The British classical authors

Spares but the cloudy border of his base 8 To the foil'd searching of mortality;

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguess'd at. Better so!
12 All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

THE FORSAKEN MERMAN.
[From The Strayed Reveller and other Poems (1849)]

Come, dear children, let us away; Down and away below! Now my brothers call from the bay, 4 Now the great winds shoreward blow, Now the salt tides seaward flow; Now the wild white horses play, Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.

8 Children dear, let us away!

This way, this way!

Call her once before you go
Call once yet!

12 In a voice that she will know:

'Margaret! Margaret!'

Children's voices should be dear (Call once more) to a mother's ear; 16 Children's voices, wild with pain Surely she will come again! Call her once and come away; This way, this way!

20 'Mother dear, we cannot stay! The wild white horses foam and fret.' Margaret! Margaret!

Come, dear children, come away down;

folk pray

We heard the sweet bells over the bay? In the little grey church on the shore

32 In the caverns where we lay,

to-day.

and we rose through the surf in the bay. 68 We went up the beach, by the sandy the beach, by the sandy down

Where the sea-stocks bloom, to the

Through the

To the little

white-wall'd town; narrow paved streets, where all was still, grey church on the windy hill.

72 From the church came a murmur of folk at their prayers, But we stood without in the cold blowing airs.

We climb'd on the graves, on the stones worn with rains,

And we gazed up the aisle through the small leaded panes. 76 She sate by the pillar; we saw her clear: come quick, we are here! Dear heart,' I said, 'we are long alone; The sea grows stormy, the little ones

'Margaret, hist!

moan.'

80 But, ah, she gave me never a look, For her eyes were seal'd to the holy book!

Loud prays the priest; shut stands the door.

Come away, children, call no more! 84 Come away, come down, call no more! Down, down, down!

Down to the depths of the sea!
She sits at her wheel in the hum-
ming town,

Singing most joyfully.
Hark what she sings: 'O joy, O joy,
For the humming street, and the child
with its toy!

For the priest, and the bell, and the holy well;

For the wheel where I spun,
And the blessed light of the sun!'
And so she sings her fill,
Singing most joyfully,

Till the spindle drops from her hand, 96
And the whizzing wheel stands still.
She steals to the window, and looks
at the sand,

And over the sand at the sea;
And her eyes are set in a stare;
And anon there breaks a sigh,
And anon there drops a tear,
From a sorrow-clouded eye,
And a heart sorrow-laden,
A long, long sigh;

For the cold strange eyes of a little
Mermaiden

And the gleam of her golden hair.

Come away, away children;
Come, children, come down!
The hoarse wind blows coldly;
Lights shine in the town.
She will start from her slumber
When gusts shake the door;
She will hear the winds howling,
Will hear the waves roar.
We shall see, while above us
The waves roar and whirl,
A ceiling of amber,
A pavement of pearl.

Singing: 'Here came a mortal,
But faithless was she!
And alone dwell for ever
The kings of the sea.'

But, children, at midnight,
When soft the winds blow,
When clear falls the moonlight,
When spring-tides are low;
When sweet airs come seaward
From heaths starr'd with broom,

100

104

108

112

116

120

124

128

And high rocks throw mildly
On the blanch'd sands a gloom;
132 Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.

136 We will gaze, from the sand-hills,

At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side
And then come back down.
Singing: "There dwells a loved one, 140
But cruel is she!

She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.'

DOVER BEACH.

[From New Poems (1867)]

The sea is calm to-night.

The tide is full, the moon lies fair

Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
5 Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray

Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar

10 Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore

Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.

But now I only hear

25 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,

Retreating, to the breath

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true

30 To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
35 And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

ΤΙ

lored one, a

ARNOLD.

WORDSWORTH.
[From Essays in Criticism, Second Series (1888)]

Wordsworth's poetry is great be-
cause of the extraordinary power
with which Wordsworth feels the joy
offered to us in nature, the joy of-
6 fered to us in the simple primary
affections and duties; and because
of the extraordinary power with which,
in case after case, he shows us this
joy, and renders it so as to make us
10 share it.

The source of joy from which he
thus draws is the truest and most
unfailing source of joy accessible to
man. It is also accessible universally.
16 Wordsworth brings us word, there-
fore, according to his own strong
and characteristic line, he brings us
word

Of joy in widest commonalty spread.
20 Here is an immense advantage for
a poet. Wordsworth tells of what
all seek, and tells of it at its truest
and best source, and yet a source
where all may go and draw for it.

