Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/300

270 of beauty and art at first was all in all, although such poems as "Locksley Hall" and "The Sisters"—such a line as that from the former,—

showed him capable of taking up the "Harp of Life." Throughout his long idyllic reign, he grew upon the whole more impassioned in thought and dramatic conception,—yet the proof of this is not found in his dramas, but in portions of "In Memoriam," in powerful studies like "Lucretius" and "Rizpah," and in the second part of "Locksley Hall." Great poets confront essentials as they approach their earthly resolution.

Thus far I have referred only to the emotion of The objective creation of impassioned types. the poet's own soul, often the more intense and specific from its limits of range. The creative masters give us all the hues of life's "dome of many-colored glass," as caught from their interior points of view. What is life but the speech and action of us all, under stress of countless motives and always of that blind emotion which Schopenhauer termed the World-Will? It is at the beck of the strong invoker that these modes of feeling come arrayed for action, and not in single spies, but far more various than the passions which Collins's Muse drew around her cell. Such are the throes of Homer's personages within and without the walls of Troy. The intense and natural