Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/126

 weeping for, but enduring with a constant mind, the worse the gods can inflict; till we feel that man is nobler than the gods—till we know that the gods whom man has previously created must be replaced by a new creation. The poem closes in a lonely beauty. The son and the father lie alone on the plain as night falls, between the mourning hosts, none daring to intrude. The dark heaven alone is their tent, and their sorrow their shroud. And we hear the deep river flowing by, the image of the destiny of man that bears us on, helpless, on its breast, until, with it, we find the sea.

Balder Dead is by no means so fine a poem. It is almost absurdly Homerised. It is far too long, and made too long by irrelevant matter and descriptions, and by repetitions. It is curiously inartistic. In it, however, Arnold had found out that he was too lavish of his similes. Moreover, his temper of mind was quite apart from that of the North. He must have been incapable of apprehending it, or he would never have written this poem in this fashion. He tries for the masculine simplicity of the North, but he does not gain it; there are even times when his elaborate simplicity verges towards the ridiculous, as in the description of the daily battle and feast in Valhalla. Odin —and it would be to his blank amazement—is turned into the Zeus of Homer, and Frea speaks like Hera grown very old; and excessively curious this talk sounds to any one who cares for the northern sagas or the