... I have
Golden within me the whole fate of man:
That every flesh and soul belongs to one
Continual joyward ravishment ...
That life hath highest gone which hath most joy.
For like great wings forcefully smiting air
And driving it along in rushing rivers,
Desire of joy beats mightily pulsing forward
The world's one nature....
... so we are driven
Onward and upward in a wind of beauty,
Until man's race be wielded by its joy
Into some high incomparable day,
Where perfectly delight may know itself,—
No longer need a strife to know itself,
Only by its prevailing over pain.
That is the topmost peak that his philosophy has gained—for just so long as to give assurance that it exists. But no one supposes that he will dwell there: it is altogether too high: the atmosphere is too rare. It was reached only by the concentration of certain poetical powers, chiefly speculative imagination, which carried him safely over the chasms of a lower altitude. But when other powers are in the ascendant, as for instance in The End of the World: when he is recalled to actuality by that keen eye for fact which is so rare a gift to genius of this type, the terror of those lower chasms is revealed. Here is one of the characters reflecting on the thought of the end of the world, which he believes to be imminent from an approaching comet:
Life, the mother who lets her children play
So seriously busy, trade and craft,—
Life with her skill of a million years' perfection
To make her heart's delighted glorying
Of sunlight, and of clouds about the moon,
Spring lighting her daffodils, and corn
Ripening gold to ruddy, and giant seas,
And mountains sitting in their purple clothes—
O life I am thinking of, life the wonder,
All blotcht out by a brutal thrust of fire
Like a midge that a clumsy thumb squashes and smears.
That passage will serve to point the single comment on technique with which this study must close. It has not been selected for the purpose, and therefore is not the finest example that could be chosen. It is, however, typical of the blank-verse form which largely prevails in this poetry, and which, in its very texture, reveals the same extraordinary combination of qualities which we have observed in the poet's genius.
We have already seen that spiritual vision is here united with intellectuality as lucid as it is powerful: that the mystic is also the humanitarian: that imagination is balanced by a good grip on reality; and that the sense-impressions are fine as well as exuberant. We have seen, too, that this diversity and apparent contrast, although resulting in an art of complex beauty, do not tend towards confusion or obscurity. There has been a complete fusion of the elements, and the molten stream that is poured for us is of glowing clarity.
Exactly the same feature is discernible in the style of this verse. Look at the last passage for a moment and consider its effect. It is impossible to define in a single word, because of its complexity. The mind, lingering delightedly over the metaphor of life the mother, is suddenly awed by the magnitude of the idea which succeeds it. The æsthetic sense is taken by the light and colour of the middle lines, and then, as if the breath were caught on a half-sob, a wave of emotion follows, pensive at first, but rising abruptly to a note that is as rough as a curse. There are more shades of thought, lightly reflective or glooming with prescience; and there are more degrees of emotion, from tenderness to wrath, than we have time to analyze. The point for the moment is the manner in which they are conveyed, and the adequacy of the instrument to convey them.
The texture of the verse itself will provide evidence of this. Here are barely a dozen lines of our English heroic verse; and they will be found to contain the maximum of metrical variety. Probably only two, or at most three of them (it depends upon scansion, of course) are of the regular iambic pentameter: that is to say, built up strictly from the iamb, which is the unit of this form. All the others are varied by the insertion at some point in the line, and frequently at two or three points, of a different verse-unit, dactyl, anapæst, trochee or spondee; and no two lines are varied in exactly the same way.
But, besides the range of the instrument, there is the exquisite harmony of it with mood or idea. The strong down-beat of the trochee summons the intellect to consider a thought: the dactyl will follow with the quick perception of a simile: the iamb will punctuate rhythm: anacrusis will suggest the half-caught breath of rising emotion, and turbulent feeling will pour through spondee, dactyl, and anapæst. And so with the diction. Just as we find a measure which is both vigorous and light, precise and flexible, easily bending law to beauty; so in the language there is a corresponding union of strength and grace, homeliness and dignity. Could a great conception be stated in a simpler phrase than that of the two first lines?
Life, the mother who lets her children play
So seriously busy, trade and craft—