As on the pale white peacock we discern
The pencilled shadows of the rainbow dyes
And coloured moons that on her sisters burn.
All this is the purest literary workmanship. There is nothing of the impressionist here. There is no dim vagueness, but the effect is noted and carefully transferred to words of infinite associations. The possible weakness of this delicate minuteness is that here and there in a moment of strenuous action, when the march of the poem ought to proceed with swift directness, the glancing eye is apt to turn aside or lose itself in detail. One small instance will be enough of a tendency that is as a rule successfully combated. In the "Cruise of the Rover," in the heat of movement, when the young English sailors after their desperate fight are being dragged to judgment, drink is given them from "a great cool earthen firkin." Now this is just such a detail as no one at such a moment should have had leisure or inclination to note, and this is the fault of the literary method. In meditative poems, in transcripts from nature, the more sensitive the eye is to external impressions the more intimate and lucid will the emotion be. But not in the ballad, not in the poem of action and life. And this is true of such narratives as the "Island of the Blest" and the "Death of Arnkel," where detail is almost too tyrannous, closely and vividly sketched as it is.
In the former poem such descriptions as that of the Island itself may be noted for their proportion:—
And now beneath the magic Isle we came:
Full of fair havens was it, blue and wide
With iron promontories, fit to tame
The wildest storm and make a calm inside,
Where gentlest birds might plume themselves and ride.
White cities nestled under every hill,
Stretching their marble feet to touch the tide,
And shallops driven by more than mortal skill
Meandered here and there, or cleft the wave at will.
Down coverts, thick with cedar and with pine,
Sonorous waters dropt their silver shafts.
This is the perfection of stately narrative. But when the mariners are led away for trial in "quaint procession" and "bound three by three in chaplets of wild rose," we pass into a region of whimsical fantasy, into which a true narrative poet like William Morris has no tendency to err.
Firdausi in Exile is a story well told, and is the best narrative poem by Mr. Gosse. Yet even this leaves us convinced that he is pre-eminently a lyric poet, the singer of a swift and passing mood; he has none of the sustained energy of the epic poet, nor the penetrating psychology of the dramatist.
The tragedy of King Erik, as Mr. Theodore Watts points out in the admirable critical note which is prefixed to the later edition, is not an acting play; the essence of an acting play is that it should pass firmly from situation to situation. But there is a further defect than even that. From a literary point of view, the images, the metre, the language are skilfully enough handled but the characters lack consistent vitality. King Erik passes from being an elevated, almost superior philosopher into an outrageous Othello, in a manner which, though possibly lifelike, is inconsistent with the dignity of his professions; he is not sincere in his utterances, if his jealousy is so easily awakened and so hardly allayed. And there is a similar want of humanity in many of the characters. Botilda is too mild and tactless, Grimur too amorous, Adalbjörg too venomous. They do not seem to betray their characters so much as to be always keeping them in view. But after all, if Mr. Gosse's dramatic muse is too statuesque, why so are Mr. Swinburne's and Mr. Bridges', and the literary instinct can extract a continuous pleasure from the mellow sequence of line upon line.
As a specimen of pictorial art, fading softly into visionary dreams, we would select a very perfect lyric from Mr. Gosse's latest book entitled "Circling Fancies." The poet sits at night by the open window, under the acacia which scents the air, with a lighted lamp, to which the gauzy summer flies come thronging.
Around this tree the floating flies
Weave their mysterious webs of light;
The scent of my acacia lies
Within the circle of their flight:
They never perch, nor drop from sight,
But, flashing, wheel in curves of air,
As if the perfume's warm delight
In magic bondage held them there.
I watch them till I half confound
Their motions with these thoughts of mine,
That no less subtle bonds have bound
Within a viewless ring divine;
Clasped by a chain that makes no sign.
My hopes and wheeling fancies live:
Desires, like odours, still confine
The heart that else were fugitive.