam " is a world- 
 poem. It is an autobiographic docu- The piace of 
 
 ment of the nineteenth century, mirror- <<In Memori- 
 
 J . am " in the 
 
 ing its deepest life and summing up Literature of 
 
 its most subtle and complex thought. 
 Like every great poem, too, it is a chapter in the 
 spiritual history of the race — a revelation of 
 what is in the heart of man, in his contact with 
 the world. Poetry which has its root in the spir- 
 itual universalizes and eternalizes. It deals with 
 the permanent and absolute in man — with that 
 which is independent of both time and place. " In 
 Memoriam" is a lyrical drama of the soul, the 
 record of a great moral and intellectual conflict, 
 " the poetical expression of a soul's moral and in- 
 tellectual growth through sorrow, and through 
 strife with the difficulties that beset the truths 
 and mysteries of religion." 
 
 l 
 
2 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 If "In Memoriam" did naught but embalm a 
 personal sorrow, it would not be the great art- 
 product that it is. Not until the genesis of its 
 particular sorrow swells out into the universal, 
 does the deep significance of this great poem lay 
 hold of us ; then indeed we realize that " In 
 Memoriam " is a world-poem, that it touches the 
 eternal in man, that within this great Cathedral 
 of sorrow we may each and all find an oratory or 
 chapel, — an altar decked with the flowers of our 
 own particular grief. 
 
 The proper approach to the study and interpre- 
 tation of a poem is always of paramount value to 
 The Approach a student. Let us see, therefore, what 
 to its study, should be our approach to a clear, care- 
 ful, and sympathetic interpretation of this great 
 masterpiece. Just here let it be remembered at 
 the outset that the charm of " In Memoriam " re- 
 sides in the poetry and not in the thought ; that, as 
 Dr. Hamilton Mabie says, it issues out of the total- 
 ity of the poem, and not out of any single element. 
 "In Memoriam" should, then, be studied first 
 as a work of art. When the complete beauty and 
 charm of the poem have impressed themselves, it 
 is time to seek for the meaning of the poem, — to 
 probe its depth and get at its secret. Little by 
 little through a study of its integral parts, lyric 
 by lyric, the student will be led to observe the 
 
"IN MEMORIAM" 3 
 
 noble unity of the whole poem. He will observe, 
 too, how the lyrics or sections are related to each 
 other, grow out of each other, and sometimes are a 
 complement of each other. Before studying each 
 lyric separately and seeking out its central idea, 
 the question of the germ-thought or poetic moment 
 of the poem should also first receive attention, 
 for this germ-thought has not a little to do in the 
 fashioning, moulding, and coloring of the whole 
 poem — it is this germ-thought which, so to speak, 
 holds the poem in its moral orbit. What stanza 
 or stanzas, then, contain the germ-thought of "In 
 Memoriam " ? Is not the nucleus of thought 
 around which the whole poem crystallizes to be 
 found in these well known and oft-quoted lines ? — 
 
 " This truth came borne with bier and pall, 
 I felt it when I sorrow'd most, 
 'Tis better to have loved and lost 
 Than never to have loved at all/' 
 
 The question as to how much Tennyson is 
 indebted in the construction of " In Memoriam " to 
 the great masters who preceded him, 
 can never be fully ascertained. There Tecimique 
 is no doubt, as Brother Azarias points ofthePoem - 
 out, that the author had before his mind, as he 
 wrote, the sonnets and odes of Petrarch on the 
 death of Laura, Shakespeare's sonnets, and Shelley's 
 " Adonais." Although Tennyson tells us himself, 
 
4 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 in speaking of "In Memoriam," "the general way 
 of its being written was so queer that if there were 
 a blank space I would put in a poem," that he 
 formulated at the outset the plan which shines 
 through his work as an organic whole seems, 
 nevertheless, more than probable. The fact that 
 the author, according to his own words, added a 
 lyric here and a lyric there does not nullify this 
 probability. 
 
 Now, as to the stanza employed in "In Memo- 
 riam," a very interesting study of rhyme effect is 
 afforded through its examination. Did Tennyson 
 borrow this form of stanza from Lord Herbert of 
 Cherbury, Ben Jonson, or Dante Gabriel Rossetti ? 
 for all three had employed it before Tennyson had 
 put his hand to the " In Memoriam." We believe 
 a careful study of the " In Memoriam " stanza form 
 will convince the reader or student that, while not 
 original, it became in the author's hands a poetic 
 necessity — an outcome of the moulding power 
 or divine energy of inspiration. It will be noticed, 
 too, how admirably adapted the form of this 
 stanza is, with its second and third verses closely 
 braced, and the terminal rhyme emphasis of the 
 stanza reduced, for bearing along unchecked the 
 flow of spiritualized sorrow, thus imparting to 
 the poem throughout a true elegiac tone. 
 
 Where the stanzas admit of a change in the 
 
"IN MEMORIAM" 5 
 
 rhyme-scheme without affecting the sense, let the 
 student convert them into alternate rhymes and 
 notice how this transposition will change the whole 
 tone of the poem. There is atmosphere in a poem 
 as well as in a painting, and were the alternate 
 rhyme-scheme to be introduced in this atmosphere 
 it would not serve so well to conduct the in- 
 definitely spiritual element which constitutes the 
 essential life of this poem. A fine example of the 
 peculiar adaptedness of the stanza employed in " In 
 Memoriam " to the continuous flow of thought 
 is to be found in the eighty-sixth section. It is 
 said to have been a favorite lyric of Tennyson's. 
 Xote how continuous and even is the movement 
 of the verse, how the sense is suspended till the 
 close, and what a charm there is in the reposeful 
 ending on the final word " Peace " : 
 
 " Sweet after showers, ambrosial air, 
 
 That rollest from the gorgeous gloom 
 Of evening over brake and bloom 
 And meadow, slowly breathing bare 
 
 11 The round of space, and rapt below 
 Thro' all the dewy-tasselPd wood, 
 And shadowing down the horned flood 
 In ripples, fan my brows and blow 
 
 "The fever from my cheek, and sigh 
 
 The full new life that feeds thy breath 
 Throughout my frame, till Doubt and Death 
 111 brethren, let the fancy fly 
 
6 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 " From belt to belt of crimson seas, 
 On leagues of odour, streaming far 
 To where, in yonder orient star, 
 A hundred spirits whisper ' Peace.' " 
 
 It is customary on the part of some critics to 
 make a general onslaught on "In Memoriam" 
 
 catholic As- and char £ e [t with bein g a P oem of 
 pectsofin scepticism. It is indeed quite easy to 
 
 Memoriam." * . . ,."..., 
 
 make such a charge, but it is much 
 more difficult to convict it from its own teachings. 
 "In Memoriam " is not a poem of scepticism, but 
 the record of a soul growing through doubt into 
 faith. Not only is " In Memoriam " not a poem 
 of scepticism, but there is much in its teachings 
 that coincides with Catholic dogma. 
 
 The very opening invocation in the prologue to 
 the poem, written by the poet in 1849, testifies to 
 Tennyson's faith in the Divinity of Christ and the 
 mysteries of God : 
 
 " Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone embrace, 
 Believing where we cannot prove." 
 
 In the third stanza he says : — 
 
 " Thou madest man, he knows not why." 
 
 Here the poet departs from Catholic teaching, 
 else what is the meaning of the Incarnation of the 
 
"IN MEMORIAM" 7 
 
 " Son of God "and nineteen centuries of light of 
 his divine gospel? Yet does not the poet himself 
 tell us in the very same lyric why man was 
 created ? — 
 
 " Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
 Our wills are ours, to make them thine." 
 
 In the fourth stanza of the same prologue, ad- 
 dressing the " Son of God," the poet says : 
 
 " Thou seemest human and divine 
 
 The highest, holiest manhood, thou." 
 
 This would, at first reading, appear to imply a 
 doubt as to the divinity of Christ, but if a care- 
 ful and an extended study be made of the mean- 
 ing which Tennyson attaches to the word seem, it 
 will be found that no such meaning can be or 
 should be read out of this line ; for the poet uses 
 the word seem here, not in the sense of appearing 
 to be what a thing is not, but in the sense of 
 appearing to be what it is. 
 
 In the third last stanza of the prologue and in 
 the first stanza of the thirty-third section, note the 
 use attached to the word seem : 
 
 " Forgive what seem'd my sin in me ; 
 What seem'd my worth since T began. 
 
 O Thou that after toil and storm 
 
 Mayst seem to have reached a purer air." 
 

 8 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 How very close to Catholic doctrine, too, is 
 Tennyson's invocation of the departed in sections 
 ninety- three and ninety-four : 
 
 " I shall not see thee. Dare I say 
 No spirit ever brake the band 
 That stays him from the native land 
 Where first he walk'd when claspt in clay ? 
 
 " O, therefore from thy sightless range 
 With gods in unconjectured bliss, 
 O, from the distance of the abyss 
 Of tenfold-complicated change, 
 
 "Descend, and touch, and enter; hear 
 
 The wish too strong for words to name ; 
 That in this blindness of the frame 
 My ghost may feel that thine is near. 
 
 " How pure at heart and sound in head, 
 With what divine affections bold 
 Should be the man whose thought would hold 
 An hour's communion with the dead." 
 
 With Tennyson, prayer is the truest religion. 
 This is set forth in the thirty-second and thirty- 
 third sections : 
 
 " Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers, 
 Whose loves in higher love endure ; 
 What souls possess themselves so pure, 
 Or is there blessedness like theirs ? " 
 
"IN MEMORIAL!" 9 
 
 " Leave thou thy sister when she prays, 
 Her early Heaven, her happy views; 
 Xor thou with shadow' d hint confuse 
 A life that leads melodious lays." 
 
 Again, take sections one hundred and twenty- 
 three and one hundred and twenty-four and com- 
 pare them with Cardinal Newman's beautiful 
 passage in the " Apologia," page 377, and note how 
 parallel they are in line of argument in their 
 proof of the existence of a God. Both Newman 
 and Tennyson consider that the voice of con- 
 science and the feelings of the heart are much 
 more conclusive of the existence of a God than 
 any arguments that are discoverable in the works 
 of nature. Tennyson's lines are : 
 
 " There rolls the deep where grew the tree, 
 O Earth, what changes hast thou seen ! 
 There where the long street roars, hath been 
 The stillness of the central sea. 
 
 " The hills are shadows, and they flow 
 
 From form to form, and nothing stands ; 
 They melt like mist, the solid lands, 
 Like clouds they shape themselves and go. 
 
 " But in my spirit will I dwell 
 
 And dream my dream, and hold it true; 
 For though my lips may breathe adieu 
 I cannot think the thins farewell. 
 
10 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 " If e'er when faith had f all'ii asleep, 
 I heard a voice ' believe no more ' 
 And heard an ever breaking shore 
 That tumbled in the Godless deep ; 
 
 " A warmth within the breast would melt 
 The freezing reason's colder part, 
 And ]ike a man in wrath the heart 
 Stood up and answered ' I have felt.' " 
 
 Newman tells us, " Were it not for this voice 
 speaking so clearly in my conscience and my 
 heart, I should be an atheist or a pantheist or a 
 polytheist when I looked into the world. ... I 
 am far from denying the real force of the argu- 
 ments in proof of a God drawn from the general 
 facts of human society;, but these do not warm 
 me or enlighten me ; they do not take away the 
 winter of my desolation or make the buds unfold 
 and the leaves grow within me and my moral 
 being rejoice." 
 
 Who has ever rebutted in verse more ably than 
 Tennyson has in the "In Memoriam " the arguments 
 adduced by infidels in support of their unbelief ? — 
 as witness the following sections of the poem : The 
 Fates not blind, in; Life shall be for evermore, 
 xxxiv; If Death were death, love would not be 
 true love, xxxv; Individuality defies the tomb, 
 XL VI ; Immortality, liv and LV ; Doubt issuing 
 in belief, xcv; Knowledge without wisdom, cxiii; 
 
"IN MEMORIAM" 11 
 
 Progress, cxvir; We are not all matter, cxix; 
 and The course of human things, cxxvn. 
 
 There is one stanza in section ninety-six which 
 is often quoted by those who charge " In Memo- 
 riam " with being a poem of scepticism, and declare 
 its ethical teaching to be dangerous, that demands 
 our attention at this point for a moment. Here is 
 the oft cited quatrain : 
 
 " Perplext in faith but pure in deeds, 
 At last he beat his music out. 
 There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
 Believe me, than in half the creeds ! " 
 
 It should be remembered that faith, which has 
 held conflict with doubt throughout the whole 
 development and progress of the poem, has not 
 gained supremacy at this point, and does not gain 
 full supremacy till the close of the poem, — doubt 
 pressing in many instances, as here, hard upon the 
 shield of faith. It is easy to .single out stanzas in 
 64 In Memoriam" wherein doubt is the flowering 
 of sorrow not yet sanctified, and faith comes out of 
 the conflict apparently maimed ; and so has it often 
 been in conflicts in the world. Faith appears to 
 suffer for the time, but ever comes out triumphant 
 at the close. 
 
 " In Memoriam " is a history of the genesis of a 
 great sorrow, and the story of a heart girt around, 
 
12 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 encompassed, by the perplexing problems of life, 
 
 death, and the mystery of hereafter. Never be- 
 
 .. , fore was there such a beautiful temple 
 Biographical * 
 
 aiid Auto- of song erected to the memory of man, 
 iograp c . ^^^ Arthur Hallam may indeed re^t 
 secure within its transepts, assured of the undying- 
 light of immortality. " In Memoriam " is both bio- 
 graphical and autobiographical. It deals with the 
 character, friendship, and memory of one of the 
 most gifted and perfect young men who have ever 
 lived in the tide of times. It is autobiographical 
 in so far as it records the life history of the 
 author himself through the various phases of sor- 
 row which mark the progress of the poem. 
 
 While reading " In Memoriam " once to Mr. 
 James Knowles, Tennyson thus commented on 
 the poem as to its personal and impersonal char- 
 acter : 
 
 " It is rather the cry of the whole human race 
 than mine. In the poem altogether, private grief 
 swells out into thought of and hope for the whole 
 world. It begins with a funeral and ends with a 
 marriage ; begins with death and ends in promise 
 of a new life, — a sort of Divine Comedy, cheerful 
 at the close. It is a very impersonal poem as 
 well as personal. There is more about myself in 
 4 Ulysses,' which was written under the sense of 
 loss, and that all had gone by, but that still life 
 
"IN MEMORIAM" 13 
 
 must be fought out to the end. It was more 
 written with the feeling of his loss upon me 
 than many poems in ' In Memoriam.' ... It 's too 
 hopeful, this poem, more than I am myself. . . . The 
 general way of its being written was so queer that 
 if there were a blank space I would put in a poem. 
 ... I think of adding another to it, a speculative 
 one, bringing out the thoughts of the Higher Pan- 
 theism and showing that all the arguments are 
 about as good on one side as the other, and thus 
 throw man back more on the primitive impulses 
 and feelings," 
 
 These three epochs of grief belong to the stages 
 in the development of every true sorrow, and if 
 we examine the genesis or develop- 
 ment of the sorrow in " In Memoriam," of Grief ^Grief 
 
 from sensuous sorrow at the outset to « e " ; P^ ef 
 
 Reflected on ; 
 
 sanctified sorrow at the close, it will Grief Trans- 
 be found that these three forms of 
 grief correspond very distinctly with the three 
 periods in the life of the poem. From section one 
 to section seventy-one inclusive, we have grief 
 felt : vi- vin, grief and sense ; ix-xxi, grief and 
 imagination; xxii-xxvri, grief and thought; 
 xxvm-xxxvii, grief in the atmosphere of faith. 
 Change here of key from faith to hope : xxxviti- 
 xlix, grief and hope ; l-lviii, grief in faith and 
 hope united ; lix-lxv, grief and love ; lxvi- 
 
14 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 lxxi, grief in the region beyond consciousness. 
 From lxxii to xcvn, we have grief reflected on : 
 lxxii-lxxvii, the world's loss in him estimated: 
 lxxviii-lxxxiii, my own loss in him estimated ; 
 lxxxiv-lxxxviii, memories linked with hopes; 
 lxxxix-xcvii, our communion an intellectual 
 one. From xcvm to cxxxi, we have grief trans- 
 formed : xcviii-cvi, to heighten the contrast, 
 the poet allows himself to be carried back by 
 associations of time and by the severing of associa- 
 tions of place to renewed freshness of grief, but 
 shakes off this feeling and loses it in the world's 
 hope ; cvn-cxv, the fruit of sorrow the deathless 
 ideal; cxvi-cxxv, grief, too, has its spring of 
 transformation ; cxxvi-cxxxi, the victory of love. 
 Let there be added here the " nine natural groups 
 or divisions " of the poem as given to Mr. Knowles 
 by Tennyson himself: From I to Vlii; from IX 
 to xx ; from xxi to xxyii ; from xxvni to XLix ; 
 from L to lviii; from Lix to LXI; from lxii 
 to xcvni; from xcix to cin and from civ to 
 
 CXXXI. 
 
 When Tennyson hears of Arthur's death he is 
 overwhelmed with grief. His sorrow drowns the 
 The Amiiver- world. Nature seems purposeless — 
 tw^iw. " A hollow form with empty hands." 
 Death. The darkness of his heart he finds 
 
 symbolized in the sullen changeless yew tree. 
 
"IN MEMORIAM" 15 
 
 " And gazing on thee, sullen tree, 
 
 Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, 
 I seem to fail from out my blood, 
 And grow incorporate into thee." 
 
 He regards sorrow as a " cruel fellowship," rails 
 against it, and repels the trite condolence that loss 
 is common to the race. Even sleep, the "balm of 
 hurt minds," gives way and in the gray dawn of 
 morning he visits the house of Hallam on Wimpole 
 street. 
 
 " Dark house, by which once more I stand, 
 Here in the long unlovely street. 
 Doors, where my heart was used to beat 
 So quickly, waiting for a hand. 
 
 " A hand that can be clasped no more, — 
 Behold me, for I cannot sleep, 
 And like a guilty thing T creep 
 At earliest morning to the door." 
 
 At the end of a year, as the first anniversary of 
 Arthur's death comes around (section lxxii), 
 there is little abatement in his sorrow. His world 
 seems yet dominated by sorrow, and nature shares 
 this influence. He does not rail against nature — 
 
 " . . . no, nor death ; 
 For nothing is that errs from law." 
 
 When the next anniversary dawns (Sept. 15, 
 1836) (section xcix), the tone is changed, the 
 
16 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 birds are singing, the meadows breathe softly of 
 the past, and the woodlands are holy to the dead. 
 But the greatest change is that the transformation 
 in Tennyson's sorrow has brought him to think 
 less of his own pain, and more of the pain of man- 
 kind. 
 
 When the bells of the first Christmas Eve ring 
 out peace and good-will (section xxviii), he re- 
 «<. -«. members that he had almost wished to 
 
 The Three 
 
 Christmas- die in his grief before he heard them, 
 
 but they control his spirit with a touch 
 of joy. Faith brings hope and consolation ; and 
 here we have the first prophecy of the soul's tri- 
 umph over sorrow, — the first budding and blos- 
 soming of hope : 
 
 " Our voices took a higher range ; 
 
 Once more we sang : ' They do not die, 
 Nor lose their mortal sympathy, 
 Nor change to us, although they change. 
 
 " ' Rise, happy morn, rise, holy morn, 
 
 Draw forth the cheerful day from night : 
 O Father, touch the east, and light 
 The light that shone when Hope was born.' " 
 
 The anniversary of the second Christmas is not 
 so sad as the first. The snow is silent and the day 
 calm. A sense of loss broods over nature, but 
 
"IN MEMORIAM" 17 
 
 sorrow within his heart, now calm, is reflected in 
 peace around him : 
 
 " last regret, Regret can die ! " 
 
 Not yet has his grief passed out of the personal 
 into the universal, nor has the poet escaped from 
 himself. His half-intellectual analysis of doubts, 
 and the replies of the understanding to them have 
 as yet brought his soul no victory. There has 
 been a lull in his sorrow, but no real transforma- 
 tion. 
 
 The third Christmastide (1837) beholds a change 
 in everything (section civ.}. Tennyson has moved 
 from Lincolnshire, and the change from the old 
 home for another has broken, like the growth of 
 time, the bond of dying use. 
 
 " No more shall wayward grief abuse 
 
 The genial hour with mask and mime ; 
 For change of place, like growth of time, 
 Has broke the bond of dying use. 
 
 " Be neither song, nor game, nor feast ; 
 
 Nor harp be touch'd, nor flute be blown ; 
 No dance, no motion, save alone 
 What lightens in the lucid east 
 
 " Of rising worlds by yonder wood. 
 
 Long sleeps the summer in the seed ; 
 Run out your measured arcs, and lead 
 The closing cycle rich in good.' , 
 
 2 
 
18 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 With the dawn of the new year (section CVi), 
 his personal sorrow disappears. His heart is full 
 of mankind, and his own victory over sorrow has 
 taught him the victory over sorrow that awaits the 
 race. 
 
 The thirty-eighth section commemorates the first 
 
 The coming of springtide (in 1834), six months after 
 the Three 
 
 springtides. Arthur's death. Here, though the poet 
 has some comfort, he has no delight : 
 
 " No joy the blowing season gives, 
 The herald melodies of spring, 
 But in the songs 1 love to sing 
 A doubtful gleam of solace lives." 
 
 The spring of 1835 brings more cheerfulness. 
 Sorrow has not yet entirely departed, but already 
 the poet feels in his soul the harbinger of a spir- 
 itual spring, when he shall rise above his pall of 
 sorrow : 
 
 " Bring orchis, bring the foxglove spire, 
 And flood a fresher throat with song.' , 
 
 In the third springtide (sections cxv, cxvi), re- 
 gret has wholly died out. The re-orient life of the 
 world is the symbol of the departure of a wintry 
 grief that looks to a friendship that is to be. 
 
 We have thus far traced the genesis and trans- 
 formation of sorrow through the anniversaries of 
 
"IN MEMORIAM'' 19 
 
 Arthur's death, the three Christmastid.es and the 
 three springtides. The contrasts that mark these 
 periods of grief are enough to indicate clearly 
 " that ' In Memoriam ' is the history of a soul in 
 progress from darkness to light ; from the selfish- 
 ness to the unselfishness of sorrow ; from despair of 
 God and man to faith in both ; and, as a personal 
 matter, from the thought that friendship was utterly 
 lost in death to the thought that friendship was 
 gained through death at a higher level of love and 
 with a deeper union." 
 
 No person can read the " In Memoriam " without 
 feeling the delight imparted by its vital beauty. 
 So many of its lyrics are as polished as some of the 
 the bosom of a star, so many deep-set f^^si^- 
 with meaning and freighted with sig- icant Lyrics, 
 nificance, that the making of a choice is beset with 
 embarrassment. Here are five stanzas (section 
 xi.) which sound like one long rippling swell of 
 Cathedral music : 
 
 " Calm is the morn without a sound, 
 Calm as to suit a calmer grief, 
 And only thro' the faded leaf 
 The chestnut pattering to the ground : 
 
 " Calm and deep peace on this high wold, 
 And on these dews that drench the furze, 
 And all the silvery gossamers 
 That twinkle into green and gold : 
 
20 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 " Calm and still light on yon great plain 
 
 That sweeps, with all its autumn bowers, 
 And crowded farms and lessening towers, 
 To mingle with the bounding maiu : 
 
 " Calm and deep peace in this wide air, 
 These leaves that redden to the fall ; 
 And in my heart, if calm at all, 
 If any calm, a calm despair : 
 
 " Calm on the seas, and silver sleep, 
 
 And waves that sway themselves in rest. 
 And dead calm in that noble breast 
 Which heaves but with the heaving deep." 
 
 Again, the lyric which makes up the sixty-fourth 
 section is full of beauty, strength, and significance : 
 
 " Dost thou look back on what hath been, 
 As some divinely gifted man, 
 Whose life in low estate began, 
 And on a simple village green ; 
 
 " Who breaks his birth's invidious bar, 
 And grasps the skirts of happy chance, 
 And breasts the blows of circumstance, 
 And grapples with his evil star; 
 
 " Who makes by force his merit known, 
 And lives to clutch the golden keys, 
 To mould a mighty state's decrees, 
 And shape the whisper of the throne ; 
 
 
 
"IN MEMORIAM" 21 
 
 " Who ploughs with pain his native lea, 
 And reaps the labor of his hands, 
 Or in the furrow musing stands : 
 c Does my old friend remember me ? ' " 
 
 Section ci. is a descriptive lyric of great beauty. 
 It should be read and re-read till its charm and 
 beauty find lodgment in the heart. 
 
 Section cm. contains fourteen stanzas, whose 
 meaning will not break upon the mind at first 
 reading. This section is also remarkable for the 
 perfection of its poetic diction. Xote the prepon- 
 derance of Saxon words and the great number of 
 monosyllables. A most admirable interpretation 
 of this section will be found in Brother Azarias' 
 study of the " In Memoriam " in " Phases of 
 Thought and Criticism." 
 
 Tennyson tells us that this dream described in 
 section crir.was a real dream, and he has furnished 
 Mr. Gatty with this note : " I rather believe that 
 the maidens are the muses, arts, etc. Everything 
 that made life beautiful here we may hope may 
 pass on with us beyond the grave.*' To Mr. 
 Knowles the poet said that "the maidens are all 
 the human powers and talents that do not pass 
 with life, but go along with it." The " river "is 
 " life," and the " hidden summits " are the high, 
 the divine, — the origin of life." The sea in the 
 fourth stanza is eternity. The seventh stanza 
 
22 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 refers to " the great progress of the age as well as 
 the opening of another world ; " and the ninth to 
 " all the great hopes of science and men." 
 
 Section cix. is valuable as setting forth the char- 
 acter and gifts of Arthur Hallam : 
 
 " Heart-affluence in discursive talk 
 From household fountains never dry; 
 The critic clearness of an eye, 
 That saw thro' all the Muses' walk ; 
 
 "And manhood fused with female grace 
 In such a sort, the child would twine 
 A trustful hand, unask'd, in thine, 
 And find his comfort in thy face." 
 
 The last lyric, or section, in "In Memoriam" 
 
 contains tha whole idea of the poem. Tennyson 
 
 ■». ~ T has struggled through doubt and dark- 
 Tile Deep Im- ° & & 
 
 port of the ness and has risen to the pure light of 
 Last Lyric. ^^ This final lyric contains the 
 
 key to the poet's successful struggle with doubt 
 and sorrow into the clear light of faith. And 
 this clear light of faith has been reached, not 
 through reasoning, but an act of the will. So the 
 poet sings in the final lyric : 
 
 " O living will that shalt endure, 
 
 When all that seems shall suffer shock, 
 Rise in the spiritual rock, 
 Flow thro' our deeds and make them pure, 
 
"IN MEMORIAM" 23 
 
 " That we may lift from out the dust 
 A voice as unto him that hears, 
 A cry above the conquered years 
 To one that with us works, and trust, 
 
 " With faith that comes of self-control, 
 The truths that uever can be proved 
 Until we close with all we loved, 
 And all we flow from, soul in soul." 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. Why is " In Memoriani " called a world-poem 1 
 
 2. What should be our approach to a clear, careful, and 
 sympathetic interpretation of this great masterpiece 1 
 
 3. What is meant by the germ-thought, or poetic mo- 
 ment of a poem ? 
 
 4. What stanza or stanzas contain the germ-thought of 
 " In Memoriam " J 
 
 5. Discuss, briefly, the plan and technique of the poem. 
 6." Point out some of the Catholic aspects of "In Me- 
 moriam. " 
 
 7. Illustrate the personal and impersonal character of 
 the poem. 
 
 8. What three epochs of grief are developed in the 
 poem 1 
 
 9. Show the effect of time on Tennyson's sorrow, as re- 
 flected through the anniversaries of Arthur Hallam's death. 
 
 10. W T hat do the contrasts that mark these periods of 
 grief indicate ? 
 
 11. Illustrate the beauty and significance of some of 
 the lyrics in the poem. 
 
BROWNING'S "A DEATH IN THE 
 DESERT." 
 
 It will be noticed that Browning has a most 
 
 abrupt method of introducing his subject. Some- 
 
 T times, in consequence of this, we may 
 
 " a Death in read page after page of one of his 
 the Desert " 
 
 poems before we can quite know whither 
 
 we are going. To understand Browning fully, 
 to catch the connection and antecedents of his 
 thought, it would be necessary that the student 
 should be a companion of the poet's own reading 
 and research, which were multifarious — it might 
 be almost said universal. 
 
 It is said that Browning, on being once asked 
 why he did not popularize and make easy the 
 study of his poems, replied that he did " not write 
 for the smoking-room." It will be well, we think, 
 if every student who takes up the study of Brown- 
 ing would treasure these words of the great seer 
 in his heart, — if he would fruitfully realize how 
 serious and laborious is the effort to follow in the 
 footsteps of the poet's thought. 
 
/IvUfrt^ Am? 
 
 ?t^K^ 
 
"A DEATH IN THE DESERT" 25 
 
 Brother Azarias, in his essay on Browning, in 
 " Books and Reading," says that he would not rec- 
 ommend the study of ^Browning to children in years 
 or to children in mind. Certainly, Browning was 
 no " idle singer of an empty day." His lines are 
 freighted with the very deepest meaning, and the 
 study of his poems, in this our day of literary dilet- 
 tanteism and palaver, is indeed a very tonic of the 
 gods. 
 
 In studying " A Death in the Desert," it will be 
 well for us to gain our approach to the poem first. 
 Like Browning's magnum ojms, " The Ring and 
 the Book," this poem is true in spirit, though 
 of course in detail it is largely the Avork of the 
 poet's imagination. The manner in which the 
 poet breathes into old dead facts, fusing his soul 
 into the " inert stuff," and thus planting life where 
 death had been before, and giving to the dead facts 
 a " resurrection and uprise," is well illustrated by 
 Browning in the following lines : 
 
 " Was not Elisha once? — 
 Who bade them lay his staff on a corpse-face. 
 There was no voice, no hearing : he went in 
 Therefore and shut the door upon them twain. 
 And prayed unto the Lord : and he went up 
 And ]ay upon the corpse, dead on the couch, 
 And put his mouth upon its mouth, his eyes 
 Upon its eyes, his hands upon its hands, 
 
26 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 And stretched him on the flesh ; the flesh waxed warm : 
 And he returned, walked to and fro the house, 
 And went up, stretched him on the flesh again, 
 And the eyes opened. 'T is a credible feat 
 With the right man and way." 
 
 There is a certain kinship in Browning's four 
 religious poems : " Caliban upon Setebos," " Cleon," 
 a Group of Re- " Rabbi Ben Ezra," and "A Death in 
 ligious Poems. t i ie Desert ; " and in the study of the 
 latter poem it would be literary wisdom to group 
 these four together. Each poem is representative 
 of a particular phase of religious thought : " the 
 natural, uncultured reasoning of the savage, the cul- 
 tured reasoning of the Greek, the inspired reason- 
 ing of the Jew, and the reason based on the belief 
 in incarnation of the Christian." It will be noticed 
 that the Setebos which Caliban conceives is a 
 reflection from his own nature ; but Cleon, the 
 cultured Greek, has advanced beyond the stage 
 where his God is a reflection of himself. The 
 difference between Cleon and the Rabbi in " Rabbi 
 Ben Ezra," as to their idea of the progress of the 
 human soul, is that Cleon's progress is an intel- 
 lectual progress ; while the Rabbi's is a spiritual 
 progress. In the " Death in the Desert " it is 
 the God of love that is made manifest. No 
 place is accorded doubt by St. John. Note how 
 the various stages of religious belief as exemplified 
 
"A DEATH IN THE DESERT" 27 
 
 by Caliban and Cleon are set forth in the follow- 
 ing lines : 
 
 " First, like the brute, obliged by facts to learn, 
 Next, as man may, obliged by his own mind, 
 Bent, habit, nature, knowledge turned to law. 
 God's gift was that man should conceive of truth 
 And yearn to gain it, catching at mistake, 
 As midway help till he reach fact indeed." 
 
 It was the attacks upon the historical bases of 
 Christianity, so vigorously maintained in Germany 
 during the beginning and middle of what Deter- 
 the present century by Strauss and Se^eaiiS 
 other sceptical philosophers, that de- the Desert." 
 termined in Browning's mind the form of the 
 " Death in the Desert." We feel sure, from the 
 unattractive description he gives of the professor 
 in " Christmas Eve," that Browning had little sym- 
 pathy with this band of sceptics. 
 
 In the critical examination of the evangelical 
 records, the Gospel of St. John suffered most. 
 Strauss denied that St. John had anything to do 
 with its composition, pronouncing it to be a con- 
 troversial work written by some learned Greek 
 Gnostic about the close of the second century. 
 In his poem " A Death in the Desert " Browning 
 restores the St. John of the Gospel, — the disciple 
 of love who leaned on his Master's breast at supper, 
 — mystical and visionary as became him who had 
 
28 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 received the revelation of Patmos. It is wonder- 
 ful how Browning has breathed into this poem — 
 endued it with — the very spirit and character of 
 St. John, the herald of Love Divine. As the last 
 survivor of those who had seen and known Christ, 
 St. John, realizes the responsibility which rests upon 
 him, and he is fearful of the heresies already be- 
 ginning to disturb the Church, particularly the 
 Ebionites, or followers of Cerinthus. 
 
 Now, in order to obtain some definite idea of 
 this noble poem, and reach its meaning, we must 
 
 first seek the significance and intent of 
 Its Prologue. . 
 
 its prologue. Inis meaning is well set 
 
 forth by Rev. G. W. Pope, D. D., in his study of 
 this poem, in the following passage : " Some Chris- 
 tian, whose name is not given (9, 10), is supposed 
 to be examining his library, — looking up and 
 classifying his choice treasures. One imagines 
 that he was an Ephesian (or perhaps an Alex- 
 andrian) ; that he may have lived in the beginning 
 -of the third century ; that it was a time of hot 
 persecution, when he was in daily peril of death ; 
 and that he is looking over a few of the more 
 ancient Christian records to strengthen himself for 
 coming trial by the contemplation of the struggles 
 of those that had gone before. He finds among 
 others a parchment scroll attributed to Pamphylax 
 of Antioch, who had died a martyr in Ephesus, 
 
" A DEATH IN THE DESERT" 29 
 
 just after the death of St. John the Apostle. This 
 manuscript is described in a very minute and 
 realistic way. It is No. 5 in his library ; consists 
 of three skins of parchment glued together ; is in 
 the Greek language ; is incomplete, since it ranges 
 from Epsilon to M u, so that four sections — pages, 
 we may call them — are missing in the beginning, 
 and perhaps some at the end. This precious 
 manuscript is kept in a ' select chest,' an ark 
 containing the most precious part of his literary 
 treasures. This chest — the poet may have seen 
 such an one in several museums — was stained and 
 rendered proof against the attacks of insects by 
 being rubbed with turpentine, was covered with 
 hair cloth, and had on its front the Xi, since it had 
 been given him by a relative named Xanthus ' now 
 at peace.' Two other letters seem to have been on 
 the chest. These were the initials of his own 
 names, or perhaps the first and last letters of his 
 ordinary name. This name he will not state, but 
 instead of it signs his note with a cross, ' to show I 
 wait his coming with the rest.' Why he withheld 
 his name, we are left to conjecture ; probably it 
 was humility, since there is one Name that is above 
 every name and alone worthy to be held in remem- 
 brance. There is throughout a remarkable reti- 
 cence as to names : even St. John is not here dis- 
 tinctly called so. The intensely real religious tone 
 
30 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 — the spirit of primitive Christianity — is heard 
 and felt in the minutest details of the poem." 
 
