Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/279

Rh

Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass,

But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

A stream went voiceless by, still deaden'd more

By reason of his fallen divinity

Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds

Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips."

At the outset of English poetry, Chaucer's imagination is sane, clear-sighted, wholesome Chaucer. with open-air feeling and truth to life. Spenser is the poet's poet chiefly as an artist. The allegory of "The Faerie Queene" is not like that of Dante, forged at white heat, but the symbolism of a courtier and euphuist who felt its unreality. But all in all, the Elizabethan period displays the English The Elizabethans. imagination at full height. Marlowe and Webster, for example, give out fitful but imaginative light which at times is of kindred splendor with Shakespeare's steadfast beam. Webster's "Duchess of Malfi" teaches both the triumphs and the dangers of the dramatic fury. The construction runs riot; certain characters are powerfully conceived, others are wild figments of the brain. It is full of most fantastic speech and action; yet the tragedy, the passion, the felicitous language and imagery of various scenes, are nothing less than Shakespearean. To comprehend rightly the good and bad qualities of this play is to have gained a liberal education in poetic criticism.

Now take a collection of English verse,—and there is no poetry more various and inclusive,—take, let us say, Ward's "English Poets," and you