Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/64



These happier, more hopeful words belong to 1849. He died in 1861. A kinder, gentler, more delicate soul has rarely lived among us. The Tennyson children used to call him the Angel-child. His fantastical spirit, his finer thought which would have liked to have danced on life's common way, the Ariel in him, would seem to have fitted him for fairyland, were it not that the sore trouble of the world, and the mystery of God's way with it, were, in that tempest-tossed time, too much for him. He was forced to enter the battle with eyes which saw too many things at the same time. The confusion might have overwhelmed him, but the other side of his nature came to his help. His light-heartedness, it is true, departed, save at happy intervals, but he never allowed its absence to