Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/23

Rh cannot transmute into the frail and gracious loveliness which feeds his senses. When he erects a Palace of Art and hangs up some paintings of the poets, Shakespeare figures under the semblance of one 'bland and mild.' Tennyson likes him bland and mild: it is so much nicer, you know, than strenuous and heart-sick, and this is his criticism of literature. Dark hours, however, will fall upon all of us, and then there begins the sombre dialogue of 'The Two Voices.' When the dark hour passes, he goes out into the fields, and, as he is feeling considerably better, he is at once aware that 'altho' no tongue can prove, every cloud that spreads above and veileth love, itself is love.' And, therefore, he 'marvels how the mind can be brought to anchor by one gloomy thought,' and this is his criticism on life. No thought, no ideas either way: merely the appeal to sensations. Round about him there is much worry and outcry on the part of what he calls 'the people.' They seemed dissatisfied with their lot. They say they are wretched, and they seem to think they ought not to be. Well—

'Two parties still divide the world, Of those that want and those that have, and still The same old sore breaks out from age to age With much the same result';

and this is his criticism on the social problem.