{"id":1280,"date":"2013-07-13T01:33:49","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=1280"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:33:49","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:33:49","slug":"20-the-victorian-poets-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/09-the-future-poetry-volume-09\/20-the-victorian-poets-vol-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","title":{"rendered":"-20_The Victorian Poets.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\nC<\/font>HAPTER<\/font>
\n<\/span>XIX<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/font>The Victorian Poets<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n
\n <\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/font><\/span>T<\/font>HE associated in England with the
\nname of Victoria was in poetry, like that of Pope and Dryden, an age of
\ndominant intellectualism; but, unlike that hard and sterile period, it has been
\nan imaginative, artistic intellectualism touched with the greater and freer
\nbreath of modern thought and its wide interest and fullness of matter, not
\nbrass-bound in furbished and narrow bands of social ease and polite refinement,
\nbut alive, astir, capable of personal energy and inspiration, aesthetical in
\nits refinements, above all not entirely satisfied with itself, but opened up to
\nsome mountain-top prospects, struck across by some moments of prophecy. But
\nstill whether we compare it with the inspirations from which it turned or with
\nthe inspiration which followed and replaced, it is a depression, not a height,
\nand without being either faultily faultless or splendidly null, as epochs of a
\ntoo self-satisfied intellectual enlightenment tend to look in the eyes of the
\nmore deeply thinking ages, \u2014as the Roman Augustan, the French grand century,
\nthe pinchbeck English Augustan, \u2014it leaves an impression of a too cramped
\nfullness and a too level curiosity. It is a descent into a comfortable and
\npretty hollow or a well-cultured flatness between high, wild or beautiful
\nmountain ranges behind and in front a great confused beginning of cliff and
\nseashore, sands and rocks and breakers and magic of hills and sea-horizons.
\nThere is much in this work to admire, something here and there to stimulate,
\nbut only a little that lifts off the feet and carries to the summits of the
\npoetic enthusiasm. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The descent from the uncertain but
\nhigh elevations of the first romantic,. Half spiritual outbreak is very marked,
\nbaffling and sudden. This is not in the nature of a revolt, an energetic
\naudacity of some new thing, \u2014except for a moment in Swinburne, \u2014but a change of
\nlevels, a transition to other more varied <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 132<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

but
\nless elevated interest, the substitution of a more curious but less impetuous
\nmovement. The rich beauty of Keats is replaced by the careful opulent
\ncultivated picturesqueness of Tennyson, the concentrated personal force of
\nByron by the many-sided intellectual robustness and energy of Browning, the
\nintense Nature poetry and the strong and grave ethical turn of Wordsworth by
\nthe too intellectually conscious eye on Nature and the cultured moralizing of
\nArnold, the pure ethereal lyricism of Shelley by Swinburne\u2019s turgid lyrical
\nsurge and all too self-conscient fury of foam-tossing sound, and in place of
\nthe supernatural visions of Blake and Coleridge we have the mediaeval glamour
\nand languorous fields of dream of Rossetti and Morris. There is a considerable
\ngain, but in that greater richness a greater poverty. The gain is in fullness
\nof language, a more conscious and careful art, a more informed and varied range
\nof thought and interest; but the loss is in spiritual substance and the Pythian
\nheight of inspiration. There is more steady working, but with it a clogged and
\nheavier breath; a wealth of colour and nearer strain of thinking, but a lower
\nflame of the spirit. This labour is assured and in its way always good, but it
\nhas paucity of greatness and a too temperate impulsion. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The intellectual preparation of the
\nprevious poetry, the depth and wealth of experience which must found the
\ngreatest and most successful audacities of spiritual vision, had been
\ninsufficient, coming as it did after a shallow and superficial age of the
\nacute, but limited cult of Reason. The work of the middle nineteenth century
\nwas to prepare anew the intellectual effort in which there was much width of a
\nkind and considerable invention, but a very insufficient height and profundity.
\nIn England, there was the added misfortune of a reign of rampant philistinism.
\nThe Victorian period for all its activity and fruitness was by no means one of
\nthose great intellectual humanistic ages which the world will look back to with
\na satisfied sense of clarity or of uplifting. The great flood of free thinking,
\nfree inquiry, scientific and artistic vivacity, the rapid breaking of fresh
\nground, the noble political enthusiasms <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 133<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

