She takes her being from the breath of Spring,
The glance of Phœbus is her fount of light,
And her long sleep a draught of primal night.
Aside from Mr. Santayana’s philosophical sonnets he has a second sequence, upon love, which, too, is philosophically tinged. In the matter of beauty this is perhaps the more finished and artistic work; but I have chosen rather to dwell upon the subtlety of his speculations in those phases of thought less universally treated of by poets than is love. It has not been possible, however, to follow the sequence in its order, or to present more than certain individual notes of its philosophy.
Thus far it has been the matter, rather than the manner, of Mr. Santayana’s verse that has been considered; but before glancing at the
later sonnet sequence, what of his touch upon the strings of his instrument? One can scarcely have followed the extracts quoted without noting the mellow suavity, the ease, the poise of his work. There is everywhere assurance of expression, nothing tentative, nothing halting. His lines are disposed by the laws of counter-point into well-ordered cadences where nothing jars; his words are rich and mellifluous, in short, he has, as a sonneteer, a finish, a classical command of the vehicle reminiscent of Petrarch and Camoens. The sonnet is, by the nature of the case, a somewhat inadaptable instrument, and yet it is susceptible of great individuality, as one may note by recalling an intricate sonnet by Rossetti and a sweeping, sonorous one by Milton. The criticism which is, perhaps, most apposite to Mr. Santayana’s sonnets is that they are “faultily faultless;” they are so finished that one would welcome a false note now and then, that suggested a choke in the voice, or a heart-beat out of time.
There is an atmosphere about all of Mr. Santayana’s work that conveys a sense of wandering in the moonlight; it is tempered, softened, stilled; it is like an Isis-veil cast over the eyes; but at times one becomes oppressed with the consciousness of himself, and of the
impalpable visions glimpsed in the wan light, and longs to snatch the veil away and flee to the garish world again. One may seek Mr. Santayana’s poetry when his mood demands it, and it will be as a cooling hand in fever; but when the pulse of being is low, and one needs the touch to vitalize, he must turn to others, for Mr. Santayana’s work is not charged with the electricity that thrills.
Because he is not inventive in metre nor sufficiently light in touch, Mr. Santayana is not a lyrist. He has scarcely any purely lyrical verse in his collections, and what is contained in them is too lacking in spontaneity to be classed with his best work. It is not wanting in lines of beauty and in English undefiled; but the sense of tone and rhythm, except of the smoothly conventional sort, is absent. There are no innovations in form and the impulse is too subdued for a true lyric. That called “Midnight” has more warmth than the others. Several of his odes in the Sapphic metre have great charm, especially the first. His elegiac verse has often rare elevation of thought; but it, also, has too set a measure, too much of the “formed style” to be vital. It brings well-conceived, well-imaged thought, as in this stanza:
How should the vision stay to guide the hand,