Spirit shall deem them beckoning Earth usually, though with brilliant instances and voiced Sisterly to her, in her beams rejoiced. Then at new flood of customary morn. Half strange seems Earth, and sweeter than her flowers.1 It may freely be granted that in general we have too continuous a strain, too unrelieved an emphasis in Mr. Meredith's poetry. It lacks breathing spaces, points of repose for the imagination. Once we have ascended his po etic car we are borne along at full speed, a speed that is rarely slackened until the goal be reached. Thus it comes that one cannot read for long in these volumes, as in Tennyson's; one cannot fleet the time carelessly with this poet as with Mr. William Morris. Mr. Meredith is not of the singers who simply say the most heart-easing things, who lead us to their favorite haunts by wood or stream and discourse music to us that we may drink oblivion of care and pass into a many-colored dream of flitting shadows. And if he fall short as a poet, it is that his poetry is too strenuous to be altogether peaceful, and that the impressions received from it are too crowded to permit of that leisurely sipping of the cup, that tranquil enjoyment which is essential to the due appreciation of poetry. Poetry and haste are eternal incompatibles. One cannot bolt a stanza in the five minutes' interval between engagements, nor can one find perfect happiness in the company of a poet whose pace is always a gallop. Mr. Meredith's verse has caught contagion from the hurry and the bustle of modern life. And his utterance, too, is a staccato utterance. It would be untrue to say of him that there was no light and shade in his conceptions, but there is often an absence of light and shade in his expression. And though Mr. Meredith conceives aright the sensuous as well as the intellectual life, his poetry 1 A Reading of Earth, p. 12. to the contrary, lacks the sensuous element, usually fails to express that element as vividly as it expresses the intellectual. Language, especially the language of poetry, has an office other than that of mirroring with precision a train of ideas; it must make appeal to the senses, to the eye and to the ear, to the memory and its associations, to the imagination and its dreams. Yet this is not the day nor the hour to complain of poetry in which the intellectual element outbalances the sensuous; rather we owe to poetry of which this is true a debt of gratitude. A little thought goes far in modern verse, and the critics assure us that even that little is unnecessary. "Poetry," Mr. Henley tells us, "is style." And in Mr. Meredith's poetry the very force and intensity of his thought communicate a beauty to his phrase the beauty that shines in strength. Take this of Byron's "Manfred" Considerably was the world Of spinsterdom and clergy racked But we should wrong Mr. Meredith by saying that his is always the music from an iron string. That he is master of a manner besides this of rugged force is easily demonstrable. The critic will need to search diligently through English poetry to discover a poem of more blithe and gracious sweetness, more radiant with the dew and sunshine of morning, with the captivating joyance of youth than "Love in a Valley." The measure-and it may be noted that in metres Mr. Meredith greatly and successfully dares-the measure itself dances to the tripping pulses of the young blood. Cool was the woodside; cool as her white dairy Keeping sweet the cream-pan; and there the boys from school, 2 Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life, p, 68. Cricketing below, rushed red and brown with sunshine; O the dark translucence of the deepeyed cool! Could I find a place to be alone with heaven, I would speak my heart out: heaven is my need. Flashing like the white beam, swaying Streaming like the flag-reed south-west Flashing as in gusts the sudden-lighted white beam; But to enter into the true spirit of Mr. Meredith's poetry of nature, we must come to it by way of "A Reading of Earth." We are constantly assured by modern criticism and by the practice of modern poets that it is no part of the poet's duty to be a teacher, that the exposition of belief lies altogether outside the province of art. Mr. Meredith abides by the tradition of the greater English poets, Spenser and Milton and Wordsworth, and his poetry frankly outlines a faith, delineates a philosophy of life. It is a creed of full and lasting "joy in the old heart of things;" but how hold and live by that creed in the face of the certain sorrows, the uncertain All seem to know what is for heaven issues, the unavoidable partings of life, alone.1 Here, and in a pastoral not reprinted from his earliest volume, Mr. Meredith's verse bubbles, and creams and ripples the knowledge that The word of the world is adieu Her word; and the torrents are round from the very founts of spring and To preserve for the human race during summer. Come, and like bees will we gather the rich golden honey of noontide . Deep in the sweet summer meadows, Revel all day till the lark mounts at eve The lyric beauty of poems such as these will recall to readers of the novels the passion-brimming lyrical enchantments woven in the "Ferdinand and Miranda" chapters of "Richard Feverel," beside which I do not know that there is anything in literature to be placed since "Romeo and Juliet" itself. In others of the "Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth" is