Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/324

294 tried to form some ritual of which it felt the need. But such a poem of earth and heaven is not to be made deliberately. The sincere agnostic must be content with his not inglorious isolation; he must barter the rapture and beauty and hope of such a liturgy for his faith in something different, something compensatory, perchance a future and still more world-wide brotherhood of men.

Until this new faith, or some fresh interpretation Tenebræ. of past belief, becomes vital in action, becomes more operative, the highest flight of poetry will be timidly essayed. The songs of those who are crying, "They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him!" will be little else than tenebræ—cries out of the darkness, impassioned, it may be, but hardly forceful or creative. Arnold and Clough. I have spoken of Arnold and Clough, the conspicuously honest, noble, intellectual poets of the transition period. Just as far as their faith extended, their verse rests firmly in art and beauty, love, and nobility of purpose. But much of it comes from troubled hearts; its limits are indicated by a spirit of unrest—limits which Arnold was too sure and fine a self-critic not to perceive; so that, after he had reached them,—which was not until he had given us enduring verse, and shown how elevated was his gift,—he ceased to sing, and set himself resolutely to face the causes of his unrest, and to hasten, through his prose investigations,