But it seems something more than that to me. As an attack on German emotionalism—however unjustly, from my point of view, through Wagner—the poem struck me as an exercise of extraordinary cleverness. I don’t know that anyone has ever said so effectively the things that ought be said about that type of emotion which feeds not upon life but, inversely, upon emotion.
Mr. Brooke’s pictures have much of the quality of Böcklin’s. That first sonnet can be imagined in the same tone values as Böcklin’s wonderful Isle of the Dead, and the closing lines of Victory need the same medium:
Down the supernal roads,
With plumes a-tossing, purple flags far flung,
Rank upon rank, unbridled, unforgiving,
Thundered the black battalions of the Gods.
Seaside needs an artist like Leon Dabo:
Swiftly out from the friendly lilt of the band,
The crowd’s good laughter, the loved eyes of men,
I am drawn nightward; I must turn again