Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/208

178 less value than faith and works without love. The vox humana must be heard. That alone can give quality to a poem; the most refined and artistic verse is cold and forceless without it. A soulless poem is a stained-glass window with the light shining on and not through it.

Since a high emotion cannot be sustained too Mill's canon, afterwards sustained by Poe. long without changing from a rapture to a pang, many have declared that the phrase "a long poem " is a misnomer. Undoubtedly, concentration of feeling must be followed by depression or repose. The fire that burns fiercely soon does its work. Yet he who conceives and makes a grand tragedy or epic so relieves his work with interludes and routine that the reader moves as from wave to wave across a great water. It may be, as alleged, a succession of short poems, but these are interwrought as by one of nature's processes for the building of a master-work. However, let me select the beauty of a short and lyric poem, as the kind about which there is no dispute, for the only type which I can here consider.

Lyrical beauty does not necessarily depend upon Lyrical beauty: the obvious repetends and singing-bars of a song or regular lyric. The purest lyrics are not of course songs; the stanzaic effect, the use of open vowel sounds, and other matters instinctive with song-makers, need not characterize them. What they must have is quality. That their rhythmic and verbal expression appeals supremely to the