FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   >>  
be above price, even gauged by the rude measure of rarity. Transcendent simplicity could not possibly be habitual. Man lives within garments and veils, and art is chiefly concerned with making mysteries of these for the loveliness of his life; when they are rent asunder it is impossible not to be aware that an overwhelming human emotion has been in action. Thus _Departure_, _If I were Dead_, _A Farewell_, _Eurydice_, _The Toys_, _St. Valentine's Day_--though here there is in the exquisite imaginative play a mitigation of the bare vitality of feeling--group themselves apart as the innermost of the poet's achievements. Second to these come the Odes that have splendid thought in great images, and display--rather than, as do the poems first glanced at, betray--the beauties of poetic art. Emotion is here, too, and in shocks and throes, never frantic when almost intolerable. It is mortal pathos. If any other poet has filled a cup with a draught so unalloyed, we do not know it. Love and sorrow are pure in _The Unknown Eros_; and its author has not refused even the cup of terror. Against love often, against sorrow nearly always, against fear always, men of sensibility instantaneously guard the quick of their hearts. It is only the approach of the pang that they will endure; from the pang itself, dividing soul and spirit, a man who is conscious of a profound capacity for passion defends himself in the twinkling of an eye. But through nearly the whole of Coventry Patmore's poetry there is an endurance of the mortal touch. Nay, more, he has the endurance of the immortal touch. That is, his capacity for all the things that men elude for their greatness is more than the capacity of other men. He endures therefore what they could but will not endure and, besides this, degrees that they cannot apprehend. Thus, to have studied _The Unknown Eros_ is to have had a certain experience--at least the impassioned experience of a compassion; but it is also to have recognised a soul beyond our compassion. What some of the Odes have to sing of, their author does not insist upon our knowing. He leaves more liberty for a well-intentioned reader's error than makes for peace and recollection of mind in reading. That the general purpose of the poems is obscure is inevitable. It has the obscurity of profound clear waters. What the poet chiefly secures to us is the understanding that love and its bonds, its bestowal and reception, do
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   >>  



Top keywords:

capacity

 

mortal

 

endurance

 
experience
 

compassion

 
profound
 

author

 

Unknown

 
endure
 
sorrow

chiefly

 

rarity

 
Transcendent
 
simplicity
 
immortal
 

poetry

 

greatness

 

endures

 

things

 
measure

conscious

 
spirit
 

habitual

 

dividing

 

possibly

 

passion

 
Coventry
 
defends
 

twinkling

 

Patmore


reading

 

general

 

purpose

 

recollection

 

intentioned

 

reader

 

obscure

 
inevitable
 

understanding

 

bestowal


reception
 

secures

 
obscurity
 
waters
 
liberty
 

gauged

 

impassioned

 
degrees
 
apprehend
 

studied