For he sometimes is prophet, heavenly taught,
Whose message is that he sees only naught!
Nathless, discern’d may be,
By listeners at the doors of destiny,
The fly-wheel swift and still
Of God’s incessant will,
Mighty to keep in bound, tho’ powerless to quell,
The amorous and vehement drift of man’s herd to hell.”
We can quote no further at any length, though we find something to attract us in every ode; and the more we read the odes the more we find in them, the more we admire them, and the clearer they become. Though independent of each other, a secret string of purpose, of aim and aspiration, of a yearning after something that the poet has not yet quite caught or cannot as yet fully express, becomes apparent. To this is due much of the obscurity and dimness that at first offend the eye. Closer study, however, reveals a throbbing passion, a high ideal, gleams of light from heaven, the flashes of a bright intelligence warmed by a pure heart and looking from and through all things earthly heavenwards. We have seen no man of late who can lash the follies and lay bare the falsehoods of the time so thoroughly. A man of intense and rooted convictions, he may make mistakes sometimes, but at least he makes them nobly. He is very human, as we have already said. Indeed, there are touches here and there in some of the odes that are strongly sensuous, and the two last poems, “The Rosy Bosom’d Hours” and “The After-Glow,” were better omitted from the volume. Their littleness offends and breaks with a discordant jar on the high and serene atmosphere through which we have been passing. It is almost like what the introduction of one of Offenbach’s airs would be into a solemn Mass. From the poet whose “Proem” is pitched in so high a key as this:
“Therefore no 'plaint be mine