 The sixty-eight lines, from line thirteen to line 
 eighty-one, are descriptive and narrative, and re- 
 st. John in the late what happened in the desert cave 
 Desert. before the apostle began the great dis- 
 
 course in uttering which he died. 
 
 An edict had been issued in the time of Trajan, 
 A. D. 98-117, ordering the seizure and death of all 
 Christians, and when tidings of this edict reached 
 Ephesus, Pamphylax himself, with Xanthus (a kins- 
 man of the owner of the manuscript) and another 
 Christian, called Valens, assisted by a strong Bac- 
 trian convert and a Christian boy, bore the aged 
 and dying apostle off to a place of safety in the 
 desert, where lie lingered on for sixty days. 
 
 The place of retreat is fully described. It is a 
 cave in a sandy plain. There are three compart- 
 ments in the cave, the most interior admitting no 
 light, and the " midmost grotto " a few straggling 
 rays at noontide. Into this " midmost grotto " St. 
 John's loving attendants, feeling that his death is 
 imminent, now bear him, that he may die in the 
 light. The picture of the dying apostle amid the 
 group of faithful followers is most touching : 
 
 " ' Here is wine,' answered Xanthus — dropped a drop ; 
 I stooped and placed the lap of cloth aright, 
 Then chafed his right hand, an i the Boy his left : 
 
"A DEATH IN THE DESERT" 31 
 
 But Yalens had bethought him, and produced 
 
 And broke a ball of nard and made perfume. 
 
 Only he did — not so much wake, as — turn 
 
 And smile a little as a sleeper does 
 
 If any dear one call him, touch his face 
 
 And smiles and loves, but will not be disturbed. 
 
 Then Xanthus said a prayer, but still he slept ; 
 
 (It is the Xanthus that escaped to Rome, 
 
 Was burned and could not write the Chronicle ) 
 
 Then the Boy sprang up from his knees and ran 
 
 Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought, 
 
 And fetched the seventh plate of graven lead 
 
 Out of the secret chamber, found a place, 
 
 Pressing with finger on the deeper dints, 
 
 And spoke, as 't were his mouth proclaiming first 
 
 ' T am the Resurrection and the Life.'' " 
 
 Beginning with line eighty-two, the writer of 
 
 the manuscript adds a note professing The Three 
 
 / . r . . & Souls: What 
 
 to give a gloss or interpretation of a Does, what 
 passage in St. John's own writings : what is. 
 
 " [This is the doctrine he was wont to teach, 
 How divers persons witness in each man, 
 Three souls which make up one soul : first, to wit, 
 A soul of each and all the bodily parts, 
 Seated therein, which works, and is What Does, 
 And has the use of Earth, and ends the man 
 Downward : but tending upward for advice, 
 Grows into and again is grown into 
 By the next soul, which, seated in the brain, 
 Useth the first with its collected use, 
 And feeleth, thinketh, willeth, — is What Knows : 
 
32 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 Which duly tending upward in its turn, 
 
 Grows into and again is grown into 
 
 By the last soul, that uses both the first, 
 
 Subsisting whether they assist or no, 
 
 And constituting man's self, is What Is — 
 
 And leans upon the former, makes it play 
 
 As that played off the first : and tending up, 
 
 Holds, is upheld, by God, and ends the man 
 
 Upward in that dread point of intercourse, 
 
 Nor needs a place, for it returns to Him, 
 
 What Does, What Knows, What Is ; three souls, one man.] " 
 
 According to Browning this curious gloss or 
 commentary (of Theotypas, an imaginary person- 
 age) supplies an explanation of the spiritual and 
 subjective character of St. John's faith. The doc- 
 trine set forth in this strange passage seems to 
 have in it something of Plato's idea of the 
 Three Souls in each man — the Vegetative, the 
 Sensitive or Active, and the Intellectual. Of 
 course there can be no division of the human soul. 
 Its unity is insisted upon by all Catholic philoso- 
 phers ; and Dante, whose philosophy is the phi- 
 losophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, testifies to — 
 
 . . . urC alma sola 
 Che vive e sente e se in se rigira. 
 
 " . . . one only soul 
 Which lives, and feels, and on itself revolves. " 
 
 Browning's whole purport in this poem, "A 
 Death in the Desert," is to diminish the importance 
 
"A DEATH IN THE DESERT" 33 
 
 of history and tradition as witness and proof of 
 the divine origin of Christianity, and The General 
 fall back upon the Love and Knowledge Deatt^ji^e' A 
 which Christ left to mankind as endur- Desert." 
 ing evidences of His divinity. And shall man 
 now, when he has gained such love and knowledge, 
 doubt their very source? 
 
 " I say the acknowledgment of God in Christ, 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it, 
 And has so far advanced thee to be wise. 
 YVouldst thou improve this to re-prove the proved ? 
 In life 's mere minute, with power to use that proof, 
 Leave knowledge and revert to how it sprung? 
 Thou hast it ; use it and forthwith or die ! " 
 
 In this poem, " A Death in the Desert," Brown- 
 ing truthfully represents St. John as especially the 
 teacher of love. As St. Paul is the The Personal- 
 teacher of faith and Christian philos- character 
 ophy so is St. John the herald of Love of st. John. 
 Divine. It was Love, as the essence of the gospel, 
 that filled the apostle's mind : 
 
 " Such ever was love's way : to rise, it stoops. 
 Since I, whom Christ's mouth taught, was bidden teach, 
 I went, for many years, about the world, 
 Saying ' Tt was so; so I heard and saw.' 
 Speaking as the case asked : and men believed. 
 Afterwards came the message to myself 
 In Patmos isle ; I was not bidden teach, 
 
 3 
 
34 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 But simply listen, take a book and write, 
 
 Nor set down other than the given word, 
 
 With nothing left to my arbitrament 
 
 To choose or change : I wrote and men believed." 
 
 Two words are used in the Latin Vulgate to ex- 
 press Christ's love for St. John, — diligebat and ama- 
 lat, the latter word marking a personal affection. 
 It is evident that Browning, believed in the Divine 
 inspiration under which St. John wrote his Gospel, 
 as he makes the apostle say : 
 
 " What first were guessed as points, I now knew stars. 
 
 Guarded and guided still to see and speak" 
 
 We find at the end of St. John's discourse an 
 epitome of Browning's religious faith as expressed 
 Browning's j n a number of his poems. Summed 
 
 Religious 
 
 Faith as set up, we find this faith contained in the 
 
 forth in the y . 
 Poem. lmeS * 
 
 " A man's reach shonld exceed his grasp 
 
 Or what 's a heaven for ? " 
 
 According to Browning, man's life consists in 
 never-ceasing progress. "The godlike power is 
 imparted to him gradually, and step by step he 
 approaches nearer to absolute truth — to divine 
 perfection." He was made — 
 
 "Lower than God who knows all and can all, 
 Higher than beasts which know and can, so far 
 
"A DEATH IN THE DESERT" 35 
 
 As each beast's limit, perfect to an end, 
 
 Nor conscious that they know, nor craving more ; 
 
 While man knows partly, but conceives beside, 
 
 Creeps ever on from fancies to the fact, 
 
 And in this striving, this converting air 
 
 Into a solid he may grasp and use, 
 
 Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, 
 
 Not God's and not the beasts 7 : God is, they are, — 
 
 Man partly is and wholly hopes to 7>e." 
 
 Should man cease to strive, and renounce the 
 divine ideals, he brings upon himself the condem- 
 nation of death : 
 
 " If ye demur, this judgment on your head, 
 Never to reach the ultimate, angel's law, 
 Indulging every instinct of the soul 
 There where law, life, joy, impulse are one thing ! " 
 
 This strong and noble poem is studded with 
 beautiful passages. Perhaps the finest of these 
 is where the apostle, in prophetic a Passage of 
 vision, looks down the avenues of Rare Beauty. 
 time and beholds the disciples of Christ ponder- 
 ing and discoursing in divers lands of the things 
 which he had taught and written : 
 
 44 1 see you stand conversing, each new face, 
 
 • Either in fields of yellow summer eves, 
 On islets yet unnamed amid the sea; 
 Or pace for shelter 'neath a portico 
 Out of the crowd in some enormous town 
 Where now the lark sings in a solitude ; 
 Or muse upon blank heaps of stone and sand 
 Idly conjectured to be Ephesus." 
 
36 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. What is Browning's method of introducing his 
 subject? 
 
 2. What is necessary to catch the connection and ante- 
 cedents of his thought and to understand Browning fully ? 
 
 3. What reason did Browning give upon being ques- 
 tioned why he did not popularize the study of his poems ? 
 
 4. Name Browning's four religious poems, and explain 
 their kinship. 
 
 5. How does Browning exemplify the various stages of 
 religious belief? 
 
 6. What determined the form of " A Death in the 
 Desert " ? 
 
 7. What reason have we to suppose that Browning had 
 no sympathy with the German sceptical philosophers, 
 Strauss and others ? 
 
 8. What did these sceptics affirm regarding the Gos- 
 pel of St. John ? 
 
 9. How may we obtain some definite idea of " A 
 Death in the Desert " ? 
 
 10. What is the meaning of this poem? Explain the 
 Prologue. 
 
 11. Belate Browning's description of St. John in the 
 desert — line thirteen to line eighty-one. 
 
 12. What, according to Browning, supplies an explana- 
 tion of the spiritual and subjective character of St. John's 
 faith ? 
 
 13. What is the general import of " A Death in the 
 Desert " ? 
 
"A DEATH IN THE DESERT" 37 
 
 14. How does Browning in his poem represent the 
 character and personality of St. John 1 
 
 15. What was Browning's religious faith as set forth 
 in the poem ? 
 
 16. Indicate some of the most beautiful passages in the 
 poem. 
 
MRS. BROWNING'S "SONNETS FROM 
 THE PORTUGUESE." 
 
 Love has ever been a fitting theme for the sonnet- 
 eer, from Spenser to Rossetti. Enshrined in this 
 Love and the art-form the poet has poured out his 
 Sonnet. tide of love and tenderly confessed to 
 
 the passionate emotions of his heart. Fourteen 
 iambic lines and the confession is made ! The one 
 idea, the one sentiment, reigns supreme. The ses- 
 tet crowns the octave. The thought must be 
 gathered up intense, not weakened by diffusion. 
 
 How suitable, then, is not the sonnet as a vehicle 
 of the loftiest thoughts as well as the tenderest and 
 most impassioned emotions ! The vernacular of 
 love is clear and direct — just what the sonnet 
 must be. It burns and blazes as a star, transfigur- 
 ing the whole world around; the sonnet must be 
 luminous, too, lighting up with its beams the world 
 of thought embodied within its lines. 
 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the greatest woman 
 
 poet of any age, has given us a cycle of sonnets, 
 
 Mrs. Brown- known under the title of " Sonnets 
 
 ing's Cycle of from the Portuguese," which contain 
 Sonnets. . . 
 
 some of the finest subjective Doetry to 
 
£}fi ^^s^t^yz^t^v^^^^ 
 
 7 
 
" SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE" 39 
 
 be found in English literature. " Their form re- 
 minds us," says Stedman, " of an English proto- 
 type, and it is no sacrilege to say that their music 
 is showered from a higher and purer atmosphere 
 than that of the Swan of Avon. We need not 
 enter upon cold comparison of their respective ex- 
 cellences ; but Shakespeare's personal poems were 
 the overflow of his impetuous youth : his broader 
 vision, that took a world within its ken, was abso- 
 lutely objective ; while Mrs. Browning's Love 
 Sonnets are the outpourings of a woman's tender- 
 est emotions at an epoch when her art was most 
 mature, and her whole nature exalted by a passion 
 that to such a being comes but once and for all. 
 Here indeed the singer rose to her height. Here 
 she is absorbed in rapturous utterance, radiant and 
 triumphant with her own joy. The mists have 
 risen and her sight is clear. Her mouthing and 
 affectation are forgotten, her lips cease to stammer, 
 the lyrical spirit has full control. The sonnet, 
 artificial in weaker hands, becomes swift with feel- 
 ing, red with a 'veined humanity,' the chosen 
 vehicle of a royal woman's vows." 
 
 The history of how the " Sonnets from the Portu- 
 guese" came to be written has been Howthe 
 given to the world. They are the " Sonnets from 
 notes and chronicle of Mrs. Browning's guese" came 
 betrothal. Mr. Browning little sus- t0 * Written - 
 
40 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 pected that the circumstances of their betrothal had 
 led Miss Barrett into any artistic expression of feel- 
 ing. During the months of their brief courtship 
 neither poet showed any verses to the other. 
 
 After a honeymoon spent in Paris, Browning 
 and his young wife took up their residence in Pisa, 
 each pursuing his or her own literary work. One 
 day early in 1847, Mrs. Browning came downstairs 
 from her literary study and pushing a packet of 
 papers into Browning's pocket told him to read it, 
 and to tear it up if he did not like it ; and then 
 she fled again to her own room. 
 
 This parcel contained the series of sonnets which 
 have rendered the name of Mrs. Browning illustri- 
 ous. These sonnets were first published in the 
 volumes of 1850, and in order to veil their true 
 authorship it was agreed, at the suggestion of 
 Browning, that they should appear under the title 
 of " Sonnets from the Portuguese." 
 
 Spenser, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Rossetti 
 — each has given us a deliberate set of sonnets, 
 Mrs. Brown- but it is not too much to say that Mrs. 
 otter^Great Browning's cycle of love poems excels 
 Sonneteers. ^he work of these four masters. 
 
 Of course, strictly speaking, these forty-four ex- 
 quisite sonnets of Mrs. Browning's are not sonnets 
 at all. It is true they are built after the Petrarchan 
 model, but with the exception of the first, fourth, 
 
"SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE" 41 
 
 and thirteenth, they cannot be said to realize with 
 any distinctness the idea and the peculiar artistic 
 effect of the sonnet proper. 
 
 As a critic points out, the natural bent of Mrs. 
 Browning was certainly not to the sonnet. She 
 was too dithyrambic, too tumultuous to be wil- 
 lingly restrained within a rigid form of verse. 
 On& of the earliest sonnets of her mature years is 
 entitled u The Soul's Expression," and it is inter- 
 esting as a revelation of her own consciousness of 
 the difficulties which technical art presented to her : 
 
 " With stammering lips and insufficient sound 
 I strive and struggle to deliver right 
 That music of my nature, day and night 
 With dream and thought and feeling intenvound, 
 And inly answering all the senses round 
 With octaves of a mystic depth and height 
 Which step out grandly to the infinite 
 From the dark edges of the sensual ground ! 
 This song of soul I struggle to outbear 
 Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole, 
 And utter all myself into the air. 
 But if I did it as the thunder-roll 
 Breaks its own cloud, my flesh would perish there, 
 Before that dread apocalypse of soul." 
 
 A study of the sonnet will reveal the fact that 
 
 the sonnet architecture of Petrarch, TheCnarac _ 
 
 Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, teristicsofa 
 r . Good Sonnet, 
 
 widely differ. The Italian is generally 
 
42 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 taken as the normal type, but it would be folly to 
 say that, because a sonnet is not fashioned after 
 the Italian type, therefore it should not be regarded 
 as a sonnet proper. Speaking of this deviation 
 from the normal type, Mark Pattison says : " How- 
 far any given specimen may deviate from type 
 without ceasing to be a sonnet is as impossible to 
 decide as it is in botany to draw the line between 
 a variety and a distinct species. Perhaps we may 
 say that success is the best test, and that a brilliant 
 example justifies its own structural form. Or we 
 may look for legislative sanction in consent, and 
 demand compliance with those rulej which the 
 majority of poets agree to respect. The mighty 
 masters are a law unto themselves and the validity 
 of their legislation will be attested and held against 
 all comers by the splendour of an unchangeable 
 success." 
 
 We came across the following wise bit on the 
 sonnet not long ago, and we think it strikes off 
 fairly well the chief characteristics of a good 
 sonnet : 
 
 "A sonnet should be grave, but not heavy. It 
 must have a severity- tempered by sweetness, like 
 the breviary character of the Venerable Bede. It 
 must linger meditatively; it must not loiter or 
 fumble with its meaning. It must be sinuous, 
 never headlong ; feeling its rhymes delicately, not 
 
"SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE" 43 
 
 falling upon them ; for these are less rhymes than 
 
 the most prominent of many assonances upon all 
 
 of which the rhythm hangs." 
 
 It will be interesting for the student to take a 
 
 Petrarchan sonnet, a Shakespearean sonnet, and a 
 
 Wordsworthian sonnet, and note the Tx t . 
 
