Near the "Wit's Interpreter"
(Like an antique Whitaker,
Full of strange etcetera),
"Areopagitiea,"
And the muse of Lycidas,
Lost in meditation deep,
Give the cut to Hudibras,
Unaware the knave's asleep….
There lies Coleridge, bound in green,
Sleepily still wond'ring what
He meant Kubla Khan to mean,
In that early Wordsworth, Mat.
Arnold knows a faithful prop,—
Still to subject-matter leans,
Murmurs of the loved hill-top,
Fyfield tree and Cumnor scenes.
The poem closes with a high tribute to Shelley, "more than all the others mine."
The following trifle is excellent fooling:
THE GREAT AUK'S GHOST
The Great Auk's ghost rose on one leg,
Sighed thrice and three times winkt,
And turned and poached a phantom egg,
And muttered, "I'm extinct."
But it is in the love of unextinct animals that Mr. Hodgson's poetic powers find their most effective display. His masterpiece on the old unhappy Bull is surprisingly impressive; surprisingly, because we almost resent being made to feel such ardent sympathy for the poor old Bull, when there are so many other and more important objects to be sorry for. Yet the poet draws us away for the moment from all the other tragedies in God's universe, and absolutely compels our pity for the Bull. The stanzas in this poem swarm with life.
From a certain point of view, poets are justified in calling attention to the sufferings of our animal brothers. For it is the sufferings of animals, even more than the sorrows of man, that check our faith either in the providence or in the love of God. Human suffering may possibly be balanced against the spiritual gain it (sometimes) brings; and at all events, we know that there is no road to greatness of character except through pain. But what can compensate the dumb animals for their physical anguish? It is certainly difficult to see their reward, unless they have immortal souls. That this is no slight obstacle in the way of those who earnestly desire to believe in an ethical universe, may be seen from the fact that it was the sight of a snake swallowing a toad that destroyed once for all the religious beliefs of Turgenev; and I know a man of science in America who became an agnostic simply from observation of a particular Texas fly that bites the cattle. The Founder of Christianity recognized this problem, as He did every other painful fact in life, when He made the remark about the sparrow.