Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/297

Rh and the "Battle Hymn of the Republic." It is the passion of Lowell's "Memorial Odes" that so lifts their rhythm and argument. With Poe, beauty was a passion, but always hovering with Exquisite sadness and enraptured joy. strange light above some haunted tomb. Emerson exhibits the intensity of joy as he listens to nature's "perfect rune." On the one side we have Poe avowing that the "tone" of the highest manifestations of beauty is one of sadness. "Beauty of whatever kind," he said, "in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears." This is the key-note of our romanticism, of which there has been no more sensitive exemplar than Poe,—Grecian as he was at times in his sense of form. But far more Grecian, in temper and philosophy, was Emerson, who found the poet's royal trait to be his cheerfulness, without which "no man can be a poet, for beauty is his aim. &hellip; Beauty, the spirit of joy and hilarity, he sheds upon the universe." What diverse interpretations, each a lesson to those who would limit the uncharted range of feeling and art! Yet it is easy to comprehend what Poe meant, and to confess that mortal joy is less intense of expression than mortal grief. And it was Emerson himself who, in his one outburst Emerson's "Threnody." of sorrow, gave us the most impassioned of American lyrics, the "Threnody" for his lost child,—his "hyacinthine boy." This free and noble poem—even for its structural beauty, so uncommon in Emerson's work—must rank with