eBooks Base 2000

]
but one needs specific instructions for interpretation of the poetic
topography to which Whitman alludes. What are the poet's distinguishing
features?
Meditating on the subject, one finds his irreverent thoughts inevitably
wandering to hair, but in verse taken up with hirsute descriptions,
there is a false note. It makes itself felt in Mrs. Browning's picture
of Keats,
The real Adonis, with the hymeneal
Fresh vernal buds half sunk between
His youthful curls.
[Footnote: _A Vision of Poets_.]
It is obnoxious in Alexander Smith's portrait of his hero,
A lovely youth,
With dainty cheeks, and ringlets like a girl's.
[Footnote: _A Life Drama_.]
And in poorer verse it is unquotable. [Footnote: See Henry Timrod, _A
Vision of Poesy_ (1898); Frances Fuller, _To Edith May_ (1851);
Metta Fuller, _Lines to a Poetess_ (1851).] Someone has pointed out
that decadent poetry is always distinguished by over-insistence upon the
heroine's hair, and surely sentimental verse on poets is marked by the
same defect.


Pages:
84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108