Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/165

STODDARD'S POEMS with novel or grotesque rhythm. No one but Stoddard could have written the solemn and mystical "Invocation," or the Holbeinish "Catch" which follows it, and each is remarkable in its kind. "Rome" and "Cæsar," companion pieces, are no less original in conception and execution. But of all the poems one, "Why Stand ye Gazing into Heaven?" is the most impassioned and yet the most unsatisfying—the voice not of an infant, but of an earnest, strong man

It is the despair of the modern Lucretius. We know too much and too little; have shaken off blind superstition and fables new or old, and now stand eager for some new revelation yet to come. The cry comes from the depths of a resolute heart. When we long to say to the poet, "Look upward," he makes us feel that he is too self-pitiless to accept comfort from that of which his reason knoweth not.

The solemnity of a large number of these poems is very marked. They are not written in a minor key, but are both profound and sad—the utterances of a chastened spirit who has gone through the period at which men like Clough strive to read the problem of life, and is content to do his work and leave the rest to that Power we do not comprehend. The tone to which we refer may be distasteful to some, but there are many readers even of modern poetry whose own hearts sooner would lead them to the house of  [151]