which
\nstirred France and Germany and Italy and created a new force of democratic
\nhumanism in Russia, swept in vain past the English shore defended by their
\nchalk cliffs and downs of self-content or only broke across them in a few
\ninsignificant waves. It is the most unlovely and uninspiring period of the
\nEnglish spirit. Never was the aesthetic sense so drowned in pretentious
\nugliness, seldom the intelligence crusted in such an armoured imperviousness to
\nfine and subtle thinking, the ebb of spirituality so far out and low. It was a
\nperiod of smug commercial middleclass prosperity, dull mechanism, hard
\nutilitarianism and a shoddy liberalism bursting and running over with
\nself-content in its narrow practical rationality, spiritual poverty and
\nintellectual ineptitude. Unteachable, it bore with a scornful complacency or
\nbewildered anger or a listening ear of impervious indulgence the lightning
\nshafts of Arnold\u2019s irony, the turbid fulminations of Carlyle, the fiery raids
\nof Ruskin or saw unaffected others of its fine or great spirits turn for refuge
\nto mediaevalism or socialistic utopias. The work of these forerunners was done
\nin a wilderness of intellectual commonness and busy mediocre energy; it bore
\nfruit afterwards, but only when the century was in its wane and other infant
\npowers of the immenser future were beginning to raise their head of cloud and
\nlight. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>But this work of revolt and preparation
\nwas done chiefly in prose. Poetry\u00a0
\n<\/span>flourishes best when it is the rhythmical expression of the soul of its
\nage, of what is greatest and deepest in it, but still belongs to it, and the
\npoetry of this period suffers by the dull smoke-laden atmosphere in which it
\nflowered; though it profited by the European stir of thought and seeking around
\nand held its own, achieved beauty, achieved in one or two poets a considerable
\nenergy, some largeness, occasional heights, there is still something sickly in
\nits luxuriance, a comparative depression and poverty in its thought, a lack in
\nits gifts, in its very accomplishment a sense of something not done. It cannot
\ncompare in power, wing, abundance of genius and talent with the contemporary
\nwork done in France: as in all intellectual ages the grand steam of poetical
\nachievement is to be found, in spite of the greater poetic energy of the
\nAnglo-Celtic mind, on the continent, in the clear and competent labour of the
\nLatin intelligence. There is certainly much
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 134<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

imaginative
\nbeauty, much artistic or fine or strong technical execution, \u2014a great deal more
\nin fact of this element than at any previous time, \u2014much excellent work high
\nenough in the second rank, but the inner surge and satisfaction of a free or
\ndeep spirit, the strong high-riding pinion or the skyward look, these things
\nare rare in Victorian poetry. <\/p>\n

\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>The fame of Tennyson, now a little
\ndimmed and tarnished by the breath of Time, occupied this epoch with a great
\nand immediate brilliance. He is unquestionably the representative English poet
\nof his time. He mirrors its ordinary cultivated mind as it shaped in the
\nEnglish temperament and intelligence, with an extraordinary fidelity and in a
\nrichly furnished and heavily decorated mirror set round with all the art and
\ndevice that could be appreciated by the contemporary taste. There has been no
\nmore consummate master of the language, and this mastery is used with a
\ncareful, sure and unfailing hand. Whatever has to be expressed, whether it be
\nof considerable, mediocre or no worth, is yet given a greater than its
\nintrinsic value by a power of speech which without any such remarkable or
\nastonishing energy as would excite or exalt the mind or disturb it from a safe
\nacquiescence and a luxurious ease of reception, has always a sufficient
\nfelicity, curiously worked even when it affects simplicity, but with a
\nchastened if not quite chaste curiosity. The turn of phrase almost always hits
\nthe mind with a certain, sometimes easy, sometimes elaborate poetic device. It
\nturns always to find and does find the pictorial value of the thing to be
\ndescribed, and even, if such a phrase can be used, the pictorial value of the
\nthought to be seized. There is a similar happiness of device and effect in the
\nverse; if there are no great lyrical, odic or epic outbursts to sweep us out of
\nourselves, there is the same well-governed craft of effective turn and
\ninvention as in the language, the same peculiar manner of easily carried
\nelaborateness, a leisurely but never sluggish self-considering self-adorning
\nflow which succeeds in being immediately received and accepted. The art with
\nwhich the subject mater is dressed up is of the same kind; a restrained
\nelaborateness, a curious picturesqueness of presentation, a taking, opulent and
\neffective form. The refinement and felicity are not of a kind which call for
\nany unusual receptive power<\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 135<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

