Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/110

 the charm, the dignity, and the peace of the past. "Rejoice in this," the new men cry, as the shepherd was bid to rejoice in the stormy riot of the Bacchanals.

"Ah," says the poet, "the shepherd thought the hush and quiet beautiful, and I feel the past while I live in the present. Lovely was the silence, the hush of the world, when but a few were great, and men loved them; when what was excellence was known."

And Progress, another poem of warning, tells the new world (which has thrown the old religion overboard) to take care not to lose with its loss the fire within, not to perish of cold, There is no religion which God has tot loved, which has not taught weak wills how much they can do, which has not let soft rain fall on the dry heart, and cried to self-weary men, "Ye must be born again." Keep these things. It is not in the pride of life that the New Age should excel; it is not for its noisy movement that we should be chiefly glad:

These things are written in a loftier, truer, wiser music than his melancholy, troubled harp could sing twenty years before. I trust I have not dwelt on them too long for my readers' patience. But the story is valuable because it is not only the history of a single soul, but the history of thousands of thoughtful English folk in those days between 1840 and 1870, when the discoveries of science and criticism, and the new