* * * * *
And now, behold! a shadow of repose
Upon a line of gray,
She sleeps, that transverse cuts the evening rose--
She sleeps, and dreams away,
Soft blended in a unity of rest
All jars, and strifes obscene, and turbulent throes,
'Neath the broad benediction of the West.
Shelley finds the suggestion of distance in beautiful music:
Though the sound overpowers,
Sing again, with thy sweet voice revealing
A tone
Of some world far from ours,
Where music and moonlight and feeling
Are one.
Wordsworth hears it in the song of the Highland Girl:
Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago.
These quotations are enough to show what a width of view is given to
modern Romantic poetry. Man is, in one sense, more truly seen in a wide
setting of the mountains and the sea than close at hand in the street.
But the romantic effect of distance may delude and conceal as well as
glorify and liberate. The weakness of the modern Romantic poet is that
he must keep himself aloof from life, that he may see it. He rejects the
authority, and many of the pleasures, along with the duties, of society.
He looks out from his window on the men fighting in the plain, and sees
them transfigured under the rays of the setting sun. He enjoys the
battle, but not as the fighters enjoy it.
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