or
\naesthetic fineness to meet it and feel all its beauty; there is enough and to spare
\nto attract the cultured, nothing to baffle or exceed the ordinary mind. This
\nart is that of a master crafts\u00adman, a goldsmith, silversmith, jeweller of
\nspeech and substance with much of the
\ndecorative painter in his turn, who never travels beyond general,
\nwell-understood and popular ideas and forms, but gives them by his fineness of
\nmanner and felicity of image a charm and distinction which belong more properly
\nto rarer and greater or lovelier motives. The achievement is of a kind which
\nwould hardly be worth doing more than once, but done that once and with such
\nmastery it takes its place and compels admiration. The spirit is not filled,
\nbut the outer aesthetic mind is caught and for a time held captive.<\/p>\n

But it is doubtful whether the future will
\nattach to Tennyson\u2019s poetry anything at all near to the value it assumed for
\nthe contemporary English mind. When we try to estimate the subs\u00adtance and see
\nwhat it permanently gives or what new thing it dis\u00adcovers for the poetic
\nvision, we find that there is extraordinarily little in the end. Tennyson wrote
\nmuch narrative poetry, but he is not a great narrative poet. There is a curious
\nblending of incompatible intentions in all his work of this kind and even his
\nexceptional skill could not save him from a brilliant failure. He has, on the
\none side, a will to convey some high spiritual and ethical intention of life
\nthrough the imaginative use of tale and legend, and that gives a scope for a
\nvery noble kind of poetry, but he has not the power to lay a great hold on the
\nancient figures and re-create them to be symbols of a new significance. The Idylls
\nof the Kings<\/i> miss both the romantic and the idyllic beauty and arrive only
\nat a graceful decorated effective triviality. The grand old Celtic myths and
\ntraditions already strangely mediaevalised by Malory, but full still of life
\nand large humanity and colour are modernised into a baffling and disappointing
\nsuper\u00adficiality and miss all greatness and power of life. There is no congruity
\nbetween the form and symbol and the feeling and substance. They seem solely to
\nbe used to frame a conventional sentimentalism of Victorian domesticity and
\nrespectable social ethics. But the wearing of the white and scentless flower of
\na blameless life in a correct button-hole and a tepid sinning without <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 136<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

the
\nleast tinge of passion or conviction by decorated puppets who are too evidently
\nlay-figures of very modem ladies and gentlemen disguised as knights and dames,
\nwas hardly a sufficient justification for evoking the magic figures of old
\nlegend and ro\u00admance. The life so masqueraded misses reality and it does not
\narrive at any great compensating imaginative or interpretative representation;
\nmodernism and the affectation of mediaevalism, conventional reality and the
\nfalsetto tones of pseudo-romance destroy each other and produce a glittering
\nincongruity. There is a void of the true sincerity of poetic vision at the
\nheart of the original conception and no amount of craft and skill in language
\nor descriptive detail and picture can cure that original deficiency. The poet
\nhas no meditative, no emotional, impassioned, no close or revealing grasp on
\nlife, and on the other hand no deep inter\u00adpretative idea, and without one or
\nother of these things narrative poetry of the modern kind cannot succeed; it
\nbecomes a body without soul or life-breath. Even when Tennyson confines him\u00adself
\nto the poetic modern tale without these disguises of any motive but the
\nethically pointed telling, he arrives at the same result, a richly coloured
\ntriviality.<\/p>\n

