Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/127

 early northern poems. It is not a true Norse poem, yet it drags in so much of the northern mythology that the mind of the reader is dissipated away from the main subject. Some of the descriptions, however, like that of Hodur visiting Frea when night had fallen on the streets of Asgard, have a pictorial excellence. What Arnold has well seized—in spite of the excess of description—is the human emotion in the story, the bitter grief of Hodur for his unconscious slaying of Balder, the grief of Balder's wife, and Balder's love for her, the eagerness of the gods to get Balder back, the union of Balder and Nanna in Hela's realm, their happiness together in that shadowy place where even passion is thin; the farewell of Hodur to Balder when they part to meet no more till the Twilight of the gods. The last ride of Hermon to Hela's reign, his meeting with Hodur, the prophecy of Balder, his weariness of blood and war which half reconciles him to the world of the dead, the picture of the new world of peace for which he waits—this is the finest part of the poem, but, on the whole, the subject was outside of Arnold nor has he at all grasped its significance. Nevertheless, being thus outside of him, we are saved in it from the trouble of his soul.

Tristram and Iseult I have partly characterised. It does not cling and knit itself into its subject as ivy round and into the oak. It swims about it like a fish, hither and thither. Anything—the tapestry, the storm, the firelight, the bed curtains, the dress of the