That is the nearest approach to fantasy which will be found in this poetry. There is nothing subtle or whimsical here: no half-lights or neutral tones or hints of meaning. This genius cannot fulfil itself in an 'airy nothing.' The imaginative power is too firmly controlled by a sense of fact to admit the bizarre and incredible; yet there can be no doubt of its creative force when one turns for a moment to either of the prize poems, and particularly to "The Bull." It would be hard to name a finer specimen of verse in which imagination, high and sustained, is seen to be operating through a purely sensuous medium. That is to say, moving in a region of fact, accurately observing and recording the phenomena of a real world, there is yet achieved an imaginative creation of great power—a bit of all-but-perfect art. Quotation will not serve to illustrate this, since the poem is an organic whole and a principal element of its perfection is its unity. One could, however, demonstrate over again from almost any line the poet's instinct for reality: as for example in the truth, quiet but unflinching, of his presentment of the cruelty inherent in his theme. The passages are almost too painful taken out of their context; and there may be some for whom they will rob the poem of complete beauty. But the same instinct may be observed visualizing, in strong light and rich colour and incisive movement, the teeming tropical world in which the old bull stands, sick, unkinged and left to die.
Cranes and gaudy parrots go
Up and down the burning sky;
Tree-top cats purr drowsily
In the dim-day green below;
And troops of monkeys, nutting, some,
All disputing, go and come;
.....
And a dotted serpent curled
Round and round and round a tree,
Yellowing its greenery,
Keeps a watch on all the world,
All the world and this old bull
In the forest beautiful.
This poem is indeed very characteristic of its author's method. One perceives the thought behind (apart, of course, from the mental process of actual composition); and one realizes the magnitude of it. But again it is implicit only, and reflection on 'the flesh that dies,' on greatness fallen and worth contemned, hardly wins a couple of lines of direct expression.
In "The Song of Honour" it would seem for the moment as if all that were reversed. This poem is the re-creation of a spiritual experience, a hymn of adoration. It is entirely subjective in conception, and is strangely different therefore from the cool objectivity of "The Bull" or "Eve" or "Time." In them the poet is working so detachedly that there is even room for the play of gentle humour now and then. He is working with delight, indeed, and emotion warm enough, but with a joy that is wholly artistic, caring much more for the thing that he is making than for any single element of it. But in "The Song of Honour" it is evident that he cares immensely for his theme; and hence arise an ardour and intensity which are not present in the other poems. Moreover, the work is the interpretation of a vision, which would seem to imply a mystical quality only latent hitherto; and there is a rapture of utterance which is not found elsewhere.
The apparent contrast has no reality however. It is possible to catch, though in subtle inflexions it is true, an undertone which runs below even the simplest and clearest of these lyrics. No doubt it is as quiet, as subdued, as it well could be—this soft, complex harmony flowing beneath the ringing measure. But one can distinguish a note here and a phrase there which point directly to the dominant theme of "The Song of Honour." There is a hint of it, for example, in "The Mystery," where the soul is imagined as standing, reverent but without fear, within the closed circle of the unknown, and joyfully content to accept as the pledge and symbol of that which it is unable to comprehend, the beauty of the material world. One may see in that a familiar attitude of the modern mind; the perception that there is a mystery, which somehow perpetually eludes the creeds and philosophies, but which seems to be attaining to gradual revelation and fulfilment in actual existence. A vision of the unity of that existence was the inspiration of this greater poem: a realization, momentary but dazzling, of the magnificence of being: of its joy, of its continuity, of the progression of life through countless forms of that which we call matter to an ultimate goal of supreme glory.
I do not say that any thesis, in those or kindred terms, was the origin of this Song. I feel quite sure that it had no basis so abstract. It was born in a mood of exaltation, kindled perhaps by such an instant of flaming super-consciousness as may be observed in the spiritual experience of other contemporary poets. The moment of its inception is recorded in the opening of the poem: