St. Agnes' Eve.
In Keats's _St. Agnes' Eve_ nothing is white but the heroine. It is
winter, and 'bitter chill'; the hare 'limps trembling through the frozen
grass; the owl is a-cold for all his feathers; the beadsman's fingers are
numb, his breath is frosted; and at an instant of special and peculiar
romance
'The frost-wind blows
Like Love's alarum, pattering the sharp sleet
Against the window-panes.'
But there is no snow. The picture is pure colour: it blushes with blood
of queens and kings; it glows with 'splendid dyes,' like the
'tiger-moth's deep-damasked wings'--with 'rose bloom,' and warm gules,'
and 'soft amethyst'; it is loud with music and luxurious with 'spiced
dainties,' with lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon,' with 'manna and
dates,' the fruitage of Fez and 'cedared Lebanon' and 'silken Samarcand.'
Now, the Laureate's _St. Agnes' Eve_ is an ecstasy of colourless
perfection. The snows sparkle on the convent roof; the 'first snowdrop'
vies with St. Agnes' virgin bosom; the moon shines an 'argent round' in
the 'frosty skies'; and in a transport of purity the lady prays:
'Break up thy heavens, O Lord! and far,
Through all the starlight keen,
Draw me thy bride, a glittering star,
In raiment white and clean.'
It is all coldly, miraculously stainless: as somebody has said, 'la vraie
_Symphonie en Blanc Majeur_.'
Indian Summer.
And at four-score the poet of _St. Agnes' Eve_ is still our greatest
since the Wordsworth of certain sonnets and the two immortal odes: is
still the one Englishman of whom it can be stated and believed that
Elisha is not less than Elijah. His verse is far less smooth and less
lustrous than in the well-filed times of _In Memoriam_ and the Arthurian
idylls. But it is also far more plangent and affecting; it shows a
larger and more liberal mastery of form and therewith a finer, stronger,
saner sentiment of material; in its display of breadth and freedom in
union with particularity, of suggestiveness with precision, of swiftness
of handling with completeness of effect, it reminds you of the later
magic of Rembrandt and the looser and richer, the less artful-seeming but
more ample and sumptuous, of the styles of Shakespeare. And the matter
is worthy of the manner. Everywhere are greatness and a high imagination
moving at ease in the gold armour of an heroic style. There are passages
in _Demeter and Persephone_ that will vie with the best in _Lucretius_;
_Miriam_ is worth a wilderness of _Aylmer's Fields_; _Owd Roa_ is one of
the best of the studies in dialect; in _Happy_ there are stanzas that
recall the passion of _Rizpah_; nothing in modern English so thrills and
vibrates with the prophetic inspiration, the fury of the seer, as
_Vastness_; the verses _To Mary Boyle_--(in the same stanza as Musset's
_le Mie Prigioni_)--are marked by such a natural grace of form and such a
winning 'affectionateness,' to coin a word, of intention and
accomplishment as Lord Tennyson has never surpassed nor very often
equalled. In _Vastness_ the insight into essentials, the command of
primordial matter, the capacity of vital suggestion, are gloriously in
evidence from the first line to the last. Here is no touch of ingenuity,
no trace of 'originality,' no single sign of cleverness; the rhymes are
merely inevitable--there is no visible transformation of metaphor in
deference to their suggestions; nothing is antic, peculiar, superfluous;
but here in epic unity and completeness, here is a sublimation of
experience expressed by means of a sublimation of style. It is unique in
English, and for all that one can see it is like to remain unique this
good while yet. The impression you take is one of singular loftiness of
purpose and a rare nobility of mind. Looking upon life and time and the
spirit of man from the heights of his eighty years, it has been given to
the Master Poet to behold much that is hid to them in the plain or on the
slopes beneath him, and beholding it to frame and utter a message so
lofty in style and in significance so potent that it sounds as of this
world indeed but from the confines of experience, the farthest kingdoms
of mortality.
His Mastership.
It is to note, too, that the Laureate of to-day deals with language in a
way that to the Tennyson of the beginning was--unhappily--impossible. In
those early years he neither would nor could have been responsible for
the magnificent and convincing rhythms of _Vastness_, the austere yet
passionate shapeliness of _Happy_, the effects of vigour and variety
realised in _Parnassus_. For in those early years he was rather
Benvenuto than Michelangelo, he was more of a jeweller than a sculptor,
the phrase was too much to him, the inspiration of the incorrect too
little. All that is changed, and for the best. Most interesting is it
to the artist to remark how impatient--(as the Milton of the _Agonistes_
was)--of rhyme and how confident in rhythm is the whilome poet of
_Oriana_ and _The Lotus-Eaters_ and _The Vision of Sin_; and how this
impatience and this confidence are revealed not merely in a piece of
mysticism naked yet unashamed as _The Gleam_--(whose movement with its
constancy in double endings and avoidance of triplets is perhaps a little
tame)--but also in what should have been a popular piece: the ode, to
wit, _On the Jubilee of Queen Victoria_. In eld, indeed, the craftsman
inclines to play with his material: he is conscious of mastery; he is in
the full enjoyment of his own; he indulges in experiments which to him
are as a crown of glory and to them that come after him--to the noodles
that would walk in his ways without first preparing themselves by prayer
and study and a life of abnegation--are only the devil in disguise. The
Rembrandt of _The Syndics_, the Shakespeare of _The Tempest_ and
_Lear_--what are these but pits for the feet of the Young Ass? and what
else will be the Tennyson of _Vastness_ and _The Gleam_? 'Lord,' quoth
Dickens years ago in respect of the _Idylls_ or of _Maud_, 'what a
pleasure it is to come across a man that can _write_!' He also was an
artist in words; and what he said then he would say now with greater
emphasis and more assurance. From the first Lord Tennyson has been an
exemplar; and now in these new utterances, his supremacy is completely
revealed. There is no fear now that 'All will grow the flower, For all
have got the seed'; for then it was a mannerism that people took and
imitated, and now--! Now it is art; it is the greater Shakespeare, the
consummate Rembrandt, the unique Velasquez; and they may rise to it that
can.