She was a creature in whose nature contrary rarities were combined, to exercise upon man powers to excite the highest joy and the deepest despair. She was, as Sonnet CVIII draws her, like “Satan in angelic vestment drest.” A maiden with wonderful physical charms,—fair of complexion, from whose blue eyes shone the light of infantile innocence,—snaring the hearts of men to torture them with cold and cruel wantonness. Living for herself, and in herself, she took for granted the homage of the world. Pleasure that came to her through other people’s suffering she accepted as the price due one to whom pleasure was ordained at birth. She never cared to consider life seriously; existence was measured by her capacity for sensation. One wonders how far in this she is a type of the modern woman; or is she merely an exception in the portrayal here? But sad it is that, beneath their frivolous exteriors, such women carry tragedy in their lives as a gift to men.
“Yet love, though long unkind, hath taught me this,
That I may find expression on its page;
Though not the record of its perfect bliss,
Yet, something of its value to mine age,
Mixed with poison from the fatal kiss
That love still bringeth in its equipage.”
The martyrdom has been suffered, and here is the record! It is hoped that something of its value—the lesson of its confession—may become a contribution to the age. Every deep human experience is significant of a moral. How it may affect the conduct of those who come to recognize in it an intimate and personal admonition or justification, depends on how deeply one’s sympathy touches the subject in hand.
The world of action is merely the concrete presentation of the illimitable cosmos of ideas; passion and pain, joy and sorrow,—the emotions dramatized into comic or tragic speech,—are the symbols of the phenomena of instinct, somewhere actively concealed in the vague origins of the human family. Afloat on the swirling current of existence, man’s soul is tossed and buffeted by the contrary influences of a rebellious primality. Its forces in the development and growth of civilization are recorded by history, demonstrated by science, and analyzed by philosophy. But art alone expresses and interprets it. Art alone contains that contagious spirit which underlies truth and beauty. It accomplishes this by an essential sincerity in the artist; and find what fault one will with the manner and method in the composition which pretends to the function of æsthetic presentation of life, this sincerity redeems the work.
Little has been said here concerning the manner in which this poem is constructed. The interest of the substance was too inviting for one to be lured into dissecting its form. Artificial as the sonnet-form is, with all its limitations, we have Wordsworth’s authority for its many possibilities. There is never any question of the merits or demerits of a poet’s sonnets. If he bends them to the purpose in hand, he achieves his intention, and in this respect the sonnets of the “Wounded Eros” are no exception.
W. S. B.