'short, swallow-flights of song.' A few poets, however, have addressed themselves to the subject in a more elaborate and particular manner. These memorial poems represent with patience and minuteness the various tints and shades of feeling, the eddies and ripples of thought, which the presence of death causes. Among them the Vita Nuova of Dante, and the In Memoriam of Tennyson, occupy the chief place. To the Vita Nuova and In Memoriam, may now be added Mr. Woolner's careful, conscientious, and striking poem.

*

*My Beautiful Lady, by Thomas Woolner. Let me add here, that in form Mr. Woolner's poem is probably the most artistic of the three. Dante's is a simple narrative. Tennyson describes the scattered verses which comprise In Memoriam as short swallow flights of song.' Not that In Memoriam is a poem which obeys no law. It is not a freak, a caprice, a perverse or erratic whim. On the contrary, it manifests the unity of life, of mental development, of spiritual progress. But Mr. Woolner's poem is cast in a straighter mould. The life in it has been modelled and shaped by an artist. The unity of lyrical emotion is one thing: the unity which an organising intellect achieves is another: and this higher unity, this dramatic order and fitness, are to be found in Mr. Woolner's work. I do not think that there is anything in it specially characteristic of the sculptor: it has colour, luxuriance of fancy, subtlety and complexity of feeling; and although it is true that these are all subordinated to the main purpose of the poem, unless we are prepared to say that singleness and simplicity of design make a poem 'statuesque' (as it is called), we shall hardly acquiesce in a criticism which is as vague as it is fanciful. At the same time it cannot be denied that the arrangement has been meditated; that the parts have been allocated; that a moral has been aimed at; and

It cannot be denied that this form of poetry-poetry dedicated to and associated with the memory of the dead—is a form of poetry eminently natural. It is prompted by feelings which are deeply rooted in human nature. Sorrow seeks expression either in words or in tears. 'There came upon me,' Dante confesses on one such occasion in his simple way, a great desire to say something in rhyme.' And later, after Beatrice's death, 'When mine eyes had wept for some while, until they were so weary with weeping that I could no longer through them give ease to my sorrow, I bethought me that a few mournful words might stand me instead of tears.' Tennyson makes the same confession. He 'lulls with song an aching heart:' he will 'out of words a comfort win.' And the impulse is not only natural but irrepressible. As the trees put forth their leaves, as the thrush fills the woodland with its vesper music, so does the poet's sorrow seek vent in his song.

I do but sing because I must,

And pipe but as the linnets sing.

He takes refuge in his rhymes, not to parade his affliction, but to ease his heart.

that the author is never diverted into digressions or episodes, however tempting, which are calculated to mar the general effect of his composition. In these respects it differs from the Vita Nuova and In Memoriam; yet, notwithstanding the marks of premeditation which it bears, it is difficult to suppose that the poet has not learned in suffering what he has taught in song, or that 'My Lady' is a fanciful effigy, like Maud, and not a creature of flesh and blood, like Beatrice.

It is natural also that these memorial poems should be principally (indeed, I might say exclusively) devoted to the memory of those who have died in youth. Our tried friend is dead; we knew what was in him; we knew the range and compass of his powers; but the world did not; and we feel that an injustice is done if he is permitted to pass away without recognition. But when the work has been accomplished, when, its lavish mission richly wrought,' the spirit leaves our earth, and returns to God, we do not experience the same sense of loss or incompleteness, nor does our tempered regret urgently demand expression. The e'en brings a' hame,' says the beautiful Scottish proverb. When the shadows of night are falling, the sheep return to the fold. That is well; that is as it ought to be; the death of the old is a visible and beneficent ordinance of nature. The peaceful light of evening is in the heaven, and on the earth, and on the calm faces of the dead. But when a maiden is struck down in the pride and excellence of her beauty, we cannot restrain a cry of dismay. Those perfect lips were worth a king's ransom this morning; that hand was a queen's dowry. And now they are quite valueless. Death-spare and shrivelled as he looks-is a spendthrift, not a miser; wanton, lavish, indiscriminate, working on no system, obeying no rules, he tosses the jewels of life aside as though they were not better than its dross. Of this sense of dismay, astonishment, incredulity, no experience can divest us. Dante is bewildered by the thought, Surely it must some time come to pass that

how can

the very gentle Beatrice must die.' Die! death approach so fair and pure a being? Let the heavens look to it. Thus when Helen or Isabel are taken away while the day is yet young, the poet not only feels that a wrong has been done to him and to the earth from which she has been withdrawn in unseemly haste, but experiences a passionate desire to restore, if in words only, the choice jewel which has been so strangely and mysteriously shattered.

Grave men have sometimes said that this memorial

poetry is slight and trivial in its nature. In one sense they are right,—it is often slight and trivial,-slight and trivial as the objects which Love appropriates, of which it takes possession, on which it is nourished. No incidents can well be slighter or more trivial than those in the Vita Nuova. But such a passion shines through them that each becomes transfigured. Dante casts his regard about the homeliest incidents, and aided by death and intense feeling, he makes them incorruptible and imperishable. The same may be said of the incidents, the ballad sung on the lawn in the summer night, the Christmas holly, the Christmas games,— which in In Memoriam most vividly recall the dead. So also in Mr. Woolner's poem. He recalls the white flutter of his lady's robe in the wood, 'where clematis and jasmine interlace;' how it was caught by the prickly thorns; how he stooped to disentangle it-' oft wounding more than he could heal.'

I recollect my Lady in the wood,

Keeping her breath, while peering as she stood

E

There, balanced lightly on tiptoe,
To mark a nest built snug below,
Leaves shadowing her brow.

And this triviality is in fact the best testimony to the reality of the passion,-as every-day experience proclaims. Death lays his hand on trifles, and they grow rife with suggestion, and rich with recollection. For weightier things you are prepared; but these trifles— turning up suddenly and unawares-stir the pulses of the memory into feverish play. Thus she moved, or walked, or rode; thus her brown hair was braided; thus her riband was tied; thus she unclasped her glove. It is undoubtedly true that these slight, lovely, familiar traits, which have perished with the body, touch us more acutely, appeal to us more pathetically, than the higher and more abiding traits of character. And thus it happens that the poets, looking back on what has been, fill their pages with this eager passionate trifling,—as grave men may well call it.

Another observation in which there is probably more truth, is that the mind which prefers this kind of poetry is not of the creative order. The production of memorial poetry infers intensity of feeling rather than width of insight. The poet retraces the track of life which stretches behind him like a beaten path, and casts the fire of his imagination along it. The rays of his genius bring every object on the roadside into vivid and brilliant relief. The creative mind, on the other hand, rejoices in construction, which it effects with supple ease and natural facility. Shakspeare and