Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/151

Rh example of voice and vision conditioned by the temperament of their possessor. Objective Byron the typical subjective poet. poetry, being native to the youth of a race before self-torturing sophistry has wrought bewilderment, seemingly should appeal to the youth of an individual. And thus it does, but to the youngest youth,—that of a wonder-loving child, whom the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," or Scott's epical romances, delight, and who can make little of metrical sentimentalism. The world-weary veteran also finds it a refreshment; his arrogance has been lessened, and he has been taught that his griefs and dreams are but the common lot.

Yet it is plain that subjective poetry, if sensuous and passionate, strongly affects susceptible The ferment of new wine. natures at a certain stage of immaturity. Now that town life is everywhere, we see the Wertherism of former days replaced by a kind of jejune æstheticism, with its own peculiar affectation of wit and indifference. But to the secluded youth, not yet concerned with action and civic life, subjective poetry still makes a mysterious appeal. Sixty years ago the young poet of the period, consciously or otherwise, became a Childe Harold, among men, "but not of them;" one who had "not loved the world, nor the world" him. He found a mild dissipation in contemplating his fancied miseries, and was a tragic personage in his own eyes, and usually a coxcomb in those of the unfeeling neighborhood. This mock-heroic pose, so often without