Page:Poems, Alexander Pushkin, 1888.djvu/61

Rh of fond, but inexperienced parents, suffocated in its wrappage.

36. This measuredness Pushkin displays best in his narrative poems. His story moves. His "Delibash" is the finest example of rapidity of execution combined with fidelity of skill. And the vividness of his stories in "The Drowned," "The Roussalka," and "The Cossak," is due not so much to the dramatic talent Pushkin doubtless possessed as to the sense of proportion which saved him from loading his narrative with needless detail. Gray's "Elegy," for instance, matchless in its beauty, is marred by the needless appendage of the youth himself. This part of the poem seems patched on. Wordsworth's "Lucy Gray" seems to justify Goldsmith's bold metaphor,—for it does drag a lengthening chain at each remove. Longfellow's "Prelude" has like "Sartor Resartus" a most unwieldy apparatus for getting ready. The poet there is ever ready to say something, but hardly says it even at the end. And even Tennyson, who at one time did know what it was to keep fine poise in such matters, is frequently guilty of this merely getting ready to say his say.

37. These, then, are the three great virtues of Pushkin's poems: They have sincere