In outline dim and vast
Their fearful shadows cast
The giant forms of empires, on their way
To ruin: one by one,
They tower and they are gone—
Yet in the Prophet's soul the dreams of avarice stay.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
He watched till morning's ray
On lake and meadow lay,
And willow-shaded streams, that silent sweep
Around the banner'd lines,
Where, by their several signs,
The desert-wearied tribes in sight of Canaan sleep.
These sober, grave stanzas have something of the cadence of The Bard. The resemblance to Wordsworth is more general, but it may be said that the tone, the structure, the language of many of Keble's lyrics, the background of Nature in which his thoughts enact their part, the presence of skies and woods and waters, of which he is for ever conscious, for which he is ever grateful, however inaccurately observed and sketched, his innate love of old, traditional, wholesome things, "our peace, our fearful innocence, and pure religion breathing household laws"—all these make Keble a true Wordsworthian.
The qualities of style to which I propose to call attention in Keble are—(1) simplicity; (2) propriety; (3) gravity—all three unpopular qualities enough nowadays, and, therefore, perhaps all the more worthy of study. (1) Simplicity, artistic simplicity, is a noble thing, and as rare as it is noble; it must be beyond and above ornateness; anciently, indeed, before literature had begun to knit her infinite combinations, it was more attainable; but now to be unstudied is to be thin. Art must now be "careless with artful care, affecting to be unaffected." Modern simplicity must show the spareness of asceticism, not the leanness of anæmia. It must arise from the repression of luxuriance, not poverty of spirit; strict simplicity implies the rejection of all startling and glittering tricks of style, and consequently it implies a lordly patience in pursuit, with an indefatigable zeal for the selection of the precise, the majestic, the supreme.
I do not say that Keble was always successful in the pursuit of simplicity. But it was his object all through. Outside the Christian Year, indeed, in the Lyra Innocentium the studied avoidance of the ornamental and the attractive, degenerated into vapid debility. But in the "Morning" and "Evening" poems:
Only, O Lord, in Thy dear love,
Fit us for perfect rest above,
And help us, this and every day,
To live more nearly as we pray.
and—
If some poor wandering child of Thine
Have spurned to-day the Voice Divine,
Now Lord, the gracious work begin:
Let him no more lie down in sin.
have the true note of pure directness; how, in the middle of so sweet and low a strain, such a stanza as—
The Rulers of this Christian land,
'Twixt Thee and us ordained to stand—
Guide Thou their course, O Lord, aright,
Let all do all as in Thy sight.
could be intruded, shows us how uncritical, how helpless Keble could be.