Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/138



The poem on the Brontës, Haworth Churchyard, is scarcely up to the level of its subject, but that on Heine is of a different and a finer quality. It does not seize the whole of Heine, but it touches his youth and happiness with grace, and his manhood, in its mockery and agony, with so sympathetic a pity that the very censure seems part of the pity. The misery of Heine's life made most impression on Arnold, and he seems to trace it to an inborn root of bitterness. He quotes, with approval, Goethe's phrase concerning some poet, and applies it to Heine, "that he had every other gift, but wanted love," love which is "the fountain of charm-charm, the glory that makes the