 ' m Italian and 
 
 difference in their architecture. Per- English Types 
 haps the great difference between the 
 English and Italian sonnet is to be found in the 
 fact that in the English sonnet the sense flows on 
 without break from the octave into the sestet ; 
 Avhereas the Italian sonnet is required at the end 
 of the octave to have a complete change in the 
 idea. So that while the form of a sonnet may be 
 Italian, the progress of the idea it embodies may 
 be English. 
 
 The rhyme-schemes of the three chief types of 
 Italian sonnets are the following : Type L, abbaabba 
 cdecde. Type II., abbaabba cdcdcd. Type III., 
 abbaabba cdedce. 
 
 A few of the finest sonnets in the English 
 language are : Wordsworth's " The World is too 
 much with us " ; Longfellow's " Sonnet on Na- 
 ture " ; Byron's " Sonnet on Chillon " ; Keats' " On 
 Looking into Chapman's Homer " ; and Shake- 
 speare's " Shall I Compare thee to a Summer's 
 Day?" 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti has given us a wonder- 
 
44 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 fully fine cycle of sonnets in his " House of Life." 
 Ro«settr ^* s introductory sonnet on the Sonnet 
 
 sonnet on a is very fine and is worthy of reproduc- 
 Sonnet. *_..-? 
 
 tion here: 
 
 " A sonnet is a moment's monument, — 
 Memorial from the Soul's eternity 
 To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be, 
 Whether for lustral rite or dire portent, 
 Of its own arduous fulness reverent : 
 Carve it in ivory or in ebony, 
 As Day or Night may rule ; and let Time see 
 Its flowering crest impearled and orient. 
 A sonnet is a coin : its face reveals 
 The soul, — its converse to what Power 't is due : — 
 Whether for tribute to the august appeals 
 Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue 
 It serve ; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath, 
 In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death," 
 
 A key to the central idea which informs this 
 cycle of sonnets is found in the opening sonnet. 
 The central It is " an overture containing the motive 
 nt e tsfrom S tiTe of the canticle ; 'not Death but Love' 
 Portuguese." had seized her unaware." Laughing 
 Love has invaded her sequestered chamber : 
 
 " I thought once how Theocritus had sung 
 Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, 
 Who each one in a gracious hand appears 
 To bear a gift for mortals old or young ; 
 And, as I mused it in his antique tongue ; 
 I saw in gradual vision, through my tears, 
 
"SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE" 45 
 
 The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, 
 
 Those of my own life, who by turns had flung 
 
 A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware, 
 
 So weeping, how a mystic shape did move 
 
 Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair ; 
 
 And a voice said in mastery, while I strove, 
 
 * Guess now who holds thee ? ' — ' Death,' I said. But there 
 
 The silver answer rang, ' Not Death but Love.' " 
 
 In the fifth sonnet there is a beautiful piece of 
 imagery. It is that in which Mrs. Browning 
 likens herself to Electra pouring her sepulchral 
 urn and all its ashes at the feet of Love. 
 
 Between sonnets fi ve and six the student should 
 read Mrs. Browning's little poem " Question and 
 Answer." It belongs to the same orbit of thought 
 and emotion and is co-radical with " Sonnets from 
 the Portuguese." Here it is : 
 
 " Love you seek for presupposes 
 Summer heat and sunny glow. 
 Tell me, do you find moss-roses 
 Budding, blooming in the snow ? 
 Snow might kill the rose-tree's root : 
 Shake it quickly from your foot, 
 Lest it harm you as you go. 
 
 From the ivy where it dapples 
 
 A gray ruin, stone by stone, 
 
 Do you look for grapes or apples 
 
 Or for sad green leaves alone ? 
 
 Pluck the leaves off, two or three; 
 
 Keep them for morality 
 
 When you shall be safe and gone." 
 
46 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 In the tenth sonnet Mrs. Browning makes full 
 confession of her love: 
 
 " And when I say at need 
 / love thee . . . mark \ . . . I love thee — in thy sight 
 I stand transfigured, glorified aright, 
 With conscience of the new rays that proceed 
 Out of my face towards thine. " 
 
 From this point forward the sonnets play in 
 their exquisite masque as if to celestial dance 
 music with the wild thoughts and tremulous 
 frolics of accepted love. 
 
 In the fourteenth sonnet Mrs. Browning pleads 
 that Browning may not love her for her desert's " 
 sake, but for love's sake : 
 
 " If thou must love me let it be for naught 
 Except for love's sake only. Do not say 
 * I love her for her smile, her look, her way 
 Of speaking gently, for a trick of thought 
 That falls in well with mine and certes brought 
 A sense of pleasant ease on such a day ; ' 
 For these things in themselves beloved may 
 Be changed, or change for thee : and love so wrought 
 May be unwrought so. Neither love me for 
 Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry : 
 A creature might forget to weep, who bore 
 Thy comfort long and lose thy love thereby. 
 But love me for love's sake that evermore 
 Thou mayst love on through love's eternity.'' 
 
"SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE" 47 
 
 At the end of the eighteenth sonnet the follow- 
 ing little lyric " Inclusions " should be inserted — 
 it is really a part of the sonnets : 
 
 " Oh, wilt thou have my hand, dear, to lie along in thine? 
 As a little stone in a running stream, it seems to lie and 
 
 pine. 
 Now drop the poor, pale hand, dear, unfit to plight with 
 
 thine, 
 
 " Oh, wilt thou have my cheek, dear, drawn closer to thine 
 
 own? 
 My cheek is white, my cheek is worn by many a tear run 
 
 down. 
 Nov leave a little space, dear, lest it should wet thine own. 
 
 " Oh, must thou have my soul, dear, commingled with thy 
 
 soul? 
 Red grows the cheek and warm the hand; the part is in the 
 
 whole : 
 Nor hands nor cheeks keep separate when soul is joined to 
 
 soul." 
 
 It will be noticed that these sonnets are not 
 heaped together in accidental sequence as Spenser's 
 and Shakespeare's seem to be, but are 
 
 r , _ Their Histori- 
 
 arranged historically. They move along cai Arran^e- 
 from the first surprise of unexpected 
 passion to the final complete resignation of soul 
 and body in a rapture which is to be sanctified and 
 heightened by death itself. 
 
 Though all these sonnets exhibit the rhyme- 
 
48 STUDIES JN POETRY 
 
 scheme of the Italian type of sonnet, — that is, 
 Mould and abbaabba cdcdcd, — they are not organ- 
 Technique, ically sonnets. As Professor Corson 
 points out, in their rhyme-schemes they take on 
 the exterior semblance of what organically they 
 are not. The whole cycle is a beautiful casket of 
 gems, full of lyrical splendor, deeply inlaid with 
 the rubies and diamonds of a woman's purest and 
 truest love. 
 
 The key-note of Mrs. Browning as an artist 
 was sincerity. This is the quality which holds 
 How Far together the edifice of her style. Her 
 
 "Sonnets nature was intense. When love in- 
 
 tuguese"Re- vaded the chamber of her heart she 
 Genius of Mrs. hearkened to its whisperings, left her 
 Browning. polar region of dreams, solitude, and 
 introspection, and lived in the aims of her new- 
 born world of thought. The long closed tideways 
 of her woman's heart were opened and Love's 
 torrent swept all before it. 
 
 " Sonnets from the Portuguese " are a record, 
 a chronicle, of the genesis of love in the pure and 
 noble heart of the world's great priestess of song. 
 They not only chronicle every heart-beat of her 
 love, but reflect the strength of her genius as an 
 artist. 
 
 It is peculiarly true that women poets rarely, if 
 ever, take us into their confidence when they deal 
 
"SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE" 49 
 
 with love. A natural delicacy leads them to write 
 of love so platonically or so obscurely that it is 
 difficult at times to know just what they wish to 
 communicate. There is no doubting the meaning 
 of Mrs. Browning in her " Sonnets from the Por- 
 tuguese." Her " song of soul " is clear, and de- 
 livered with no stammering lips. The burden of 
 her heart is love, and this she clothes with a tech- 
 nical beauty and sincerity that glorify the heart of 
 woman. 
 
 Before Robert Browning achieved eminence as 
 a poet, Tennyson and Mrs. Browning were the 
 obvious inheritors of Wordsworth's "Sonnets 
 throne. The two volumes of 1844 tugnese"and 
 
 lifted Mrs. Browning" at once to a place "JnMemo- 
 
 o i- nam » ' con- 
 
 among the living poets of her country, trasted. 
 Tennyson's great elegy, "In Memoriam," which 
 is devoted to the analysis of philosophic grief, 
 was published about the same time that Mrs. 
 Browning's " Sonnets from the Portuguese " 
 appeared. There is a certain analogy between 
 the two poems — one dealing with grief the other 
 with love. " In Memoriam " is the record of a 
 great friendship. " Sonnets from the Portuguese," 
 one of the acknowledged g]ories of our literature, is 
 built patiently and unquestionably on the union in 
 stainless harmony of two of the most distinguished 
 spirits which our century has produced. 
 
 4 
 
50 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. Define the sonnet. 
 
 2. Why is the sonnet suitable as a form of verse to 
 express the emotions of love ? 
 
 2. What is Mrs. Browning's place among the women 
 poets of the world ? 
 
 4. What, in brief, is Stedman's appreciation of Mrs. 
 Browning's " Sonnets from the Portuguese * ? 
 
 5. Eelate how these sonnets came to be written. 
 
 6. Contrast the sonnets of Mrs. Browning with the 
 sonnets of Spenser, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and 
 Possetti. 
 
 7. Should " Sonnets from the Portuguese," be really 
 designated sonnets] 
 
 8. What are the characteristics of a good sonnet ? 
 
 9. Explain the difference between the Italian and 
 English types of the sonnet. 
 
 10. What is the central idea in " Sonnets from the 
 Portuguese " ? 
 
 11. Are these sonnets heaped together in accidental 
 sequence ? 
 
 12. Are these poems organically sonnets? 
 
 13. What was the keynote of Mrs. Browning as an 
 artist ? 
 
 14. How far do these sonnets reflect the genius of 
 Mrs. Browning? 
 
 • 15. Contrast " In Memoriam" and "Sonnets from the 
 Portuguese." 
 
&* Ikr0r*uv?j£ 
 
WORDSWORTH'S ODE "ON INTIMA- 
 TIONS OF IMMORTALITY." 
 
 Wordsworth's ode " On Intimations of Im- 
 mortality " is, perhaps, the most organic poem to 
 be found in the whole range of English An o^^c 
 literature. It is, indeed, an embodi- Poem, 
 ment of the happiest and truest inspiration. The 
 idea and matter in the ode so interpenetrate — are 
 so fused — and the poet's individuality becomes so 
 absorbed in the creation of his imagination, that a 
 Words worthian poem of rare power and vital beauty 
 is the result. 
 
 Where there is a lack of true inspiration this 
 organic character in a poem will be wanting, and 
 the idea will seem to stand above the matter as a 
 master above a slave. The absence, too, of that 
 sacred flame which fuses and fashions the precious 
 ore of poetic thought with its unifying power, will 
 affect the organic character of a poem not only on 
 its thought side, but also on its metrical side. 
 
 Wordsworth's " Ode to Immortality " is a most 
 vital creation and represents the genius of Words- 
 worth at its very best. It is the embodiment of 
 
52 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 the poet's own mystical ideality, and may be justly 
 regarded as the crowning effort of modern imag- 
 inative discourse. Emerson calls it the high- 
 water mark of English thought in the nineteenth 
 century, and Principal Shairp says that it marks 
 the highest limit which the tide of poetic inspira- 
 tion has reached in England within this century, 
 or, indeed, since the days of Milton. 
 
 Of this poem, " Ode on Intimations of Immor- 
 Wordsworth's tality," published in 1807, Wordsworth 
 onts^rigin wrote as follows in 1843, explanatory 
 and import. f £ts genesis and import: 
 
 " This was composed during my residence at 
 Town End, Grasmere. Two years at least passed 
 between the writing of the first four stanzas and 
 the remaining part. To the attentive and com- 
 petent reader, the whole sufficiently explains it- 
 self ; but there may be no harm in adverting here 
 to particular feelings or experiences of my own 
 mind on which the structure of the poem partly 
 rests. Nothing was more difficult for me in child- 
 hood than to admit the notion of death as a state 
 applicable to my own being. I have said else- 
 where : 
 
 " ' A simple child, 
 That lightly draws its breath, 
 And feels its life in every limb, 
 What should it know of death ! ' 
 
"ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY" 53 
 
 " But it was not so much from feelings of animal 
 vivacity that my difficulty came as from a sense of 
 the indomitableness of the spirit within me. I 
 used to brood over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, 
 and almost to persuade myself that, whatever 
 might become of others, I should be translated in 
 something of the same way to heaven. With a 
 feeling congenial to this I was often unable to 
 think of eternal things as having external exist- 
 ence, and I communed with all that I saw as some- 
 thing not apart from, but inherent in, my own 
 immaterial nature. 
 
 " Many times wdiile going to school have I 
 grasped at a wall or tree to recall myself from 
 this abyss of idealism to reality. At that time I 
 was afraid of such processes. In later periods of 
 life I have deplored, as we all have reason to do, 
 a subjugation of an opposite character, and have 
 rejoiced over the remembrances as is expressed in 
 the lines : 
 
 " ' Obstinate questionings 
 
 Of sense and outward things, 
 
 Fallings from us, vanishing*,' etc. 
 
 "To that dream-like vividness and splendour 
 which invest objects of sight in childhood, every 
 one, I believe, if he would look back, could bear 
 testimony, and I need not dwell upon it here ; but 
 having in the poem regarded it as presumptive 
 
54 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 evidence of a prior state of existence, I think it 
 right to protest against a conclusion which has 
 given pain to some good and pious persons, that I 
 meant to inculcate such a belief. It is far too 
 shadowy a notion to be recommended to faith 
 as more than an element in our instincts of 
 immortality. 
 
 "But let us bear in mind that, though the idea 
 is not advanced in revelation, there is nothing there 
 to contradict it, and the fall of man presents an 
 analogy in its favor. Accordingly, a pre-existent 
 state has entered into the popular creeds of many 
 nations, and among all persons acquainted with 
 classic literature is known as an ingredient in 
 Platonic philosophy. 
 
 " Archimedes said that he could move the world 
 if he had a point whereon to rest his machine. 
 Who has not felt the aspirations as regards the 
 world of his own mind ? Having to wield some 
 of its elements when I was impelled to write this 
 poem on the ' Immortality of the Soul,' I took hold 
 of the notion of pre-existence as having sufficient 
 foundation in humanity for authorizing me to 
 make for my purpose the best use of it I could 
 as a poet." 
 
 The germ, or shall we call it main idea of this 
 its Germ in & Q will be f ound in a fine poem by Henry 
 Literature. Vaughan, a Platonic poet of the seven- 
 
"ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY" 55 
 
 teenth century. The poem is entitled u The Re- 
 treat." Here is the passage which embodies the 
 germ : 
 
 " Happy those early days when I 
 
 Shin'd in my angel-infancy ! 
 
 Before I understoo 1 this place 
 
 Appointed for my second race, 
 
 Or taught my soul to fancy anght 
 
 But a white, celestial thought ; 
 
 When yet I had not walked above 
 
 A mile or two from my first love, 
 
 And looking back — at that short space — 
 
 Could see a glimpse of his bright face ; 
 
 When on some gilded cloud or flower 
 
 My gazing soul would dwell an hour, 
 
 And in those weaker glories spy 
 
 Some shadows of eternity : 
 
 Before I taught my tongue to wound 
 
 My conscience with a sinful sound, 
 
 Or had the black art to dispense 
 
 A sev'ral sin to ev'ry sense, 
 
 But felt through all this fleshly dress 
 
 Bright shoots of everlastingness." 
 
 Again in our later poets we find hints and glints 
 of the informing idea in this poem. Shelley in 
 his u Lament " touches it : 
 
 " O world ! O life ! O time ! 
 On whose last steps I climb, 
 Trembling at that whereon I stood before — 
 When will return the glory of your prime ? 
 No more — oh, never more! " 
 
56 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 Hood, in his poem " I remember, I remember/' 
 embodies a thought also kindred to this : 
 
 , "I remember, I remember, 
 The fir trees dark and high ; 
 I used to think their slender tops 
 Were close against the sky. 
 It was a childish ignorance, 
 But now 't is little joy- 
 To know I 'm farther off from heav'n 
 Than when I was a boy." 
 
 In structure this great ode stands alone, being 
 
 modelled on no other poem. Its rhythm, metre, 
 
 rhyme, melody, harmony, and stanza, 
 Its Technique. J ' / . J ' 
 
 are vital and organic, — the outcome 
 of the unifying, or what Coleridge terms the esem- 
 plastic power, of the feeling or emotion embodied 
 in the poem. It should be remembered that poetic 
 unities — metre, melody, rhythm, etc. — are not 
 accidents or things apart from the life of a poem, 
 but are inherent and contained in the divine en- 
 ergy of the art work. 
 
 The " Ode on Immortality " contains eleven 
 stanzas of varied mould, dependent upon the char- 
 acter of the sentiment poetically enhoused. It 
 will be noticed that not only is the metre of this 
 fine ode singularly appropriate, but its diction is 
 equally felicitous. Had its stanzas been fashioned 
 successively, in regular form, such structure would 
 
"ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY" 57 
 
 have proved particularly suitable for the expres- 
 sion of definite thought ; but the irregular yields 
 itself more pliantly to the imaginative passion 
 which is of the very life, atmosphere, and essence 
 of this poem. 
 
