He everywhere, and in a profusion that is, as it were, rebellious against his strict discipline of words, sees and expresses the picture of this world.
If Landscape be the best test of this quality of adventure in English poets and the Milton as their standard, so the mystic character of English verse appears in them and in him. No period could be so formal as to stifle or even to hide this demand of English writers for Mystery and for emotions communicable only by an art allied to music. The passion is so strong that many ill-acquainted with foreign literature will deny such literature any poetic quality because they do not find in it the unmistakable thrill which the English reader demands of a poet as he demands it of a musician. As Landscape might be taken for the best test of Adventure, so of this appetite for the Mysterious the best measurable test is rhythm. Highly accentuated rhythm and emphasis are the marks and the concomitants of that spirit. As powerful a line as any in the language for suddenly evoking intense feeling by no perceptible artifice is that line in Lycidas—
Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds.
I confess I can never read that line but I remember a certain river of twenty years ago, nor does revisiting that stream and seeing it again with my eyes so powerfully recall what once it was to those who loved it as does this deathless line. It seems as though the magical power of the poet escaped the effect of time in a way that the senses cannot, and a man curious in such matters might find the existence of such gifts to be a proof of human immortality. The pace at which Milton rides his verse, the strong constraint within which he binds it, deeply accentuate this power of rhythm and the mystical effect it bears. Now you would say a trumpet, now a chorus of human voices, now a flute, now a single distant song. From the fortieth to the fifty-fifth line of the third book Paradise Lost has all the power and nature of a solemn chant; the large complaint in it is the complaint of an organ, and one may say indeed in this connection that only one thing is lacking in all the tones Milton commanded; he disdained intensity of grief as most artists will disdain intensity of terror. But whereas intensity of terror is no fit subject for man's pen, and has appealed only to the dirtier of our little modern fellows, intense grief has been from the very beginning thought a just subject for verse.
Τἡλε δ' ἁπὁ κρατὁς χἑε δἑσματα σιγαλὁεντα
Αμπυκα κεκρὑφαλὁν τ', ἡδἑ πλεκτἡν ἁναδἑσμην
Κρἡδεμνὁν Θ', δ ῥἁ οἱ δὡκε χρυσἑη 'Αφροδἱτη
Ηματι τὩ, ὁτε μιν κορυθαἱολος ἡγἁγεθ' Εκτωρ
'Εκ δὁμου 'Ηετἱωνος, ἑπεἱ πὁρε μυρἱα ἑδνα.
[Greek: Têle d' apo kratos chee desmata sigaloenta