Page:The Fleshly school of poetry - Buchanan - 1872.djvu/54

 circumstance of its composition, I feel that such an account of the poem is inadmissible. It does not contain one single note of sorrow. It is a "composition," and a clever one. Read the opening stanzas:—

The blessed damozel leaned out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of water stilled at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven.

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No wrought flowers did adorn, But a white rose of Mary's gift, For service meetly worn; Her hair that lay along her back Was yellow like ripe corn."

This is a careful sketch for a picture, which, worked into actual colour by a master, might have been worth seeing. The steadiness of hand lessens as the poem proceeds, and although there are several passages of considerable power,—such as that where, far down the void,

"this earth Spins like a fretful midge,"

or that other, describing how

"the curled moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf,"—

the general effect is that of a queer old painting on a missal, very affected and very odd. What moved the British criticaster to ecstasy in this poem seems to me very sad nonsense indeed, or, if not sad nonsense, very meretricious