 Referring to the structure and diction of the 
 " Ode on Immortality," Aubrey de Vere says : 
 " Parts of it are written in that ; large utterance,' 
 at once majestic and simple, which makes so much 
 of Wordsworth's poetry, when once read, haunt 
 the ear forever. Parts of it are familiar even to 
 roughness. That roughness was intentional and 
 was not mitigated in the later editions. It was 
 needed. The perfection of a poem may be gravely 
 impaired by its uniform elaborateness ; as in archi- 
 tecture ornament becomes offensive if it be not 
 relieved by contrasted masses of occasional plain- 
 ness or rudeness. Without such passages the sen- 
 timent of this ode would have lacked its passionate 
 impulse, and its doctrine would have been frozen 
 into a scholastic theory. In this poem many 
 extremes are reconciled. In no other has Words- 
 worth's genius, contemplative at once and emo- 
 tional, moved through so wide an arc." 
 
 Of the two hundred and three verses which 
 make up the ode, the metre of one hundred is iam- 
 bic pentameter. This is the theme-metre of the 
 ode — indeed, it is the measure in which the 
 
58 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 greatest portion of English poetry is written. Of 
 the other metres in the poem there are thirty-nine 
 4xa, forty-four 3xa, ten 2xa, six 6xa, one 7xa, one 
 2xxa plus x, one xxa, xa, xxa, xa, and one 3xa, ax, 
 xa, — a representing in every case, according to 
 Latham's method of metrical notation, an accented 
 syllable, and x an unaccented syllable. 
 
 It will further be observed that the more reflect- 
 ive portions of the ode are expressed in the theme- 
 metre — good examples being found in the eighth 
 and eleventh stanzas. Where the thought is light 
 and gay and gladsome, as in the tenth stanza, the 
 notes are set to a shorter metre. 
 
 The third stanza contains a greater variety of 
 metre than any other section of the ode. Notice 
 how the music of the verses in their varied form 
 serves as a chorus to the thought, expressing a 
 mystic S} r mpathy with it ; and notice, too, the exult- 
 ant note attained in the last verse through the 
 sweeping close imparted by the iambic heptameter 
 (7xa). 
 
 Again, it would be well for the student to note 
 the rhyme-scheme, followed with the varying 
 degrees of emphasis imparted, according to the 
 nearness or remoteness of the rhyme. 
 
 There are two marked and well defined transi- 
 Three Divisions tions in the thought of the poem — be- 
 of the Poem. tween the f ourt h an d fifth, and eighth 
 
"ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY" 59 
 
 and ninth stanzas. The first four stanzas deal 
 with a loss which has saddened a soul once self- 
 sufficing ; the next four are devoted to a vindica- 
 tion of the daring doctrine of the poem without 
 trenching upon polemics; while the concluding 
 stanzas of the poem restore to the soul peace 
 through the thought that the spiritual vision, cut 
 off by the temporal tilings around, may be regained 
 and the melancholy fear subdued by a return to 
 the simple ways in which our childhood walked. 
 
 In the first division of the poem is set forth the 
 experience of our common humanity! In the first 
 stanza the poet recalls his childhood, 
 
 1 . 'The Thought 
 
 when all nature seemed to him to be in the First 
 clothed in celestial light; but now that 
 he has reached the years of manhood this celestial 
 light has given place to a more prosaic aspect in 
 nature. In the next stanza — a piece of matchless 
 description — there is revealed to him the fact 
 that nature is still beautiful and fair in its varied 
 phenomena; still he knows, realizes, that a glory 
 has departed from the earth, — a glory which be- 
 longed to the vision of his childhood. In the third 
 and fourth stanzas the poet mingles in the great 
 festival of nature. He hears the echoes from the 
 mountain throng, and the winds come to him from 
 the fields of sleep, but amidst this jubilee grief is 
 borne in upon him through a single tree, a single 
 
60 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 field, which speaks to him of something that is 
 gone. The little pansy at his feet repeats the self- 
 same tale. 
 
 The thought in the second division contains the 
 
 argument of the poem. It sets forth the fact that 
 
 , _ . this earthly life is nothing' more than a 
 
 The Thought J . & 
 
 in the second sleep, or a forgetting, in the midst of 
 the larger life of Eternity; that when 
 man is born he brings with him recollections of the 
 glory he has left behind him, and as he grows to 
 manhood the remembrance becomes dimmer, until 
 at length the grown man sees the sunrise glory 
 fade away into the light of common day. 
 
 The close of the first division is marked by sad- 
 ness — gloom : 
 
 " Whither is fled the visionary gleam ? 
 Where is it now, the glory and the dream ? " 
 
 The second division opens in hope and light. 
 As Aubrey de Vere says, u A hundred bygone mus- 
 ings have rushed to a single conclusion, and the 
 problem is solved. Sharply, definitely, and with 
 nothing of preface, the thought which has wrought 
 deliverance is enunciated. The loss was even 
 greater than it seemed to be ; but in its very great- 
 ness there lives a secret hope. It was not the loss 
 of that gleam which beautified this earth : it w T as 
 the loss of a whole world, but of one that cannot 
 
"ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY " 61 
 
 be lost forever. We have a higher birthplace than 
 we know ; and our sorrow is itself a prophecy that 
 the exile shall return to his country." 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep aud a forgetting : 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And cometh from afar : 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home: 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing boy, 
 But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 
 
 He sees it in his joy ; 
 The youth, who daily farther from the East 
 
 Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 
 
 And by the vision splendid 
 
 Is on his way attended; 
 At length the man perceives it die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day." 
 
 The succeeding three stanzas of the second divi- 
 sion illustrate how the soul is gradually beguiled 
 into a temporary forgetf ulness of its celestial origin. 
 The earth, his foster-mother, with a sort of cruel 
 kindness does everything in her power to make 
 him forget " that imperial palace whence he came." 
 Environed by the moving pageantry of life " the 
 little actor cons another part, descends from his 
 
62 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 being's height," and wears the yoke which life and 
 custom place upon his neck. 
 
 In the seventh stanza is set forth the life of 
 man from childhood to old age. It is practically 
 Shakespeare's " Seven Ages of Man," as found in 
 "As You Like It," Act n. ; Scene 1: U A11 the 
 world's a stage," etc. 
 
 The last stanza of the second division is probably 
 more difficult of interpretation than any other 
 section of the poem. Stopford Brooke, we think, 
 lays bare its meaning very clearly in the following 
 comment : 
 
 " We can only catch the main idea among ex- 
 pressions of the child, as the " best philosopher " 
 the " eye among the blind," " mighty prophet," 
 "seer blest," — expressions which taken separately 
 have scarcely any recognizable meaning. By tak- 
 ing them all together we feel, rather than see, 
 that Wordsworth intended to say that the child, 
 having lately come from a perfect existence, in 
 which he saw truth directly and was at home with 
 God, retains, unknown to us, that vision — and 
 because he does, is the best philosopher, since he 
 sees at once that which we through philosophy 
 are endeavoring to reach; is the mighty prophet 
 because in his actions and speech he tells uncon- 
 sciously the truths he sees, but the sight of which 
 we have lost; is more closely haunted by God, 
 
"OX INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY" 63 
 
 more near to the immortal life, more purely and 
 brightly free, because he half shares in the pre- 
 existent life and glory out of which he has come." 
 The third division indicates the use of the 
 change, and shows how it reacts upon the earlier 
 disposition of the mind and tends to 
 
 1 The Thought 
 
 deepen the meaning of the first inti- in the Third 
 mations of immortality. Man preserves 
 through life a memory of his first estate. The 
 obstinate questionings of sense and outward things 
 make him but conscious of his own finiteness and 
 the infinity towards which he is going, but which 
 would not have been possible without his •* shadowy 
 recollections " of a time when he was intuitively 
 conscious of an infinite from which he had come. 
 He can never fully lose sight of this infinity — of 
 the great "immortal sea" upon whose shores his 
 childhood dreamed : 
 
 " Hence in a season of calm weather, 
 Though inland far we be. 
 Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
 Which brought us hither ; 
 Can in a moment travel thither ; 
 And see the children sport upon the shore, 
 And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 1 ' 
 
 In the fourth book of ;i The Excursion " there is 
 a passage closely allied in thought to the above 
 lines, beginning with — : 
 
64 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 " I have seen 
 A curious child who dwelt upon a tract 
 Of inland ground, applying to his ear 
 The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell ; " etc. 
 
 Wordsworth regards the universe as a shell 
 bespeaking communion with its native sea of God's 
 Immensity and Omnipotence. The whole passage 
 is very beautiful and very Wordsworthian in its 
 thought and teaching. 
 
 The sublime ode which we are considering ends 
 in a hymn of praise, a reconcilement with nature, 
 which forms the subject of its opening lines. The 
 spiritual passion which touched and stirred and 
 tossed its beating heart has sunk at the close into 
 a tranquillity which retains but a ripple of the 
 storm beyond the harbor bar. 
 
 The estrangement of the poet from his loved 
 nature is but for a brief season. She is still to 
 him a very sacrament, bestowing upon him her 
 spiritual gifts and graces — an intermediary be- 
 tween the source of all life and love and the 
 heart of man : 
 
 " And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, 
 Forbode not any severing of our loves ! 
 Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; 
 I only have relinquished one delight, 
 To live beneath your more habitual sway. 
 I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, 
 
"ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY" 65 
 
 Even more than when I tripped lightly as they ; 
 The innocent brightness of a new-born Day, 
 
 Is lovely yet ; 
 The Clouds that gather round the setting sun 
 Do take a sober coloring from an eye 
 That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ; 
 Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 
 Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 
 Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears, 
 To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 
 
 There is certainly a kinship between these two 
 poems. " Ode to Immortality " is a great philo- 
 sophic structure reared on " We are «o<ietoim- 
 
 Seven." It embodies the child's feel- mo 5 t ^ ,, 
 
 and "We are 
 
 ing in " We are Seven " carried into the seven" 
 years of philosophic thought. " We 
 are Seven," however, is not alone the mere tale of 
 a little cottage girl who could not fully realize the 
 meaning of death : it represents as well the poet's 
 contemplative contrast between the natural health 
 and joy of life in the living child and the super- 
 natural secret of death : 
 
 " She had a rustic woodland air, 
 And she was wildly clad : 
 Her eyes were fair and very fair ; 
 Her beauty made me glad." 
 
 It is worthy of noting, while discussing this 
 poem, that the poetic moment or inspirational 
 
 5 
 
66 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 thought of the poem is to he found in the last 
 stanza, which, by the way, Wordsworth tells us 
 was composed first. 
 
 In the " Ode to Immortality" the poetic moment 
 is to be found in the fifth stanza. It hints at, nay, 
 embodies, the idea of the pre-natal existence of the 
 soul. In wi We are Seven " the child's feeling is 
 horizoned by " this muddy vesture of clay " with no 
 thought of the spirit tabernacled therein. In the 
 " Ode to Immortality " this feeling touches the im- 
 mortal threshold of philosophic thought and gains 
 for the poet a faith, a trust, a hope — 
 
 " In the primal sympathy 
 
 Which, having been, must ever be; 
 In the soothing thoughts that spring 
 Out of human suffering; 
 In the faith that looks through death, 
 In years that bring the philosophic mind." 
 
 In studying the " Ode to Immortality " it would 
 be well for the student to compare it, (1) as to met- 
 Some Great rical form, (2) as to ethical teaching, and 
 
 SS?p£Sf" ( 3 ) as t0 ^ sthetic value, with the fol - 
 compared. lowing four great odes : Coleridge's 
 
 " France " ; Gray's " Bard " ; Tennyson's " Death 
 
 of Wellington " ; and Milton's " Nativity." Note 
 
 the share which the poet as seer and singer has in 
 
 the building up of an ode. Is Tennyson's " Death 
 
 of Wellington " characterized by the same deep 
 
"ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY" 67 
 
 and rich thought, sublime conception, and in- 
 wrought truth as the " Ode to Immortality" ? Is 
 it not largely labored, and, as Stedman says, built 
 up of high-sounding lines and refrains in which 
 rhetoric is substituted for imagination and richness 
 of thought? Gray's "Bard" is a Pindaric ode. 
 Would you designate the " Ode to Immortality " or 
 Coleridge's u France " or Milton's " Nativity " as a 
 Pindaric ode ? The " Bard " is considered to be a 
 prophetic poem. Does this account for the obscur- 
 ity which characterizes it ? Note the manner in 
 which each ode opern. Compare the five odes as 
 to strength, uplift, loftiness of cast, organic mould, 
 stanza, and rhyme-scheme. " The ode is a grand 
 conception expressed in language of uniform dig- 
 nity and often of great beauty." How far and 
 how fully do the five odes embody this definition? 
 Wherein do the opening and closing of Coleridge's 
 " Ode to France " resemble the opening and closing 
 of the "Ode to Immortality"? How far does each 
 ode represent the special poetic characteristics of 
 its author? 
 
 The " Ode to Immortality " is essentially a philo- 
 sophical poem. It never, however, descends to the 
 plane of mere argument, but keeps ever The Ethical 
 on the high ground of the essential ^e^ode to 
 identity of our childish instincts and immortality." 
 our enlightened reason. The whole poem and its 
 
68 STUDIES IN PQETRT 
 
 meaning and intent may be summed up as follows : 
 There is set before us in the first part of the poem 
 an experience common to humanity. Then it is 
 shown how the soul, step by step, becoming cen- 
 tred in the seen and the temporal, loses sight of 
 the glory and beauty which were the dower of 
 childhood. The ethical value of the poem is to be 
 found in the closing stanzas, which set forth the 
 fact that if we would regain the spiritual vision 
 lost to us as our souls have travelled inland in life, 
 far from "that immortal sea," we must become 
 again as little children in this life of the soul, 
 blending the early intuitions of our childhood with 
 the mature reason of our manhood. The " Ode to 
 Immortality " is generally regarded as Platonic in 
 its philosophy, assigning as it does to mankind a 
 life previous to their human one. There is, how- 
 ever, a difference in the teaching of the two : 
 " With Wordsworth the infant, with Plato the 
 philosopher approaches nearest to the previous 
 more glorious state." It should be remembered 
 too, that Wordsworth held to the teachings in 
 this great poem with a poetic, not a religious faith. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. Why is Wordsworth's ode "On the Intimations of 
 Immortality " claimed to be the most organic poem in 
 English literature? 
 
"ON INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY' 5 69 
 
 2. What does the " Ode to Immortality " represent ? 
 
 3. What was the origin of this poem? 
 
 I. What is its import 1 
 
 5. What is its informing idea ? 
 
 6. Explain its literary structure. 
 
 7. Explain the three divisions of the poem. 
 
 8. What is the thought in the first division ? 
 
 9. What is the thought in the second division t 
 
 10. What is the thought in the third division ? 
 
 II. Explain the kinship between the " Ode to Immor- 
 tality " and " We are Seven." 
 
 12. Compare the " Ode to Immortality " with other 
 great odes in English literature. 
 
 13. What is the ethical teaching of the " Ode to 
 Immortality " ] 
 
COLERIDGE'S "ANCIENT MARINER." 
 
 A new gospel of poetry received proclamation 
 at the close of the eighteenth century through the 
 a New Gospel ^ip s °f Words worth and Coleridge, who 
 of Poetry. } ec [ y ie h ear t f man back in pilgrimage 
 to the shrine of nature, whose altar lamp had 
 burned unheeded during the reign of the w correct 
 school of poets." Burns and Goldsmith and Cow- 
 per and Thomson prepared the way. The new 
 movement, which had contemporaneous cradling 
 in Germany and France, and had touched and 
 quickened the literary mind and spirit of England, 
 found fullest and clearest expression in the ardent 
 and reverent hearts of William Wordsworth and 
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge. These gifted twain 
 well represent the school of nature and romance in 
 English poetry. They came with a message, a 
 new gospel, to the literary world; and despite the 
 lashes and stripes, the scorn and contempt of crit- 
 ics, this message, this gospel, they proclaimed to 
 the literary sons of men. 
 
 A close, intimate, and abiding friendship sprang 
 up between those two gifted minds, perhaps owing 
 
^f 7. C^r^f 
 
"ANCIENT MARINER" 71 
 
 to the kinship of their genius. Coleridge first 
 became acquainted with Wordsworth Wordsworth 
 in 1794, and the two became neigh- and Coleridge, 
 bors in 1797. They formed just estimates of each 
 other's powers and soon resolved to unite in a 
 literary venture. They projected the " Lyrical 
 Ballads," — a work which was destined to mark a 
 momentous epoch in the history of English poetry. 
 The purpose of the " Lyrical Ballads " was to illus- 
 trate "the two cardinal points of poetry: the 
 power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a 
 faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the 
 power of giving the interest of novelty by the 
 modifying colors of the imagination." It was 
 agreed that Wordsworth was to contribute poems 
 on subjects chosen from every-day life, while on 
 Coleridge's part " the incidents and agents were to 
 ba, in part at least, supernatural, and the interest 
 aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the 
 affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions 
 aj would naturally accompany such situations, sup- 
 posing them real." He was " to transfer from our 
 inward nature a human interest and a semblance of 
 truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of the 
 imagination that willing suspension of disbelief 
 which constitutes poetic faith." Coleridge's part 
 of the joint volume, which appeared in 1798, vir- 
 tually consisted of the " Ancient Mariner " alone. 
 
