Page:Essays and Studies - Swinburne (1875).pdf/167

 and keener, he has inherited the soothing force of speech and simple stroke of hand with which Wordsworth assuaged and healed the weariness and the wounds of his time; to his hands the same appeasing spells and sacred herbs that fell from the other's when they relaxed in death have been committed by the gods of healing song. The elder physician of souls had indeed something too much of Æsculapius in him, something too little of Apollo his father; nevertheless the lineal and legitimate blood was apparent.

This elegy and the poem headed "Resignation" are in my eyes the final flower of Mr. Arnold's poems after Wordsworth—as I take leave to qualify a certain division of his work, The second of these is an unspotted and unbroken model of high calm thought couched in pure and faultless words; the words more equal and the vision more clear than his old teacher's, more just in view and more sure in grasp of nature and life. Imbued with the old faith at once in the necessity of things and in the endurance of man, it excels in beauty and in charm the Kindred song of Empedocles; from first to last there rests upon it a serene spell, a sad supremacy of still music that softens and raises into wisdom the passionless and gentle pain of patience; the charm of earth and sorrowful magic of things everlasting; the spell that is upon the patient hills and immutable rocks, at work and asleep in "the life of plants and stones and rain"; the life to which we too may subdue our souls and be wise. At times he writes simply as the elder poet might have written, without sensible imitation, but with absolute identity of style and sentiment; at times his larger tone