heard the same clear lark-like trill of gladness, a music as of the early world untouched by human pain or sorrow, a song of the elements Water, first of singers, o'er rocky mount and mead, its dark hours the heart of hope, the faith that there is some soul of goodness in things evil, that evil itself is not immortal, and that the destiny of man is something more than to die, to preserve this heart of hope and this faith is not the meanest achievement of the poet. Yet, when this faith and this hope are threatened, so exclusively does the poetic spirit seem to feed upon the beauty and the pathos of life that the poets often offer us no more than a sad philosophy of indifference," or a fuller life of the senses, the worship of the flesh in despair of soul. But Mr. Meredith in this also abides by the poetic tradition of the greater poets and refuses to despair of soul. The resurgent brood of questions to which earth, our mother, replies not are but the brood of unfaith, and earth's silence argues no indifference to her children. Of those who ask them Earth whispers they scarce have the thirst, First of earthly singers, the sun-loved Except to unriddle a rune; rill Sang of him, and flooded the ripples on the reed Seeking whom to waken and what ear fill.2 1 Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, p. 95. 2 Ibid. p. 73. And I spin none; only show, Would humanity soar from its worst, it trusts 3 A Reading of Earth, p. 71. Uses my gifts yet aspires In "A Faith on Trial" and in "Earth and Man" Mr. Meredith sets forth a spiritual philosophy of courageous faith, a philosophy akin in some respects to that of Wordsworth, but informed by the later spirit of scientific realism. The poet is now, as the man of the future will be, as we are all fast becoming, neither idealist nor realist, neither one nor the other, because both. If Mr. Meredith in his poetry rejects with the unalterable mien of physical science any mystical explanation of things which leaves the facts and laws of the great external world of our physical nature out of account, he rejects with equal firmness the philosophy of immediate conclusions based upon the slight and meagre knowledge we possess. Like the Christian's, Mr. Meredith's word is "Faith till proof be ready." Only when the lesson of A fortitude quiet as Earth's At the shedding of leaves2 Nothing harms beneath the leaves Only at a dread of dark Enter these enchanted woods, Few among Mr. Meredith's poems are more quaintly, and at the same time more powerfully, conceived than this, "The Woods of Westermain." The very spirit of the forest is abroad in it, a mystery of life lurks in the thicket and among the leaves. With it should be read "Melampus”— Where others hear but a hum and see but a beam, The tongue and eye of the fountain of life he knew. Here, as in all his nature-poems, Mr. Meredith moves with the firm step of one to whom the path is a familiar one; a subtle accuracy of observation shines in every epithet. There is no poet since has been duly learned, only when the the death of Wordsworth for whom na attitude of ture has meant so much as for Mr. unfaith clamoring to be coined Meredith. From many of his poems oue To faith by proof might conceive him as entirely preoccupied with nature, a close and eager student, to whom the world of individual men and women was little more than a shadowland. How far this is wide of the truth readers of Mr. Meredith's novels are indeed aware; and perhaps we need go no further for convincing proof, if any were needed, of the mental grasp and breadth displayed in his work, a breadth and grasp unmatched in the work of any living man. The place occupied by nature in modern poetry since the advent of Wordsworth must in large measure be associated with the growth of a knowledge of nature, and the desire for that knowledge displayed in scientific investigation. With Mr. Meredith nature is not so much, as with Wordsworth, an object of impassioned contemplation, an enclasping presence, the source of spiritual ecstasy. She is rather nature as re 4 Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, p. 1 Ibid. p. 83. vealed to us by science, the eternal activity, the nature that overflows with individual life. And an enduring place among the English poets is assured to Mr. Meredith if for this alone, that he is the first to accept fearlessly the view of nature offered by modern science, and not to accept it only, but to find that view vitally poetic and inspiring. For this he will be remembered. He will be remembered and honored as that coura geous spirit who, when his companions were assailed by fears, embraced with ready welcome the entire unbroken ring, the whole result of science, and, claiming this too as a province of art, drew from the new truths fresh auguries and hopes and lessons for humanity. Mr. Meredith's study of nature is that of the naturalist, the naturalist who has become the passionate lover. He would have us believe that a closer intimacy with nature will serve to prove her Mother of simple truth, Relentless quencher of lies, and to dispel the unworthy apprehensions which, judging her with shrinking nerves, makes her "a cruel sphinx," A mother of aches and jests; She is before and above all the Earth our mother, instructress of her children; and to prate of other worlds ere we have mastered this and its lessons seems to