72 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 What was the purpose of Coleridge in writing the 
 " Ancient Mariner " ? Is the poem probable, and has 
 Purpose and it a moral ? These are important ques- 
 the^ Ancient tions, an( i should receive the attention of 
 Mariner." y ie student. Coleridge places as an in- 
 troduction to his poem the following lines from 
 Burnet, and they may lend some light to the pur- 
 pose which the author had in building up this re- 
 markable poem : " I have no difficulty in believing 
 that there are more invisible than visible beings in 
 the world. But who shall tell us the story of their 
 whole family, and the rank, relationship, character- 
 istics, and duties of each ? How they act? Where 
 they dwell ? The mind of man has always striven 
 for, but never attained, a knowledge of these 
 things. Meanwhile I shall not deny that some- 
 times it is useful to view in a mental picture the 
 image of a greater and better world, so that 
 the intellect may not, through occupation with the 
 petty concerns of daily life, become too narrow 
 and be wholly absorbed in the consideration of 
 trifles. But, nevertheless, we must watch over the 
 truth and keep ourselves within bounds, in order to 
 distinguish the certain from the doubtful, and day 
 from night." 
 
 It seems quite clear, we think, that Coleridge's 
 purpose in writing the " Ancient Mariner," which 
 is, as Swinburne says, a very triumph of modern 
 
"ANCIENT MARINER" 73 
 
 poetry, was to show that God's love animates and 
 binds together the whole world — 
 
 " For so the whole round earth is every way 
 Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 
 
 ■ — that every creature is a link in His love, and 
 that he who wantonly destroys one of God's 
 creatures cuts himself off from God's love. By 
 the killing of the albatross the soul of the ancient 
 mariner has been wrenched from the animating 
 principle that linked it to the universe. 
 
 In Coleridge's "Table Talk" we find the following 
 reference to the moral import of this poem : " Mrs. 
 Barbauld once told me that she admired Its EtMcal 
 the 'Ancient Mariner' very much, but TeacMll 2- 
 that there were two faults in it, — it was improba- 
 ble, and had no moral. As for the probability, I 
 owned that it might admit some question ; but as 
 to the want of a moral, I told her that in my judg- 
 ment the poem had too much ; and that the only 
 or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion 
 of the moral sentiment so openly on the reader as 
 a principle or cause of action in a work of such 
 pure imagination." Of course the moral is obvi- 
 ously contained in the third last stanza of the 
 poem : 
 
 " He prayeth best who loveth best 
 
 All things both great and small; 
 
 For the dear God who loveth us 
 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
74 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 The " Ancient Mariner " is an expression of 
 divine love manifested through objects of nature. 
 
 Coleridge did much to restore the note of super- 
 naturalism to English poetry. It is an element 
 Supernatural- which belongs especially to mediaeval 
 
 isminthe t * • 4- T^ 4. 
 
 Poem. poets. Later m our century Dante 
 
 Gabriel Rossetti introduced it, together with the 
 
 temper of religious wonder. It was one of the 
 
 outcomes of the romantic movement in English 
 
 poetry, which Percy's "Reliques" did so much to 
 
 foster. Scott employs it with good effect. In the 
 
 preparation of the " Lyrical Ballads,'' Coleridge 
 
 undertook the special romance of the woik, and the 
 
 blending of supernatural machinery with human 
 
 interest. Hence the very life and atmosphere of the 
 
 " Ancient Mariner " have root in the supernatural, 
 
 — in fact, it is this which holds the poem together 
 
 and gives it artistic unity as well as imaginative 
 
 reach and scope. 
 
 Mrs. Oliphant contributes the following brief 
 
 study or appreciation of the " Ancient Mariner." It 
 
 A Brief study may shed some light upon the student's 
 of the " Ancient *; , . ° , -. 
 
 Mariner." path and make more clear the purpose, 
 plan, and meaning of this very unique poem : " The 
 life of every day is going on gayly; the wedding 
 guests are close to the festal doors, when Mystery 
 and Wonder suddenly interpose in the way, shut- 
 ting out everything else around. The sounds of 
 
"ANCIENT MARINER" 75 
 
 the other existence are heard through them ; and 
 even by glimpses that life is visible, — the merry- 
 minstrels ' nodding their heads,' the bride in her 
 blushes, — but the unwilling listener has entered 
 into the shadow, and the unseen has got hold of 
 him. It is a parable not only of the ship and the 
 albatross (which is hard of interpretation) but of 
 mankind, a stranger upon earth 4 moving about in 
 worlds not realized,' always subject to be seized 
 by powers to which he is of kin, though he under- 
 stands them not. c There is more of the invisible 
 than the visible in the world ' is the poet's motto, 
 and with a great splendor and force of imagination 
 he enforces his text. ' There was a ship,' quoth 
 he, and the weird vessel glides before the unwill- 
 ing listener's eyes so that he can see nothing else. 
 It comes between him and the feast, between him 
 and the figures of his friends, which flit like ghosts 
 out of the door. Which is the real, and which is 
 the vision ? The mind grows giddy and is unable 
 to judge ; and while everything tangible disappears, 
 the unseen sweeps triumphantly in and holds pos- 
 session more real, more true, more unquestionable 
 than anything that eye can see. 
 
 " Throughout the poem this sentiment of isola- 
 tion is preserved with a magical and most impres- 
 sive reality. All the action is absolutely shut up 
 within the doomed ship. The one man who is the 
 
76 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 chronicler, and to whose fate everything refers, is 
 never withdrawn from onr attention for a moment. 
 We grow silent with him, 'with throats unslaked, 
 with black lips baked,' in a sympathy which is 
 the very climax of poetic pain. And then what 
 touches of tenderness are those which surprise us 
 in the numbness and trance of awful solitude — 
 
 4 O happy living things ! ' — 
 
 or this other which comes after the horror of the 
 reanimated bodies, the ghastly crew of the dead- 
 alive — 
 
 ' For when it dawned . . . ' 
 
 When the tale has reached its height of n^stery 
 and emotion a change ensues. Gradually the 
 great spell is removed. As the voyage approaches 
 its conclusion ordinary instrumentalities appear 
 once more. 
 
 " This unexpected gentle conclusion brings our 
 feet back to the common soil with a bewildered 
 sweetness of relief and soft quiet after the prodi- 
 gious strain of mental excitement, which is nothing 
 like an3 T thing else we can remember in poetry. 
 The effect is one rarely produced, and which few 
 poets have the strength and daring to accomplish ; 
 sinking from the highest notes of spiritual music 
 to the absolute simplicity of exhausted nature." 
 
 The " Ancient Mariner " is an allegory, and repre- 
 
"ANCIENT MARINER » 77 
 
 sents the emancipation of the human soul, through 
 universal love, from the bonds of error its Artistic 
 and passion. It is a poem of great Devices- 
 spiritual significance, but its ethical value, bound 
 up mystically in its lines, is not its only worth. 
 This truly organic poem should be studied through 
 the artistic devices which the poet makes use of in 
 the fashioning and upbuilding of the poem. 
 
 For instance, in order to produce the impressions 
 of extreme suffering and terror, Coleridge resorted 
 to certain devices. First, he laid the scene of his 
 tale at sea — u in a field of life which is nearest the 
 primitive forces of nature. Again, the bare inci- 
 dents of his tale, stripped of their vitality, are in 
 themselves productive of horror and dread : the 
 notions of agonized thirst, of stagnation under 
 tropical heat, of confinement to a ship manned by 
 the dead, and of utter loneliness under their wide- 
 open, eternally accusing ej^es." Perhaps the great 
 artistic device employed by Coleridge is that of 
 contrast, — contrast in color, sound, motion, and the 
 larger narrative effect-;. This artistic device of 
 contrast will be found in each of the seven sec- 
 tions of the poem. 
 
 There is a goodly mixture of archaic words in the 
 u Ancient Mariner." These color the atmosphere 
 of the poem and help to give it fit set- a word about 
 ting. In the picturesque power of ltsDl c tion - 
 
78 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 language, Coleridge excels. There is scarce any- 
 thing in modern poetry to surpass in vividness and 
 melody some portions of the "Ancient Mariner" 
 and a Christabel." The words are full of song and 
 sheen and color. They are more than a garment of 
 the poetic thought — they throb and glow with the 
 spirit itself. 
 
 In Part Second the stanzas descriptive of the 
 some entrance of the ship into the Pacific 
 
 Beauty^and Ocean, and the becalming which ensued, 
 splendor. are very fine : 
 
 " The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 
 The furrow followed free : 
 We were the first that ever burst 
 Into that silent sea. 
 
 " Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 
 'T was sad as sad could be ; 
 And we did speak only to break 
 The silence of the sea ! 
 
 " All in a hot and copper sky 
 The bloody sun, at noon, 
 Right up above the mast did stand, 
 No bigger than the moon. 
 
 " Day after day, day after day, 
 
 We stuck — nor breath, nor motion ; 
 As idle as a painted ship 
 Upon a painted ocean." 
 
"ANCIENT MARINER" 79 
 
 Where again can be found sweeter poetic music 
 than the following ? — 
 
 " It ceased ; yet still the sails made on 
 A pleasant noise till noon, 
 A noise like of a hidden brook 
 In the leafy month of June, 
 That to the sleeping woods all night 
 Singeth a quiet tune." 
 
 Charles Algernon Swinburne is a supreme artist 
 in technique, though lacking in the fuller endow- 
 ment of poetic thought. His estimate An Estimate 
 of the u Ancient Mariner" is of value. ofthe . 
 
 u Ancient 
 
 Here it is: " This poem is beyond Mariner." 
 question one of the great triumphs of poetry. 
 For the execution, I presume no human eye is 
 too dull to see how perfect it is and how high 
 in kind of perfection. Here is not the speckless 
 and elaborate finish which shows everywhere the 
 fresh rasp of file or chisel on its smooth and spruce 
 excellence ; this is faultless after the fashion of a 
 flower or tree." 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. What is meant by the new gospel of poetry pro- 
 claimed by Wordsworth and Coleridge ? 
 
 2. How were the writings of these two poets received 
 by the critics ? 
 
 3. What were the relations between Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge ] 
 
80 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 4. In what literary venture did they unite ? 
 
 5. What was the purpose of the "Lyrical Ballads"? 
 
 6. What was the character of the poems contributed 
 by each of these two poets to the " Lyrical Ballads " ? 
 
 7. What is the purpose and scope of the "Ancient 
 Mariner " I 
 
 8. What is the ethical teaching of this poem 1 
 
 9. How is the supernatural element manifested in the 
 " Ancient Mariner " I 
 
 10. What is Mrs. Oliphant's appreciation of the 
 " Ancient Mariner " 1 
 
 11. Illustrate the artistic devices of the poem. 
 
 12. What may be said of the diction of this poem % 
 
 13. Quote a passage descriptive of the beauty and 
 splendor of the poem. 
 
 14. What is Swinburne's estimate of the "Ancient 
 Mariner " % 
 
SHELLEY'S "PROMETHEUS UNBOUND." 
 
 To understand Shelley's work, it is necessary to 
 understand the poet's creed. Shelley was a demo- 
 crat and a communist. "Prometheus sheiiey's 
 Unbound " is the supreme expression in Creed - 
 imaginative form of that new democracy which 
 found dynamic power in the Revolution of 
 1789. 
 
 Shelley held that the universe is penetrated, 
 vitalized, by a spirit, and this spirit he sometimes 
 designates as Nature, and again as something 
 more than Life and Nature — as Love and Beauty. 
 He believed that the true object of man was to 
 adore this spirit, — to clasp it affectionately. We 
 see this idea set forth in " Prometheus Unbound, 9 ' 
 for, according to Shelley, the final union of Pro- 
 metheus with Asia is the consummation of human 
 destinies. 
 
 Shelley pierced through things to their spiritual 
 essence. He cared more for the world beyond 
 than for the actual world around him. " I 
 seek," he says, " in what I see, the manifestation 
 
 6 
 
82 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 of something beyond the present and tangible 
 object." 
 
 In his religious belief Shelley was an atheist. 
 Antagonism to belief in a personal God is, accord- 
 ing to William Rossetti, the chief informing pur- 
 pose of thd " Prometheus Unbound." The poem 
 breathes hatred to historical Christianity. Yet 
 this great lyrical drama should be carefully studied, 
 not because of its ethical value, but as an exemplar 
 of the logical product of the rationalism which was 
 nurtured through two centuries in the garden of 
 English song. 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact that the farther the 
 human mind departs from Catholic truth the less 
 
 The Logical w ^ ^e ^e va ^ ue °^ ^ ie expression of 
 Product of its genius in art. The "Divina Corn- 
 media" of Dante, representing the ages of 
 faith, and the " Prometheus Unbound " of Shelley, 
 representing the age of the Revolution, indicate 
 pretty clearly the attitude of those two periods 
 towards spiritual truth. There is no doubting which 
 is the greater period or which the greater poem. 
 
 To Shelley there is no moral evil — no sin. He 
 does not teach self-conquest, but rebellion against 
 authority. It is true he would liberate humanity, 
 but he offers us no help towards this liberation 
 save the discipline of sorrow and doubt, — " the 
 unlimited extension of limited conditions, and our 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND " 83 
 
 souls weary of the thought ; whereas the poet of 
 the ' Paradiso ' promises us the knowledge of the 
 Most High/' 
 
 Dante represents a fulness of faith. Shelley 
 represents the absence of all faith. The poets of 
 the Revolution closed with their age and demanded 
 freedom as an innate right. Dante promises us 
 freedom through obedience, which, indeed, is the 
 only true freedom. 
 
 " Prometheus Unbound" has its root in the 
 Greek JEschylean myth. Like the " Divine 
 Comedy" of Dante, Prometheus deals TheCon . 
 with spiritual forces, with the eternal ceptionof 
 
 n- 1 _c -i • " Prometheus 
 
 conflict ot good and evil ; the action to unbound." 
 be wrought out is in both the final redemption of 
 the soul of man. 
 
 " In ' Prometheus,' " says John Addington Sy- 
 monds, " Shelley conceived a colossal work of art, 
 and sketched out the main figures on a scale of 
 surpassing magnificence. While painting in these 
 figures he seems to reduce their proportions too 
 much to the level of earthly life. He quits his 
 god-creating, heaven-compelling throne of myth- 
 opoeic inspiration and descends to a love story of 
 Asia and Prometheus. In other words, he does not 
 sustain the visionary and primeval dignity of these 
 incarnated abstractions ; nor, on the other hand, has 
 he so elaborated their characters in detail as to 
 
84 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 give them the substantiality of persons. There is 
 therefore, something vague and hollow in both 
 figures. Yet in the subordinate passages of the 
 poem the true mythopceic faculty — the faculty of 
 finding concrete forms for thought and of in- 
 vesting emotion with personality — shines forth 
 with extraordinary force and clearness. We feel 
 ourselves in the grasp of a primitive myth-maker 
 while we read the description of Oceanus and the 
 raptures of the Earth and Moon." 
 
 English genius tends to express itself through 
 forms of experience and fact. An exception to 
 Its this is, however, found in the work of 
 
 idealism. Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, and 
 Shelley. They are ideal, and the idealism which 
 pervades such poems as the " Ancient Mariner " and 
 " Hyperion " finds its fullest manifestation in the 
 " Prometheus Unbound," which is the supreme 
 achievement of Shelley. 
 
 Iii the creation of Prometheus Shelley has 
 eliminated the taints which stain Milton's Satan 
 and the Greek Prometheus. He has given us an 
 ideal Prometheus, possessing all the qualities which 
 go to make a perfect life. " Prometheus is, as it 
 were," says the poet himself, "the type of the 
 highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature 
 impelled by the purest and the truest motives to 
 the best and noblest ends," 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 85 
 
 The dawn of the nineteenth century saw the 
 
 rise of democracy. France expressed The 
 
 this democracy in brief historic act, Democratic 
 
 •i i i r T-i Idea in 
 
 Willie it Was the work 01 England to "Prometheus 
 
 express it in eternal art. unbound." 
 
 Shelley voices this democracy in clearest tones 
 in " Prometheus Unbound." Yet this democracy of 
 Shelley cannot hope to govern, for it knows 
 neither obedience nor authority, and without these 
 democracy is an untamed beast. Shelley- recognized 
 fully the law of love. " Unterrified by the grim 
 realities of pain and crime revealed in nature and 
 society, he held fast to the belief that if we could 
 but pierce to the core of things, if we could but be 
 what we might be, the world and man would both 
 attain to their perfection in eternal love." Shelley, 
 like many of his poetic brethren, taught the rights 
 of man, but forgot his correlative duties. 
 
 A genuine liking for " Prometheus Unbound," 
 says a well known critic, may be reckoned the touch- 
 stone of a man's capacity for under- The Lyrical 
 standing lyric poetry. Scattered I^mSieL 
 throughout the drama are lyrics which unbound." 
 are very miracles of workmanship — charged with 
 an ethereal music which belong rather to the 
 spheres of heaven than the spheres of earth. The 
 spirit voice in the air which sings the hymn of 
 Asia, at the moment of her apotheosis, voices alike 
 
86 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 the highest expression of Shelley's lyrical genius 
 and faith : 
 
 " Life of Life ! Thy lips enkindle 
 With their love the breath between them ; 
 And thy smiles before they dwindle 
 Make the cold air fire ; then screen them 
 In those looks where whoso gazes 
 Faints, entangled in their mazes. 
 
