Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/213

Rh We ask with sighs and tears, but would we have it otherwise? If Poe was wrong in restricting poetry to the voices of sorrow and regret, he was right, methinks, in feeling these to be among the most effectual of lyrical values. The word Irreparable suggests a yearning as infinite as that for the Unattainable, under the spell of which Richter fled as from a passion too intense to bear. Yes; From Cory's "Ionica." the sweetest sound in music is "a dying fall." "Mimnermus in Church" weighs the preacher's adjuration, and makes an impetuous reply:

Among priceless lyrics from the Greek anthology to our own, those of joy and happy love and hope are fair indeed, but those which haunt the memory turn upon the escape—not the retention—of that which is "rich and strange." Their charm is poignant, yet ineffable. The consecration of such enduring melody to regret for the beloved, whose swift, inexplicable transits leave us dreaming of all they might have been, is the voice of our desire that their work, even though perfecting in some unknown region, may not wholly fail upon earth,—that their death may not be quite untimely.

How subtile the effect, even in its English