Nevertheless, we are not to sup-
pose that everything is precious which
Wordsworth, standing even at this
perennial and beautiful source, may
give us. Wordsworthians are apt to
30 talk as if it must be. They will
speak with the same reverence of
The Sailor's Mother, for example,
as of Lucy Gray. They do their
master harm by such lack of dis-
35 crimination. Lucy Gray is a beauti-
ful success; The Sailor's Mother is
a failure. To give aright what he
wishes to give, to interpret and render
is not always within
successfully,
40 Wordsworth's own command. It is
within no poet's command; here is
the part of the Muse, the inspiration,
the God, the 'not ourselves'. In
Wordsworth's case, the accident, for
45 so it may almost be called, of in-

575

spiration, is of peculiar importance.
No poet, perhaps, is so evidently
filled with a new and sacred energy
when the inspiration is upon him;
no poet, when it fails him, is so left 50
'weak as is a breaking wave'. I
say that
remember hearing him
'Goethe's poetry was not inevitable
enough.' The remark is striking and
true; no line in Goethe, as Goethe 55
said himself, but its maker knew
well how it came there. Wordsworth
is right, Goethe's poetry is not in-
evitable; not inevitable enough. But
Wordsworth's poetry, when he is at 60
his best, is inevitable, as inevitable as
Nature herself. It might seem that
for
Nature not only gave him the matter
poem
for his poem, but wrote his
him. He has no style. He was too 65
conversant with Milton not to catch at
times his master's manner, and he
has fine Miltonic lines; but he has
no assured poetic style of his own,
like Milton. When he seeks to have 70
a style he falls into ponderosity and
pomposity. In the Excursion we
have his style, as an artistic product
of his own creation; and although
Jeffrey completely failed to recognise 75
Wordsworth's real greatness, he was
yet not wrong in saying of the Ex-
cursion, as a work of poetic style:
"This will never do.' And yet magical
as is that power, which Wordsworth so
has not, of assured and possessed
poetic style, he has something which
is an equivalent for it.

Every one who has any sense for these things feels the subtle turn, 85 the heightening, which is given to a poet's verse by his genius for style. We can feel it in the

After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well of Shakspere; in the

of Milton. It is the incomparable charm of Milton's power of poetic 95 style which gives such worth to Paradise Regained, and makes a great poem of a work in which Milton's imagination does not soar high. Wordsworth has in constant pos100 session, and at command, no style of this kind; but he had too poetic a nature, and had read the great poets too well, not to catch, as I have already remarked, something of 105 it occasionally. We find it not only in his Miltonic lines; we find it in such a phrase as this, where the manner is his own, not Milton's

110

... the fierce confederate storm Of sorrow barricadoed evermore Within the walls of cities;

although even here, perhaps, the power of style which is undeniable, is more properly that of eloquent 115 prose than the subtle heightening and change wrought by genuine poetic style. It is style, again, and the elevation given by style, which chiefly makes the effectiveness of Laodameia. 120 Still the right sort of verse to choose from Wordsworth, if we are to seize his true and most characteristic form of expression, is a line like this from Michael

125 And never lifted up a single stone.

There is nothing subtle in it, no heightening, no study of poetic style, strictly so called, at all; yet it is expression of the highest and most 180 truly expressive kind.

Wordsworth owed much to Burns, and a style of perfect plainness, relying for effect solely on the weight and force of that which with entire 135 fidelity it utters, Burns could show him.

Still Wordsworth's use of it has something unique and unmatchable. Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his hand, and to write for him with her own bare, 155 sheer, penetrating power. This arises from two causes; from the profound sincereness with which Wordsworth feels his subject, and also from the profoundly sincere and natural char- 160 acter of his subject itself. He can and will treat such a subject with nothing but the most plain, firsthand, almost austere naturalness. His expression may often be called bald, 165 as, for instance, in the poem of Resolution and Independence; but it is bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness which is full of grandeur.

170

Wherever we meet with the successful balance, in Wordsworth, of profound truth of subject with profound truth of execution, he is unique. His best poems are those which most 175 perfectly exhibit this balance. I have a warm admiration for Laodameia and for the great Ode; but if I am to tell the very truth, I find Laodameia not wholly free from something 180 artificial, and the great Ode not wholly free from something declamatory. If I had to pick out poems of a kind most perfectly to show Wordsworth's unique power, I should 185

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The British classical authors: with biographical notices. On the basis of a ...