 " Child of Light ! Thy limbs are burning 
 Through the vest which seems to hide them, 
 As the radiant lines of morning 
 Through the clouds, ere they divide them ; 
 And this atmosphere divinest 
 Shrouds thee wheresoe'er thou shinest. 
 
 " Fair are others ; none beholds thee. 
 But thy voice sounds low and tender, 
 Like the fairest, for it folds thee 
 From the sight, that liquid splendour, 
 And all feel, yet see thee never, 
 As I feel now lost forever. 
 
 " Lamp of Earth ! where'er thou movest 
 Its dim shapes are clad with brightness, 
 And the souls of whom thou lovest 
 Walk upon the wings with lightness, 
 Till they fail as I am failing, 
 Dizzy, lost, yet unbewailing." 
 
 The "Divina Commedia" of Dante reflects as in a 
 crystal sphere the ages of faith, Shelley's " Prome- 
 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 87 
 
 theus Unbound" the age of the Revolution. Both 
 are symbolic. One was written in ^ M ^ . 
 
 J The " Divina 
 
 1320, the other in 1819. The "Divina Commedia "and 
 
 ^ 1-53 x. j.' r "Prometheus 
 
 Commedia represents a time ol re- unbound": a 
 ligious contemplation, " Prometheus " a Contrast, 
 time of revolution. With Dante the great pur- 
 pose, the great problem, is the purification of 
 the soul ; with Shelley, the liberation of the soul. 
 The central idea in Dante is obedience ; the cen- 
 tral idea in Shelley is freedom. The hero of the 
 " Divina Commedia " is Dante the mystic, the hero 
 of "Prometheus Unbound," Prometheus the rebel. 
 Both poems tell the same story — the story of a 
 human soul that moves from passion to peace. 
 The characters of the two protagonists in these 
 poems are thus contrasted by an eminent literary 
 critic : 
 
 " Prometheus is lofty of spirit, forgiving towards 
 enemies, untouched by sin, nobly firm in the re- 
 jection of evil or compromise, patient through 
 suffering, rilled with compassion and with univer- 
 sal love. All these traits are shown to us in verse 
 of sweetest harmonies. To what result ? We 
 place beside Shelley's faultless Titan the ashen 
 Florentine, with tight-set lip and the sign of sin 
 on his forehead, and straightway human life be- 
 comes a holier thing. For the greatness of the 
 human soul is to be measured less by the qualities 
 
88 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 it possesses than by the resistance it has overcome. 
 The majesty of Prometheus springs from his re- 
 sistance of tyranny without ; but having no foes 
 to fight within he suggests vacuity. Dante has 
 sinned, therefore he is lower than Prometheus ; he 
 feels penitence, and therefore he is higher. He 
 knows experiences into which the elemental Titan 
 of Shelley cannot enter, — the rapture of pardon, 
 the blessing of humility, the might of worship. 
 
 64 Into the mediaeval protagonist has passed the 
 passion of generations ; into the hero of the modern 
 poet have passed the theories of his author. The 
 scope of emotion is vastly greater in the older 
 poem. Prometheus cannot hate ; Dante is su- 
 preme as a hater. If the modern attitude seem 
 the higher we must remember that the charity of 
 Prometheus finds its source in his fatalism. To 
 Shelley the sense of moral responsibility is a 
 shadow; Dante passes with silent scorn souls 
 that have chosen evil for their god." 
 
 Professor Trent, of the University of the South, is 
 
 a clear, thoughtful, and, generally speaking, sound 
 
 critic. It is evident from the follow- 
 Ad Estimate of 
 
 tiie"Prome- ing estimate that he is not borne away 
 n oun ' by the praise lavished at times on this 
 representative and epochal poem of Shelley's. Re- 
 ferring to the " Prometheus Unbound " and the 
 extravagant claims put forth for it, Professor 
 Trent says : 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 89 
 
 " With regard to what maybe called the intellec- 
 tual claims put forth for this poem, which has been 
 edited for schools and been made the subject of 
 essays by the dozen, I can say only that, however 
 true they may be when applied to special passages, 
 they are by no means true when applied to the 
 drama as a whole. The fourth act which is a 
 favorite with the Shelleyans, seems to have been 
 an afterthought and is a most lame and impotent 
 conclusion. The characters are, except for short 
 intervals, vague, misty, and devoid of personality. 
 The solution proposed for the problem of human 
 destiny, for the freeing of the Promethean spirit of 
 man, is as impossible and ineffectual as if it had 
 been generated in the heated brain of a maniac. 
 This great poem is really little more than a senes 
 of wonderful phantasmagoria flashed forth upon 
 the curtain of the reader's mind by a very unsteady 
 hand. When the reader voluntarily shuts off the 
 light, i. e. ceases to think or judge, the effect is 
 dazzling; when he allows the light of reason to 
 play upon his mind the effect is just the reverse. 
 I admire the ' Prometheus Unbound ' as the dar- 
 ing and, in parts, splendid achievement of a bril- 
 liant, unbalanced, but nobly poetic nature ; but I 
 cannot admit that it is worthy of language which 
 would be hyperbolical in the case of any other 
 poet than Shakespeare or Milton." 
 
90 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. What is necessary in order to understand Shelley's 
 work ? 
 
 2. Of what is " Prometheus Unbound " the supreme 
 expression ? 
 
 3. Describe Shelley's creed. 
 
 4. What, according to William Rossetti, is the chief 
 informing purpose of the " Prometheus Unbound " 1 
 
 5. Why should this great lyrical drama be carefully 
 studied ? 
 
 6. Compare the " Prometheus Unbound " and the 
 " Divina Commedia " as representing Rationalism and 
 Catholicism. 
 
 7. Explain the conception of the " Prometheus Un- 
 bound." How does it compare with the "Divina Com- 
 media " in its conception 1 
 
 8. Give briefly John Addington Symonds' appreciation 
 of the poem. 
 
 9. What is the tendency of English poetic genius? 
 
 10. Name some exceptions to this tendency. Where 
 does idealism find its fullest manifestation 1 
 
 11. How is the ideal impersonation of Prometheus 
 described by Shelley ? 
 
 12. How was democracy expressed in England and 
 France at the dawn of the nineteenth century ? 
 
 13. Why cannot the democracy of Shelley as expressed 
 in the "Prometheus Unbound" hope to govern ? 
 
 14. How would Shelley have the world and man attain 
 to their perfection ? 
 
"PROMETHEUS UNBOUND" 91 
 
 15. What is the lyrical character of " Prometheus 
 Unbound"? 
 
 16. Contrast briefly the " Divina Commedia" and 
 " Prometheus Unbound." 
 
 17. Justify Professor Trent's estimate of the "Prome- 
 theus Unbound." 
 
KEATS'S "EVE OF ST. AGNES." 
 
 About the literary fame of no other English 
 
 poet has the strife of critics been so intensely and 
 
 bitterly waged as that of poor John 
 A Word about J P , i 
 
 the Genius of Keats, — from the brutal assaults of 
 " Blackwood's Magazine " and the 
 " Quarterly Review " to the kindly words of Sir 
 James Mackintosh, indignant at the cruel and 
 savage attacks made upon our young, sensitive 
 poet, and the letter of admiration by Lord Jeffrey, 
 wherein he wrote, " I never regretted anything 
 more than to have been too late with my testimony 
 to his merits." Indeed the name of John Keats 
 continued to be for some time a very storm centre 
 — now dark with the clouds of bitterness and 
 wrath, now brightened by the rays of just appre- 
 ciation and praise. 
 
 The voices of Keats's contemporaries were so 
 loud in the academic groves of English song, 
 that Keats remained for the time unheard, un- 
 heeded. In the year of Keats's birth, 1795, Words- 
 worth was twenty-five, Coleridge twenty-three, 
 Southey twenty-one, Landor twenty, and Scott 
 
JOHN KEATS 
 
"EVE OF ST. AGNES" 93 
 
 twenty-four. Byron and Shelley, of volcanic 
 and ethereal fame, were at the time too young 
 for even poetic dreams, while Leigh Hunt, who 
 was destined to be in future years Keats's warm 
 and constant friend, had just reached his eleventh 
 year. 
 
 It was, however, fortunate for Keats that he 
 had fallen upon such a period, when, as Dr. Hamil- 
 ton Mabie says, "the intellectual and spiritual 
 tides were rising, and English literature was recall- 
 ing, in the breadth and splendour of its movement, 
 the great Elizabethan age." It was enough that 
 Keats responded to his time, and his genius took 
 birth from what Matthew Arnold rightly considers 
 to be the powers that concur in the creation of a 
 master-work of literature : " the power of the man 
 and the power of the moment." 
 
 The very essence of Keats's poetic creed is to be 
 found in his lines : 
 
 " Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all 
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 
 
 His poetic vision pierced the soul of things. It 
 w^as not merely surface beauty which concerned 
 him, it was that beauty whi^li h the reflection of 
 the very soul of things. " When I wrote it," he 
 said of one of his poems, " it was a regular step- 
 ping of the imagination toward a truth." In 
 
94 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 another place our young poet writes : u Scenery 
 is fine, but human nature is finer. The sward is 
 richer for the tread of a real nervous English foot ; 
 the eagle's nest is finer for the mountaineer having 
 looked into it." 
 
 Keats's imagination was fed and fashioned by his 
 early reading. He dipped into old classical myth- 
 ology, finding room for his fancy in the 
 Preparation & J & J 
 
 for Poetic pages of " Tooke's Pantheon," " Spence's 
 Polymetis," and "Lempriere's Diction- 
 ary.*' It was Charles Cowden Clarke who first 
 introduced him to the glowing pages of Spenser. 
 Together they read the " Epithalamium," and Keats 
 borrowed from his friend the " Faerie Queene," 
 " ramping," as Clarke writes, " through the scenes of 
 the romance like a young horse turned into a spring 
 meadow." The most poetic of poets became to his 
 young heart a passionate delight. He revelled in 
 the color and imagery of Spenser's great allegory, 
 catching up with the wings of his spirit the mysti- 
 cal beauty and splendor of its enchanted lines. 
 " He hoisted himself up," says Clarke, " and looked 
 burly and dominant as he said, 4 What an image 
 that is — sea-shouldering whales ! ' ; It was the full 
 birth of poetry in his mind. The boy had suddenly 
 become a poet. 
 
 Such is the influence of genius upon genius; yet, 
 as a critic remarks, the genius of Keats was too 
 
"EVE OF ST. AGNES" 95 
 
 virile and original to be dominated or held as debtor 
 by even a master of song. There is no doubt that 
 Keats owes much to Spenser. His first poem, "Imi- 
 tation of Spenser,'' testifies to this. Surely there 
 could be nothing more Spenserian in mould, spirit, 
 and color than the following lines which form the 
 opening stanza of this poem : 
 
 " Now morning from her orient chamber came, 
 And her first footsteps touched a verdant hill : 
 Crowning its lawny crest with amber flame, 
 Silvering the untainted gushes of its rill ; 
 Which, pure from mossy beds, did dawn distil, 
 And after parting beds of simple flowers, 
 By many streams a little lake did fill, 
 Which round its marge reflected woven bowers, 
 And in its middle space, a sky that never lowers." 
 
 During the winter of 1819 Keats produced a 
 noble group of poems- — " Hyperion," "Ode on a 
 Grecian Urn," " Ode to Psyche," " Ode a Group of 
 to a Nightingale," and " The Eve of St. Poems - 
 Agnes." 
 
 " Endymion " had already reached the public, 
 and the reviews had accorded it a most ungracious 
 welcome. The opinion has gained credence, some- 
 what widely too, that the reviewers killed Keats, 
 and that there was some truth in Byron's jingling 
 rhyme referring to our modern young Greek as 
 "that fiery particle snuffed out by a magazine 
 
96 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 article." Such a tradition has done too much 
 honor to the whole brood of brutal reviewers, 
 whose crime was not murder, but vulgarity and 
 stupidity. Keats possessed too sound a nature, 
 too great a mind, to be killed by adverse criticism. 
 No doubt he felt the meanness of the attacks made 
 upon him. Referring to these he writes : 
 
 " Praise or blame has but*a momentary effect on 
 the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes 
 him a severe critic of his own work. . . . The Genius 
 of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a 
 man. It cannot be matured by law and precept, 
 but by sensation and watchfulness in itself. That 
 which is creative must create itself. In c En- 
 clymion ' I leapt headlong into the sea, and thereby 
 have become better acquainted with the soundings, 
 the quicksands, and the rocks than if I had stayed 
 upon the shore and piped a silly pipe and taken tea 
 and comfortable advice. I was never afraid of fail- 
 ure ; for I would sooner fail than not be among the 
 greatest." 
 
 "I have loved the principle of beauty in all 
 things," said the author of " Hyperion," during 
 44 Eve of st. the closing days of his life. In this 
 Agnes." our young poet was certainly a modern 
 
 Greek. But while he had the temperament of 
 the Greek in his delight in beauty and his repose 
 in it, his manner was, as Dr. Hamilton Mabie 
 
"EVE OF ST. AGNES" 97 
 
 points out, pre-eminently romantic. Take for in- 
 stance "The Eve of St. Agnes." In form and 
 idea the poem belongs to the romantic. It is full 
 of color and warmth and fragrance. Speaking of 
 this exquisite poem. Dr. Mabie says: "There is no 
 magic of colour in written speech that is not mixed 
 in the diction of 6 The Eve of St. Agnes,' — a 
 vision of beauty deep, rich, and glowing as one 
 of those dyed windows in which the heart of the 
 Middle Ages still burns." 
 
 It is interesting to note how differently Keats 
 and Tennyson treat the same poetic theme. " The 
 Eve of St. Agnes " is a good exempli- TreatneBt 
 fication of this. Tennyson's " Eve of of the same 
 St. Agnes " is more severe and classical Ee atsand 
 
 than is that of Keats, while there is a Tennyson 
 
 ... -. j. rr , ' Contrasted, 
 
 warmth and tragrance m Keats s poem 
 
 entirely wanting to Tennyson's. Keats approaches 
 the theme "through the avenue of romance, giving 
 color and glow to his lines within the radiant 
 dome of his imagination. The genius of Tenny- 
 son turns from the romantic to the ascetic and de- 
 votional and paints a St. Agnes more in accord- 
 ance with the life and spirit of the early saints, and 
 martyrs. Tennyson's is the more real and Cath- 
 olic, Keats's the more ideal and pagan. 
 
 Keats was responsive to the beauty of the world 
 around him. He was sensuous, but his love of the 
 
 7 
 
98 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 beautiful was something more than that of the sur- 
 Howfar ^ ace * K ea ts's vision penetrated the soul 
 "The Eve of of things, and his greatness lay in his 
 Reflect^ mastery of the unity of life and his 
 the Genius identification of the highest beauty with 
 the highest truth. 
 His genius is well reflected in " The Eve of St. 
 Agnes." It is, as the poet himself said, a regular 
 stepping of the imagination towards a truth. " The 
 Eve of St. Agnes " is not only radiant with beauty, 
 it is beauty itself. Its poetic thought is flashed 
 through the cloister windows of the imagination 
 and is warm with the breath of incense and prayer. 
 Take for instance the twenty-fourth stanza of this 
 poem. Did poet ever before write lines so full of 
 pomp and grace and color as the following ? — 
 
 " A casement, high and triple-arched, there was, 
 All garlanded with carven imageries 
 Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot-grass, 
 And diamonded with panes of quaint device, 
 Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, 
 As are the tiger-moth's deep-damasked wings ; 
 And in the midst, 'mong thousand heraldries. 
 And Twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, 
 
 Ashielded 'scutcheon Blushed with blood of queens and kings." 
 
 " The Eve of St. Agnes " is, indeed, a casket of 
 
 Some Pas- g-ems. Perhaps there is nothing" finer in 
 
 sages of Rare ° x ° 
 
 Beauty. the forty-two stanzas that make up the 
 
 entire poem than the following exquisite lines : 
 
"EVE OF ST. AGNES" 99 
 
 " Soon trembling in her soft and chilly nest, 
 In sort of wakeful swoon, perplexed she lay, 
 Until the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed 
 Her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away, 
 Flown like a thought until the morrow-day ; 
 Blissfully havened both from joy and pain ; 
 Clasped like a missal where swart Pay nims pray ; 
 Blinded alike from sunshine and from rain, 
 
 As though a rose should shut and be a bud again." 
 
 Again, what could be more beautiful than the 
 twenty-fifth stanza ? — 
 
 " Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 
 And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
 As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon ; 
 Rose-bloom fell on her hands together prest, 
 And on her silver cross soft amethyst. 
 And on her hair a glory like a saint: 
 She seemed a splendid angel, newly drest, 
 Save wings, for heaven. Porphyro grew faint : 
 
 She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint." 
 
 Commenting on this passage Leigh Hunt writes : 
 " The lovely and innocent creature, thus praying 
 under the gorgeous painted window, completes the 
 exceeding and unique beauty of this picture,— 
 one that will forever stand by itself in poetry as an 
 addition to the stock. It would have struck a 
 glow on the face of Shakespeare himself. He 
 might have put Imogen or Ophelia under such a 
 shrine. How proper as well as pretty the heraldic 
 
100 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 term gules, considering the occasion. Red would 
 not have been a fiftieth part so good. And with 
 what elegant luxury he touches the ' silver cross ' 
 with ' amethyst ' and the fair woman with ' rose- 
 color,' the kin to their carnation.'' 
 
