Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/25

 Men could no longer complain that there was no national passion in the country; and this national passion for new ideas fled, like an angel with wings of fire, over the brains and into the souls of the old men who saw visions and the young men who dreamed dreams, 'Those who were by nature poets received the national emotion, and it stimulated their own. They woke to use both these emotions on their own subjects,—and before four years had passed by Tennyson and Browning began the new life of English poetry. Nor was religion unaffected, Just at the same time these poets began, two great religious movements took their rise. Liberal theology began with Maurice; sacerdotal theology with Keble and Newman. One only of these movements had at first a poet, but he had already written in Oxford, in 1827, The Christian Year. Both movements were full of passion and thought. Both have not only deeply influenced England, but have also done her great and lasting good; and both illustrate afresh the work of the ideas of the Revolution—the one in its attraction to those ideas; the other in its repulsion from them. Thus England emerged from her vile condition of careless and heavy slumber full of sensual dreams. And with her waking, Poetry awoke. And the light of Thought was in her eyes, and the fire of Love in her heart, and of them was Beauty born.

Elliott and Keble were the precursors of this awakening. Elliott began as a poet of Nature. "Farewell," he cried, "to the town and its horrors; let me live