Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/118

 he may be said to have joined in the battle he hated, and to have helped the world.

Might he not have escaped from the trouble of the present, and his own in it, by falling in love? Most men, most poets certainly, pass in youth through a period in which love leads them out of themselves, and opens the gates of that vast and shining realm of self-forgetfulness where art has built her noblest palace. We may not say that youthful love-passion brings a man into that excelling realm, or leads an artist into its inner shrine. A larger, a mightier expansion of love is needed for that high citizenship—a love which passes beyond one woman or one man to embrace nature, and man, and God; but we may say that love-passion opens the gates of this kingdom, gives us our first experience of loss of self, and affords a fleeting vision of the glory it may he to lose ourselves in the whole of Love.

Arnold had but little, it seems, of that young experience. It was not the natural outcome of his character or of the character of Clough. This, too, was a pity. Had they had more of the usual love-passion of youth, they would much sooner have learnt the great lesson they needed so much, of not thinking of themselves. Only here and there, by fits and starts, and always mixed with retreats on his own soul, love seems to have come to Arnold in his poetry. And his few love-poems, half of the woman and half of himself, form a sort of transition between poems about himself