Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/24

 full-voiced birds to sing in its trees. The democratic ideas, in a new form and fitted to existing circumstances, began to burn again in the poetry, the philosophy, the religion, the social and political realms of England. Deep-seated, wide-spreading emotion, accompanied by serious thinking, stirred the country and the towns, even the universities; and the deaf opposition of the baser conservative elements in society only deepened the excitement. The state of the oppressed and starving poor, whether in the country or in the towns, awoke the wrath of Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer, and in 1827 his passionate poetic indictment of the shameless wealth and comfort, brought by the misery of the workers, ran far and wide, He, like Wordsworth and Crabbe, was the poet of poverty. But he carried it farther than these men, He began the crusade against its evils which has continued to the present day. The return to Nature which Wordsworth sang was good; but Elliott asked, "What have the poor to return to? The life they live is wholly unnatural, not according to Nature." Nor has the voice his poetry began ever failed since, till quite lately, in English song. A cloud like a man's hand was rising, full of menacing fire, into the dead grey sky of England. The democratic ideas were at work again, and their first instalment was the Emancipation of the Catholics, the Reform Bill, and the Repeal of the Corn Laws, events which were the pioneers of a mighty progress. They stirred England to its depths.