 There is little doubt but that Keats was pos- 
 sessed of great poetic endowments. Had his 
 me Place of genius fully ripened it might have 
 
 John Keats in given him a place side by side with 
 
 the Pantheon ° . 
 
 of English Shakespeare and Milton. As Dr. Ham- 
 
 Poetry. ilton Mabie justly remarks: "It is 
 
 enough that except Shakespeare no other English 
 
 poet has found such color in our speech, has 
 
 made it linger in the ear in phrase so rich and full. 
 
 This magical note, heard only in the greatest 
 
 poetry, is heard in Keats, — - the evidence alike of 
 
 the rare quality of his genius and its depth and 
 
 power." 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. What appreciation was shown for the genius of 
 Keats by his contemporaries ? 
 
 2. What may be termed the essence of Keats's poetic 
 creed ? 
 
 3. How did Keats make his preparation for his poetic 
 work ? 
 
 4. To whom did Keats owe much for his inspiration ? 
 
 5. What group of poems did Keats produce in 1819 ? 
 
"EVE OF ST. AGNES" 101 
 
 6. How was " Endymion " received by the critics, and 
 how was Keats affected 1 
 
 7. What was the temperament of Keats, and in which 
 poem is it best illustrated 1 
 
 8. Compare the treatment of " The Eve of St. Agnes " 
 by Keats and Tennyson. 
 
 9. How far does "The Eve of St. Agnes" reflect the 
 genius of Keats ] 
 
 10. "What place has John Keats in the Pantheon of 
 English poetry ? 
 
GRAY'S « ELEGY IN A COUNTRY 
 CHURCHYARD." 
 
 The genius of English poetry has given the 
 world some very beautiful elegies. Milton's 
 a word "Lycidas," the first great elegy in 
 
 about Elegies. English poetry, is commemorative of 
 the death of the poet's young friend Thomas 
 King ; Tennyson's " In Memoriam " embalms in 
 immortal verse the memory of one of the most 
 perfect young men that have ever lived in the 
 tide of times — Arthur Hallam ; and Swinburne's 
 " Ave atque Vale " and Matthew Arnold's " Thyr- 
 sis " are noble tributes in elegiac verse to two 
 gifted souls whom death snatched untimely from 
 our planet. Nor should Shelley's sweet and sad 
 lament over the death of John Keats — his be- 
 loved Adonais — -be denied a place amongst the 
 greatest of English elegies. 
 
 Gray was a contemplative and reflective poet, 
 origin, an( ^ the s P^ r ^ °f ^ s m use sought a 
 
 setting, and kindred environment. The " Elegy " 
 Import of & . J 
 
 Gray's is the very embodiment and incarnation 
 
 "Elegy. o £ even i n g re gret. There is no doubt 
 
"ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD" 103 
 
 that it was within the sacred precincts of Stoke 
 Poges churchyard, while contemplating each 
 " frail memorial " and deciphering the rude in- 
 scriptions u spelt by th' unlettered muse," that 
 Gray first conceived the idea of writing the 
 " Elegy." The thoughts which flooded his mind 
 as he moved noiselessly through the aisles of 
 " God's Acre " as the mantle of eventide descended 
 upon the cold shoulders of day, were thoughts 
 common to humanity. The every-day drama of 
 the poor filled the theatre of his heart. Their 
 narrow kingdom knew not gold or purple, but love 
 built for them her lily walls and carpeted the 
 floors with blossoms of peace. 
 
 Gray's " Elegy" is Burns' " Cotter's Saturday 
 Night " amplified and transplanted to English soil. 
 Surely the reader can have no difficulty in finding 
 in Burns' beautiful idyll the counterpart of the 
 following lines : 
 
 "For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
 Or busy housewife ply her evening care ; 
 Xo children run to lisp their sire's return, 
 Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share." 
 
 We do not believe, as some critics maintain, 
 that Gray's fame rests in this poem upon his skill 
 as an artist. The poet himself attributed the 
 popularity of the " Elegy " to the nature of its 
 subject, holding that it would have had a like 
 
104 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 popularity had it been written in prose. The 
 secret of the greatness of the " Elegy " as a poem 
 resides in its subject, which touches the universal 
 heart and lifts mankind to a plane of true kinship 
 in death. Of course there is no doubting the 
 artistic merits of the poem. 
 
 In support of this view it may be well to quote 
 here the opinion of Hales, in his introduction to 
 the poem. He says : " The ' Elegy ' is, perhaps, the 
 most widely known poem in our language. The 
 reason of this extensive popularity is, perhaps, to 
 be sought in the fact that it expresses in an ex- 
 quisite manner feelings and thoughts that are 
 universal. In the current of ideas in the ' Elegy ' 
 there is, perhaps, nothing that is rare or excep- 
 tional or out of the common way. The musings 
 are of the most rational and obvious character 
 possible; it is difficult to conceive of any one 
 musing under similar circumstances who should 
 not muse so ; but they are not the less deep and 
 moving on this account. The mystery of life does 
 not become clearer or less solemn and awful for 
 any amount of contemplation. Such inevitable, 
 such everlasting questions as rise in the mind 
 when one lingers in the precincts of death, can 
 never lose their freshness, never cease to fascinate 
 and to move. It is with such questions, that would 
 have been commonplace long ages since, if they 
 
" ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD" 105 
 
 could ever be so, that the 6 Elegy ' deals. It 
 deals with them in no lofty, philosophical manner, 
 but in a simple, humble, unpretentious way, always 
 with the truest and broadest humanity. The poet's 
 thoughts turn to the poor ; he forgets the fine 
 tombs inside the church, and thinks only of the 
 ' mouldering heaps ' in the churchyard. Hence 
 the problem that especially suggests itself is the 
 potential greatness, when they lived, of ; the rude 
 forefathers' that now lie at his feet. He does not 
 and cannot solve it, though he finds considerations 
 to mitigate the sadness it must inspire ; but he 
 expresses it in all its awfulness in the most effec- 
 tive language and with the deepest feeling; and 
 his expression of it has become a living part of 
 our language." 
 
 Gray's "Elegy" is unlike any other of the 
 great elegies in that it is impersonal. Its subject 
 touches the universal, — the life of 
 man horizoned by a lowly firmament, in in? idea in " 
 which burns neither star of glory nor tkePoem - 
 meteor of fame. 
 
 The informing idea in the poem is to be found 
 in the stanza — 
 
 " Let not ambition mock their useful toil, 
 Their homely joys and destiny obscure; 
 Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile 
 The short and simple annals of the poor." 
 
106 .. STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 All the rest of the poem is but an amplification 
 of the thought in this stanza. Truly, Gray has 
 built of the " Elegy" a monument more lasting 
 than a niche in Westminster Abbey, for the thought 
 so delicately and sincerely enshrined in this beauti- 
 ful poem will outlive the most cunning or artistic 
 touch of sculptor when embodying his dream in 
 Carrara marble. By this elegy Gray becomes lau- 
 reate of the poor. It is their round of toil — their 
 simple annals — their narrow cells that mould, fash- 
 ion, and give purpose to the " Elegy." The whole 
 poem leads up to the central idea — the informing 
 idea — that man is great, not by virtue of the 
 magnitude of his achievements, but by virtue of the 
 performance of his duties. The "rude forefathers 
 of the hamlet," though denied by fortune to sway 
 the rod of empire, are, nevertheless, not to be 
 mocked or contemned, for within their narrow 
 spheres they performed each pressing and incum- 
 bent duty. If they became not real Hampdens 
 or voicef ul Miltons it was because — 
 
 " Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife 
 
 Their sober wishes never learn'd to strays 
 Along the cool sequester'd vale of life 
 
 They kept the noiseless tenor of their way." 
 
 Now, what is the peculiar charm of the "Elegy " ? 
 James Russell Lowell says : " It is to be found in 
 
"ELEGY IX A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD" 107 
 
 its embodying that pensively stingless pessimism 
 which comes with the first gray hair; that Ks peculiar 
 vague sympathy with ourselves which Charm, 
 is so much cheaper than sympathy with others ; 
 that placid melancholy which satisfies the general 
 appetite for an emotion which titillates rather than 
 wounds." We think, however, that its charm, 
 its peculiar charm, is a thing quite apart from this 
 "stingless pessimism which comes with the first 
 gray hair," and rests in the simplicity and univer- 
 sality of its thought enshrined in language at 
 once clear, beauteous, and harmonious. It will be 
 noticed that in the " Elegy " Gray is more picto- 
 rial than imaginative. Indeed there is scarcely a 
 stanza in the poem that would not form an excel- 
 lent subject for a painting. The opening lines 
 have oft been transferred to canvas. 
 
 How far does the " Elegy " reflect the genius of 
 Gray? We think that the chief characteristics 
 of Tennyson are mirrored in the " In HowFart he 
 
 Memoriam," the chief characteristics of "Elegy "Re- 
 flects the 
 Wordsworth in the "Ode to Immortal- Genius of 
 
 ity," the chief characteristics of Coleridge Gray ' 
 in the " Ancient Mariner." Is not the " Elegy " a 
 very mirror wherein you may see reflected, not 
 only the poetic genius of Thomas Gray, but some- 
 thing also of the form and spirit of eighteenth- 
 century verse. Decorum was the religion of the 
 
108 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 eighteenth century. Gray worshipped at its shrine. 
 He tells us that the style he aimed at was extreme 
 conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, 
 and musical, and this he assuredly reached in the 
 " Elegy." He united in himself genius and dilet- 
 tanteism. Poetry is said to be divine madness, 
 but the English poets of the eighteenth century 
 were the sanest of the sane. As Lowell says, no 
 English poet between 1700 and 1800 need have 
 feared a writ de lunatico inquirendo. Still there 
 are hints in the "Elegy" that the heart of man 
 was turning for inspiration to the shrine of nature. 
 A critic says that Gray never spoke out, — ■ that his 
 thought lacked spontaneity. " He was a poetical 
 scholar and scholarly poet. His poetry twined it- 
 self around his learning and was saturated by it. 
 He planted himself in bookish soil and flowered at 
 last into verse." 
 
 Gray was a great admirer of Dryden and bor- 
 rowed from him the form or mould in which the 
 
 " Elegy " is cast. It is the iambic pen- 
 Technique and ° J x 
 
 Language of tameter measure. Of course it was 
 e Elegy." no ^ or jgi na } w ith Dryden, being first 
 employed by Raleigh. It is a measure which fits 
 the theme most admirably. The reader cannot 
 fail to note its suitableness for pictorial effect. 
 Gray had a thorough knowledge of perspective, 
 while his skill as an artist in combining words and 
 
"ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD" 109 
 
 sounds gave him a complete command over the 
 resources of melody. This, as a writer remarks, 
 explains why he is so easy to remember : why, 
 though he wrote so little, so much of what he 
 wrote is familiar on men's tongues. 
 
 It is claimed that Gray borrowed his phrases 
 and language from other poets. ' For instance, take 
 this stanza — 
 
 " Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 
 
 Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke ; 
 How jocund did they drive their team afield ! 
 
 How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke !" 
 
 Stubborn glebe is found in Gay, afield in Milton, 
 and sturdy stroke in Spenser. But has any poet in 
 his vocabulary the right of eminent domain ? Is 
 not the English language the inheritance of the 
 people? The gold coinage of exchange when 
 minted may pass through a thousand hands — 
 always remaining the property of the possessor. 
 
 It is not just, therefore, to Gray to regard his 
 " Elegy " as a mosaic made up of phrases borrowed 
 from other poets ; it requires genius in itself to 
 give a fit robing to thought, and certainly it must 
 be conceded that the author of the "Elegy" has 
 dressed his poetic offspring in purple and fine 
 linen. 
 
 Few poems have been so tampered with in the 
 
110 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 text as the "Elegy." Editors and publishers 
 
 A word as to liaYe ' as Tiiackera y would say, put their 
 
 certaiii hoofs and horns through it. It will be 
 
 men a ons. remem ] 3erec j t j iat ft wag ^ rgt p^lig^^ 
 
 in book form by Dodsley,in Februaiy, 1751. Two 
 manuscripts of the " Elegy " in Gray's handwriting 
 still exist. One of these is known as the Pem- 
 broke manuscript, which is to be found in Pem- 
 broke Hall, Cambridge University, and the other 
 is known as the Wrightson manuscript. As W. J. 
 Rolfe, in his edition of Gray's poems, points out, 
 there is little doubt that the latter is the original 
 manuscript of the " Elegy." Of course, not a few 
 of the emendations were made by Gray himself 
 in the various editions which were published. Let 
 us here note some of these : 
 
 The fifth stanza originally read — 
 
 " Forever sleep : the breezy call of morn, 
 
 Or swallow twit 'ring from the straw-built shed, 
 Or chanticleer so shrill or echoing horn, 
 
 No more shall ronse them from their lowly bed." 
 
 The fourteenth stanza read thus : 
 
 " Some village Cato, who, with dauntless breast, 
 The little tyrant of his field withstood ; 
 Some mute inglorious Tully here may rest, 
 Some Caesar guiltless of his country's blood.' ' 
 
 The substitution of the names of three English- 
 men for the three Romans, Cato, Tully, and Caesar, 
 
"ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD" 111 
 
 indicated in Gray's time the going out of the 
 classic taste, or fashion, which had first taken root 
 in the period of the Renaissance. 
 
 After the twenty-fifth stanza came the following 
 stanza which was omitted in subsequent editions : 
 
 " Him have we seen the greenwood side along. 
 
 While o'er the heath we hied, our labour done, 
 Oft as the woodlark pip'd her farewell song, 
 With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun." 
 
 Concerning this stanza, Mason remarks : " I 
 rather wonder that he rejected this stanza, as it 
 not only has the same sort of Doric delicacy which 
 charms us peculiarly in this part of the poem, but 
 also completes the account of his whole day ; 
 whereas, this evening scene being omitted, we have 
 only his morning walk and his noontide repose." 
 
 Lord Mahon, when telling of the capture of 
 Quebec, in 1759, in his History of England, relates 
 how General Wolfe paid a beautiful General Wolfe 
 tribute to the " Elegy." It was on the ^Eiegy." 
 night of September 13th, 1759 — the night pre- 
 ceding the battle on the Plains of Abraham ; 
 Wolfe was descending the St. Lawrence with a 
 part of his troops. The historian says : " Swiftly 
 but silently did the boats fall down with the tide, 
 unobserved by the enemy's sentinels at their posts 
 along the shores. Of the soldiers on board how 
 eagerly must every heart have throbbed at the 
 
112 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 coming conflict! How intently must every eye 
 have contemplated the dark outline, as it lay pen- 
 cilled upon the midnight sky, and as every mo- 
 ment it grew closer and clearer, of the hostile 
 heights ! Not a word was spoken — not a sound 
 heard beyond the rippling of the stream. Wolfe 
 alone — thus tradition has told us — repeated in a 
 low tone to the other officers in his boat those 
 beautiful stanzas with which a country churchyard 
 inspired the muse of Gray. One noble line, — 
 
 ' The paths of glory lead but to the grave,' — 
 
 must have seemed at such a moment fraught with 
 mournful meaning. At the close of the recitation 
 Wolfe added, 'Now, gentlemen, I would rather 
 be the author of that poem than take Quebec' ' 
 
 The whole " Elegy " is a casket of gems, and 
 difficult is the task amid such riches to select the 
 Some passages of rare beauty. Surely the 
 
 P&.SS<i '6S Of 
 
 Rare Beauty, following stanzas are true to the atmos- 
 phere of their setting! Surely, too, their music 
 and verbal lustre must touch and charm both eye 
 and heart : 
 
 " The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, 
 
 The swallow twittering from the straw-bnilt shed, 
 The cock's shrill clarion or the echoing horn, 
 No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 
 
"ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD" 113 
 
 " The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power, 
 And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, 
 Awaits alike th' inevitable hour. 
 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 
 
 " Full many a gem of purest ray serene 
 
 The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear; 
 Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
 And waste its sweetness on the desert air." 
 
 The place of the " Elegy " must unquestionably 
 be among the classics of English poetry. It con- 
 tains but one hundred and eighteen The Place of 
 lines, every line of which is quotable ^EasSsh" 7 " 
 and full of that polish and splendor Poetry, 
 which only real poetic artistry can impart. To no 
 other poem in the English language has the genius 
 of mankind paid such homage in translation as to 
 the " Elegy." Of these translations there have 
 been: one in Hebrew, seven in Greek, twelve in 
 Latin, thirteen in Italian, fifteen in French, six in 
 German, and one in Portuguese. 
 
 The fame of Thomas Gray is assuredly secured 
 in the " Elegy " against the teeth of time. 
 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 1. Name the great elegies in English poetry. 
 
 2. What is the origin and import of Gray's "Elegy " ? 
 
 3. To what is the greatness of Gray's " Elegy " 
 attributed ? 
 
114 STUDIES IN POETRY 
 
 4. What is the informing idea of the poem 1 
 
 5. What resemblance is there between the " Elegy" 
 and Burns' " Cotter's Saturday Night " 1 
 
 6. What is the peculiar charm of Gray's " Elegy " ? 
 
 7. How far does the " Elegy" reflect the genius of 
 Gray J 
 
 8. Explain why the " Elegy " is easy to remember. 
 
 9. What does the substitution of the three English 
 names for the three Roman names — Cato, Tully, and 
 Caesar — in the " Elegy/' indicate 1 
 
 10. What beautiful tribute did General Wolfe pay to 
 the author of the " Elegy " % 
 
 11. What place does the "Elegy" hold in English 
 poetry ? 
 
 12. How has the world shown appreciation of the 
 " Elegy " I