This principal work of his maturity fails;
\nits popularity springs from its work of detail and its appeal to the
\nsuperficial sentiment of the time: but some earlier work of the kind had a
\nnobler success. In the Morte d\u2019 Arthur<\/i> there is some natural magic and
\nvision which if it had been sustained and kept the same delicate and mystic
\nstrain, might have made the cycle of idylls a new poetic revelation. In other
\npoems, in the Lotos-Eaters, Ulysses, Oenone,<\/i> where set narrative is
\navoided and the legend is a starting-point or support for thought, vision and
\nbeauty, some fullness of these things is reached; but still the form is greater
\nthan the substance which has no heights and only occasionally strikes depths.
\nTennyson does not figure largely as a lyrical poet in spite of one or two
\ninspired and happy moments; for he has neither the lyrical passion and
\nintoxication nor the profounder depth of lyrical feeling. In his description of
\nNature there is no greater seeing, but a painting of vivid details detached
\n\/for simile and ornament, and though he worked up a great accuracy of obser\u00advation
\nand colour, the deeper sincerity of the born Nature-poets <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 137<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nis<\/span> absent. Finally he gives us a good
\ndeal of thinking of a kin in often admirably telling phrase arid with much art
\nof setting but he is not a revealing poetical thinker. His thought seldom
\nescapes from the conventional limits of a cultivated, but not large or original
\nVictorian mind; it beautifies most often the obvious and commonplace or the
\ncurrent and acceptable ideas with rare exceptions he has neither exaltations
\nnor profundities nor subtleties nor surprises. A great poetical craftsman
\nturning many forms to account for the displaying of an unusual power of
\ndescriptive and decorative language and a verse of most skilled device, but no
\nvery great purpose and substance, this he is iron beginning to end of his
\ncreation. His art suffers from the excess of value of form over value of
\ncontent; it incurs a liability to a besetting note of artificiality, a frequent
\nfalsetto tone of prettiness, an excessive stress, a colouring which is often
\ntoo bright for the stuff it hues and is unevenly laid, but it is always taking
\nand effective. By his very limitation of mind he becomes the re\u00adpresentative
\npoet of a certain side of the English mentality, not in its originality and
\nadventurous power, but in its temperate con\u00advention and fixity, renders its
\nliberalism and its conservatism, its love of freedom and dislike of idealism,
\nits surface common sense of doubt and traditional belief, its successful way of
\ndealing with its material, its formal ethicism and its absence of passion. But
\nto all these things he brings an artistic decorative quality which is new in
\nEnglish poetry. He has left his stamp on the language and has given starting-points
\nand forms for poets of a rarer force to turn to greater uses and pass beyond
\nthem to a new construc\u00adtion.<\/p>\n

Tennyson is the most representative and
\nsuccessful poet of the Victorian epoch. Others who have not the same
\nlimitations either fall below him in art or have a less sustained and
\nconsiderable bulk and variety of work. Swinburne brings in into the poetry of
\nthe time an element to which the rest are strangers, passion, fire, lyrical
\nsublimity and some strains of prophecy. He brings in too the continental note
\nof denial, atheistic affirmation, sceptical revolt, passionate political
\nidealism, but to these things he gives the Anglo-Celtic aggressiveness and
\nvehemence, no the Latin sureness and clarity. He is a great lyrist, but like
\nmany <\/span><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 138<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

of
\nhis contemporaries revels too much in device and virtuosities of form and his
\nlyrical thought and sentiment turned always towards the choric ode and
\ndithyramb loses itself too often in a sonorous gurge and violence of sound. The
\nquieter classical power of Arnold which voices the less confident search of a
\nself-doubting scepticism, has more lucidity, balance and grace, a fine though
\nrestricted and tenuous strain of thought and a deep and penetrating melancholy,
\nthe mediaevalism and aesthetic mysticism of Rossetti, the slow dreamy narrative
\nof Morris which takes us to a refuge from the blatancy and ugliness of the
\nVictorian environment into the gracious world of old story and legend, bring in
\neach their own significance for the age and help towards that enrichment of the
\nlanguage of thought and artistic poetical feeling which is the chief work of
\nthis intervening time. They have all three this characteristic that they are
\nstudious artists, \u2014 it is significant that two of them are painters and deco\u00adrative
\ncraftsmen, \u2014 who are concerned to give beauty and finish to the material of
\npoetry rather than original poets with a large power of inspiration. Their
\nrange is small, but they have brought into English poetry a turn for fine
\nexecution which is likely to be a long-abiding influence.<\/p>\n

