Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/99

 had an undying interest in himself as an epitome of man.

I will touch on a few of them. One, entitled Human Life, glances, in spite of its important title, at only one experience of life. We would fain steer our ship as we please, and not by the inward law. But we cannot live, we are compelled not to live, by chance impulse. As the ship leaves behind it the waves it divides, so we leave behind the joys not designed for us, the friends not destined to be ours. Unknown powers direct our course as they will, not as we will. This is only one small fragment of the riddle of human life. Its title is a misnomer.

Then he asks himself in a well-written sonnet: Shall I be glad, when I am growing old, that the heats of youth are left behind and I at peace? No, I shall wish its agitations, fire, and desire back again, and sigh that nothing is left to youth and age save discontent. This is a common human cry, but it belongs only to one type of men, and even they do not feel its passion, save at intervals. Browning and Tennyson would not have come to that conclusion, nor the lovers of mankind, It also is only a fragment of the problem.

In Self-Deception we have another fragment. We think we have great powers, and expect to realise their ends. We may have had them in an antenatal world, and been as eager then to use them towards their perfection as we are now. But the Great Power who gave us them, imposed on us a rigid law, and the