Page:The Poetry of Dante Rossetti by Hall Caine.pdf/5

 of its successful painter-brother. They are, as Professor Dowden has said in another connection, the work of the elder brother who with high traditions of soul is living upon his little patrimony, secluded, meditative, thinking his own thought, dreaming his own dream and letting the world go by. They are the labour of love and more than twenty years. "Jenny" was begun in 1850, when Mr. Rossetti was twenty-two years old, and finished in 1861. The intervening period saw the creation of a picture of kindred theme, and the poem caught something from the picture, and the picture took something from the poem. Throughout ten years, when the mood was strong upon him, this great work was touched by the light hand of the master. "Last Confession" occupied 1853, and "Sister Helen" 1858. The love-sonnets covered almost the twenty years between 1850 and the date of the volume. Truly, these poems are the outcome of long and loving labour, and in order to be valued to the full measure of their worth should be read as long and lovingly. They should, too, be read, as far as may be, by the light of the sustained ardour that produced them. Only so may their native flowerage be seen. But where the even current of men's lives knows nothing of the fluctuation of their subtle emotion, the charm of their art and magic will not fail. After the high pressure of serious labour they bring clearness and brightness and glow, and their pure beauty haunts again the heavier hours with the radiance of its presence.

And now I wish to traverse hastily a few general considerations on two aspects of Mr. Rossetti's genius. First, a few thoughts on Mr. Rossetti as an artist. The volume of his poems contains songs, narrative pieces, ballads and sonnets. We will glance at each of these in what I conceive to be the rightful order in which I have written them. Every poet should be first a singer; song should be the basis of his art. It is idle to urge that some poets who have attained excellence in sustained and elaborate forms of verse, have been deficient in purely lyrical quality. Actors have succeeded in Hamlet who would not have been tolerated in Horatio, and the result has been due to a flood of auxiliaries not their own. None the less is it an actor's business to learn to sustain the weight of subsidiary characterisation, or the poet's art to bear the burden of sweet music. Song writing requires, first, that its words should live in the air (which is properly its heritage) and make the music of sound, not of sight; next, that its affluent speech should be wedded to its golden