Among the Victorians Browning stands next
\nto Tennyson in the importance of his poetic work and station as a representa\u00adtive
\nfigure of the age and creator. He surpasses him indeed in the mass and force
\nand abundant variety of his work and the protean energy of his genius. His
\ninventiveness of form and range and variety of subject are prodigious; he
\nturns, to every quarter of the world, seizes on every human situation, seems to
\nbe trying to exhaust a study of all possible human personalities and minds and
\ncharacters and turns his eye on every age and period of history and many
\ncountries and all possible scenes and extracts from them meaning and their
\ninterest for the satisfaction of his universal curiosity and his living and
\ninexhaustible interest in the vividness and abundance of their life of earth
\nand man. Her has an equal interest in the human mind and its turns of thinking
\nof all kinds and its human aims, ambitions, seeking and wants to pursue it
\neverywhere in its ramifications, in its starts of individuality, peaks,
\nwindings, even all manner of
\n <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 139<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

borrowings
\nof thought and feeling, nothing human is foreign to his research and pursuit,
\nall enters into this prodigious embrace. This gives to his poetry a range and unceasing
\ninterest and rich\u00adness of attraction which surpasses immeasurably all that his
\ncon\u00adtemporaries can give us in wideness of the call of life, even though in
\nthem the poetic height to which they draw us may be greater than his. In his
\nmass of creation he can be regarded as the most remarkable in invention and
\nwideness if not the most significant builder and narrator of the drama of human
\nlife in his time.1 <\/sup>Browning stands apart from the contemporary poets
\nin his striking force and originality. He is in many ways the very oppo\u00adsite of
\nthem all. He is the one robust and masculine voice among these artists,
\nsceptics, idealists or dreamers, always original, vigo\u00adrous, inexhaustible;
\nwith a great range of interests, a buoyant hold on life, a strong and clear
\neye, an assured belief and hope but no traditional conventionality, he alone
\nadequately represents the curious, critical, eager, exploring mind of the age.
\nHe has depth and force and abundance of thought which, if not of the very first
\ngreatness and originality, is open to all manner of ques\u00adtioning and
\nspeculation and new idea. His regard ranges over history and delights in its
\npictures of the stir and energy of life and its changing scenes, over man and
\nhis thought and character and emotion and action, looks into every cranny,
\nfollows every tortuous winding, seizes on each leap and start of the human
\nmachine. <\/b>He<\/span> is a student,
\ncritic, psychologist, thinker. He seeks to interpret, like certain French
\npoets, the civilisations and the ages.
\nHis<\/span> genius is essentially dramatic; for though he has writ’ ten in many
\nlyrical forms, the lyric is used to represent a moment in the drama of life or
\ncharacter, and though he uses the nar\u00adrative, his treatment of it is dramatic
\nand not narrative, as when he takes an Italian
\nfait-diver<\/i>s and makes each personage relate or discuss it in such a way as
\nto reveal his own motive, character, thought and passion. <\/b>
\nHe<\/span> does not succeed as a dramatist in
\nthe received forms because he is too analytic, too much interested is the
\nmechanism of temperament, character, emotion and changing<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

‘
\nThe
\npassage up to here in this paragraph was dictated by Sri Aurobindo at a later
\ntime and meant to be woven into the chapter in a future edition of the book. It
\nis not cer\u00adtain whether all the words were correctly taken down.<\/font> <\/font> <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 140<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