Mr. Meredith the hugest of follies. Through the knowledge of earth, "never misread by brain," we approach a fuller consciousness of the issues and meanings of life, Till brain-rule splendidly towers.' Mr. Meredith is at times obscure, but he is never intangible; he is at times difficult, but he is never unreal. Sureness of grasp, concentration, force, significance these are the splendid qualities of his style, and at times one catches an accent, a phrase, a verse exquisitely tuneful, a melody wholly his 1 A Reading of Earth, p. 78. The Empty Purse, p. 28. Her pomp of glorious hues, Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile.3 His "cosmic enthusiasm" is without reservations, his spiritual freedom untrammelled and entire. "The Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life" display Mr. Meredith in his characteristic, his unmistakable style, the style which is the despair of so many readers. Here are ballads, indeed, but not of that species which may be defined as the simplest and most direct form of narrative poetry. To disentangle these tales one must proceed warily, and piece each together, like a mosaic, from hints, reflections, apostrophes, and the future may not find ballads of this order acceptable. Save in "The Nuptials of Attila," the vigor of the manner hardly narration. But "The Nuptials of Atcompensates for the harshness of the tila" is a notable exception, a notable poem. It is not only a notable, it is an altogether marvellous and indescribable poem. To read it is to hear the tread of armies, to mingle in the tossing tumult of barbarian camps, to catch one's breath in the presence of the queen of tragedy herself. There is no poem with which it can to any purpose be compared. From first to last it displays the characteristics of Mr. Meredith at his best and strongest, and will take rank among the great achievements of mod 8 Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth, p. 119. ern verse as a tour de force of unique tainly not obscurities of expression. power and splendor. The volume containing these ballads, which represent the poet in his most disdainful mood of the accepted poetical methods, represents him also in his docile mood of almost academic "correctness," content to move in familiar ways of art. The sustained magnificence of diction in "France, December, 1870," recalls the historical accents of our English speech, the English language as written by its greatest masters, as we have grown to love and hope to preserve it. The gods alone Remember everlastingly; they strike Remorselessly, and ever like for like. By their great memories the gods are known. Lo, strength is of the plain root-virtues born; Strength shall ye gain by service, prove in This is the English of Milton, and Southey, and Wordsworth, the English that speaks the character and power of the English race. It is evidently not because Mr. Meredith finds it beyond his power to write a simple and direct style that he indulges in the style characteristic of him. In "France," and in that remarkable series of poems entitled "Modern Love," he moves with ease and dignity within the strictest traditions of poetic diction, and if the latter exhibits any obscurities, they are cer 1 Ballads and Poems of Tragic Life, pp. 117, 119, 126. The works of ancient art, said SaintBeuve, "ne sont pas classiques parce qu'ils sont vieux, mais parce qu'ils sont énergiques, frais et dispos." "Modern Love" is a series of sonnets-we may call them sonnets-modern in phrase, modern in sentiment, modern in their treatment of a subject unknown to ancient art, yet if Sainte-Beuve be right, then is Mr. Meredith, the author of "Modern Love," already a classic. On the appearance of this poem in 1862, the Spectator spoke of the author as dealing here with "a deep and painful subject upon which he has no convictions to express." But the aim of Mr. Meredith's art is neither to persuade nor to tranquillize. He is neither a concise doctrinaire with ready-made conclusious for his readers, nor the type of poet who affords agreeable shelter for the imagination from the strain and the stress of life. Throughout his poetry this strain and stress is exhibited; the fingers of the artist are upon the pulse of the modern world. The web and woof of Mr. Meredith's poetry is its resolute devotion to the conditions that are present, his achievement as a poet is the singular exactness with which these conditions are presented by him, and elevated to poetic rank. He has extracted inspiration from conditions which seemed incapable of supplying inspiration, which seemed hostile to it, and from the dull or commonplace or disquieting aspects of life has rescued the stimulus or interest which, properly approached and viewed by the artist, they offer. Sedatives are abundantly supplied in the poetry of our day and generation, in the poetry, for ample, of Mr. William Morris; in its ex tonic properties consists the virtue of Mr. Meredith's poetry. It kindles energy because energy is its preponderating quality, and if he has not cared to provide for his readers the graces and harmonies to which they have grown accustomed, compensations are not wanting. Let it be granted that the familiar accessories of color and rhythm and impassioned feeling are subservient to the heart of thought. Thought is his familiar, and finds him in every mood; finds him intense and eager, finds him |