Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/456

428 the ancients. And although he is a teller of tales, he is dramatic in the higher sense, in that he writes without a conscience. For when Jason comes to love Creusa, he glides into his new passion so easily, so naturally it seems so inevitable that the beauty and the allurements of this fair girl and the circumstances under which they are brought together should end in his enthralment, that we—we men, at least—cannot look upon him as guilty; while Medea, with her love-born hatred of the fresh-hearted, innocent beauty who has won what she has lost, with her incantations and her poisoned garments, becomes, in spite of her grief and her grandeur, a hideous witch.

Our new poet deals very boldly and simply with love, of which his "Earthly Paradise" is full, bringing with it descriptions rich with sensuous beauty. He does not refine upon love and make of it an intellectual game or a moral problem. His lovers look at each other and love; their eyes ask and answer a mutual question. Perhaps of all the poems in "The Earthly Paradise" that which tells the story of Cupid and Psyche is the most admirable, the most daintily sensuous, the richest in those clearly and strongly-imagined scenes of various beauty which are the chief charm of this delightful volume. One of these scenes, not very interesting for the incident which it relates, is yet very impressive for the sharp sense of reality which is conveyed by the poet's clear imagination, and his ability to impress upon others what his mind's eye so clearly sees Psyche finds herself in the wonderful golden house of her unknown, unseen lover. She has wandered through it, wrapt in admiration, and has begun to lose her fear of its strangeness as her sensitive nature is absorbed in her enjoyment of its marvellous beauty. After hearing a song of welcome, sung by an invisible choir, she enters a tessellated chamber, in which there is a bath.

That would seem rather like the relation of an actual occurrence by the actor in it, than the dream of a poet, did we not know how sharply real the dreams of real poets are. It brought up at once to us the memory of a woman, who, under like circumstances, would surely become thus the prey of her own fancy—one who with Psyche's nature seems like her in the poet's words, "the soul of innocent desire." In this poem we have evidence that, given up to his delight, as the author is, in physical beauty, he is able to read the nature to which it is as often a mask as an outward manifestation, and that he is not to be bribed by its allurements into any unfaithfulness to the truth of nature.

Poor Psyche, according to the old story, wanders into the precincts of her archenemy Venus herself, who straightway begins to torment her rival in beauty, who has thus stumbled into her power. There, in an enchanting plesaunce, she has the poor girl whipped by stalwart Amazons, until "like red flame she saw the trees and ground." And then comes this fine touch:

Admirable, and not exaggerated picture of a cold, cruel beauty, the cruellest and most coldly selfish of all created things. In portraying moods of mind our new poet is no less skilful than in his descriptions of passing scenes and his revelations of character. Psyche, weary and worn, sinks down in a swoon upon the banks of the Styx,

had not the Phoenix seen her, and for pity of her sweet face borne the news of her whereabout to Cupid, who flies to her, and rouses her by words of love, and assurances that now she shall be his, and share his divinity forever.

But we must bring to a speedy end our