Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/130

 a passion rare in Arnold, half for himself, half for the sorrow of the world. But far the best of these Hellenic things is the Strayed Reveller. This is a piece of pure creation with full invention flowing through it in happy ease. The scene is vividly pictured. The palace, the court, the fountain, the forest, and the hills around the palace, are clothed in the Greek beauty and clearness. We breathe that pellucid air, and see the Reveller in the dewy twilight, and Circe in the palace porch, and Ulysses, "the spare, dark-featured, quick-eyed stranger" coming from the pillared hall. This pictorial power charms us through the poem. The Reveller, half drugged into vision by Circe's wine, describes, with a conciseness and illumination which save it from the merely picturesque, a bright procession of countries, men, and the works of men—a "wild, thronging train of eddying forms" sweeping through his soul. But it is not mere description. Good matter of thought lies. at the centre of the poem. The youth tells what the happy gods see:—Tiresias the prophet, the Centaurs on Pelion, the Indian drifting on the mountain lake among his melon beds, the Scythian on the wide steppe, the merchants ferrying over the lone Chorasmian stream, the heroes sailing in Argo;—and the gods rejoice, pleased as men in a theatre with the stream of human life passing them by, where, unconcerned, they sit at ease.

The poet sees the same things, but not in the same way. He has to bear what he sees, to feel