Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/68

 6o INTRODUCTION

in one, is easily discernible in Ingersoll's letter, and still more in Randall's poems. They had not derived it from Goethe. It was the natural product of their own minds ; it was the bond of intellectual sympathy between the youthful friends, the foundation of common tastes, the inspiration of common studies and efforts and dreams of future work. Whoever thinks with Goethe that Nature is essentially Artist-Work {Vielgebilde), and that human Art is the expression of True Meaning {Simi der WaJirJieit) in the form of Imaginative Loveliness {sick mir mii Schonem schmiickt), will find Goethe's idea quite unconsciously re- produced in Randall's "The Poet : Fourth Treatment," and still more strikingly in "The Nuptials: or, Marriage of the True and the Beautiful," — which in its exquisite simplicity has always seemed to me a well-nigh perfect lyric, and perhaps the poet's most melodious expression of his own ideal.

There is very little that I can say of Randall's early days. He used to talk of them at great length and with almost startling freedom, but in such a way that I never clearly knew how much was literal truth and how much was ironical or bantering exaggeration. That his whole boyhood and youth had been embittered by unhappy

Dieses ist der Sinn der Wahrheit, Der sich nur tnii SchoJtem schmiickt,

Und getrost der hdchsten KLxrlieit Hellstefi Tags entgegenblickt.

Carlyle's version of this stanza, which may well have been the origin of Teiifelsdrockh and his Clothes- Philosophy, is as follows : —

A s all Nature's thousand chaiiges

But one changeless God proclaim, So in A rt's wide kingdoms ranges

Ofie sole meaning still the same ; This is Truth, eternal Reason,

IVhich/rom Beauty takes its dress, And serene through time and season

Stands/or aye in lozieliness.

�� �