idea
\nto concentrate sufficiently on their results in action; but he has an
\nunrivalled force in seizing on a moment of the soul or mind and in following
\nits convolutions as they start into dramatic thought, feeling and impulse. He
\nof all these writers has hold of the substance of the work marked out for a
\npoet of the age. And with all these gifts we might have had in him the great
\ninterpreta\u00adtive poet, one might almost say, the Shakespeare of his time. But by
\nthe singular fatality which so often pursues the English poetical genius, the
\none gift needed to complete him was denied. Power was there and the hold of his
\nmaterial; what was absent was the essential faculty of artistic form and poetic
\nbeauty, so eminent in his contemporaries, a fatal deficiency. This great
\ncreator was no artist; this strength was too robust and direct to give forth
\nsweetness. There was no lack of a certain kind of skill. If not an artist in
\nverse, .Browning is a consummate techni\u00adcian, one might almost say a
\nmechanician in verse; his very roughnesses and crudities and contortions have
\nthe appearance of device and calculation. He had an immense command of lan\u00adguage
\nand was never at a lack for forcible and efficient expression, but in its base
\nit was the language of a prosaist and not a poet, of the intellect and not the
\nimagination. He could throw into it strong colours, has sometimes though too
\nseldom a vigorous richness and strong grace, achieves often a lyric elevation,
\nbut they supervene upon this base and do not ordinarily suffuse and change it
\nor elevate it to a high customary level. Much strong and vigorous work he did
\nof a great and robust substance, won many victories, but the supreme greatness
\ncannot come in poetry without the supreme beauty.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Arnold is a third considerable Victorian
\npoet of the epoch, though he bulks less than the two more abundant writers who
\nhave till now held the first place. But as time goes on his figure emerges and
\nassumes in quality, not in mass of work, a first importance. His poetic work
\nand quality may even be regarded as finer in its essence of poetic value if
\nmore tenuous in show of power than that of his two contemporaries. There is a
\nreturn to the true classic style of poetry in the simplicity and straightforward
\ndirectness of his diction and turn of thought that brings us back to the way of
\nthe earlier poets and gives a certain seriousness and <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 141<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

power
\nwhich we do not find in the over-consciousness and the too studied simplicity
\nor elaborate carefulness and purposeful artistry of the other poets of the
\ntime. This imparts a note of depth and sincerity to his passion and his pathos,
\na character of high serious\u00adness to his reflection and meditative thought, a
\ngreatness and strength to his moments of height and elevated force which raise
\nhim above the ordinary levels around him and create an impres\u00adsion of the
\ntruest poetry, the most genuine in poetic value, if not in effect the greatest
\nof this Victorian age. His simplicity is a true thing and not the over-studied
\nfalse simplicity of Tennyson; his thought is free from the conventionality and
\nplatitude which constantly meets us in Tennyson’s thinking; he can achieve the
\nstrongest effects, even the romantic effect without the over\u00adwrought romantic
\ncolour of Rossetti, Swinburne’s overpitch or Tennyson’s- too frequent
\novercharge and decorative preciosity of expression. We are at ease with him and
\ncan be sure that he will not say too much but just what the true poet in him
\nhas to say and no more. For this reason he was able to bring into Victorian
\npoetry the expression or the most characteristic trains of thought expressing
\nthe contemporary mind and temperament at its highest and best. Tennyson voices
\nthe conventional English mind, Swinburne a high-pitched cry of revolt or a
\nrevolutionary passion of freedom or even of licence; Rossetti and Moms take
\nrefuge in mediaevalism as they saw it: Arnold strikes out the more serious
\nnotes of contemporary thinking. He fails, however, to look beyond to the
\nfuture. In one respect of literary work\u00admanship he does anticipate future
\ntrends; for he makes a depar\u00adture towards certain tendencies of modernist forms
\nof verse. He<\/span> made the first
\nattempt at any regular free verse and thus attempted also an imitation of Greek
\ndramatic form but not with Swinburne’s originality and the success achieved in
\nAtalanta
\nin\u00a0 <\/span>Calydon.1<\/sup><\/i><\/p>\n

This is the balance of the Victorian epoch;
\na considerable intellectual and artistic endeavour, contradicting, overcoming
\nbut still hampered by an ungenial atmosphere; two remarkable poets held back
\nfrom the first greatness, one by imperfection of form, the other by
\nimperfection of substance; four artists of small<\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

1<\/font><\/sup>
\nThis paragraph also is a later
\ndictated note for future inclusion.<\/font> <\/p>\n

\nPage \u2013 142<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

range,
\nbut with work of an accomplished, but overpitched or thin or languorous beauty;
\nan enrichment and strengthening of the language which makes it more capable of
\nfine and varied and curious thought, and the creation of an artistic conscience
\nwhich may impose in the future a check on the impulse of an over\u00adabundant
\nenergy to imperfection of eager haste and vagary in execution. If the promise
\nof the coming age is fulfilled, it may be remembered as a fine, if limited
\nperiod of preparation for the discovery of new, more beautiful and grander
\nfields of poetry. <\/p>\n

\nPage – 143<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CHAPTER XIX  The Victorian Poets   \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 THE associated in England with the name of Victoria was in poetry, like that of Pope and Dryden,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-09-the-future-poetry-volume-09","wpcat-29-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}