Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/121

 remarkable are Faded Leaves, Euphrosyne, Calais Sands, and the series addressed to Marguerite. The poems entitled Faded Leaves, in which all the love is unhappy, "too late or separated, or despairing or longing," should not, I think, have been kept among the collected poems. The subject is plainly worked up and chosen from the outside. Their workmanship is weak; unfortunate phrases jar the lyric sense; there is none of the naturalness of love in the series, save in one verse of the last poem. His artistic sense is scarcely born in these poems, and his longing for quiet intrudes its philosophy curiously and unhappily into them. They must have been a very youthful effort, yet, if they were so, what a curious. youth! As to Euphrosyne, it is better done. Browning would have liked its motive. This is sufficiently given in the last verse:—

Calais Sands comes nearer to reality, but its close remains obscure. Whether the lover is to live always apart in a silent worship, as in one verse—or to be happy in meeting his sweetheart, as in the last verse—we cannot know. One motive or the other should have been chosen and completed.

No one can tell whether the series addressed to Marguerite, and entitled Switzerland, records a real