Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/153

 the desolate inn and the gaunt landlord on the ridge of the snow-clad pass. The rest have perished. But his father would not be saved alone, but gave his life to bring those that were lost safe to the goal. And from this he passes to describe in lofty phrase those others, servants and sons of God, through whom it is that mankind still has faith and strength enough to march on to the City of God. This is indeed a change from the days when he only thought of his own soul.

Then the famous passage in the poem on Heine's Grave on the Titan toil of England shows how he felt beyond himself the building pains of a nation. This dignified passage is lightened and enlightened by his delicate description of Heine's youth and his sympathy with his joy; and finally all the poem is made to thrill with its final thought concerning all humanity (thrown back from the end into all that precedes it)—that the Spirit in whom man exists has made each of us the revealer of one or more of His thoughts, discloses through us the infinite variety of His Being. It is a leading thought of Fichte's, a thought that arises in many, and that arose, I have no doubt uncommunicated, in the soul of Arnold.

The Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse, represent, as I have already said, a partial reaction from the wider, brighter view he now takes of the world to the trouble of his own life and spirit; but as they develop, they also pass from self-consideration into consideration of the fate of the world of men, and of those who shared