WORDSWORTH'S PHANTOM OF DELIGHT'.

149

of erotic stimulus, that it may excite the passion in the absence of charms of person. The effect, however, of introducing these qualities may be to relax attention to the others, and still oftener to make a see-saw of confusing description.

Wordsworth's fine Lyric- She was a Phantom of Delight' although not an erotic composition, in the sense of direct love-making, yet exemplifies all the arts of inspiring the love attachment. There is a delineation of personal beauty, embracing form and movement, and the highest graces and virtues of the mind.

She was a Phantom of delight

When first she gleamed upon my sight:

A lovely Apparition, sent

To be a moment's ornament.

This is to begin with a comprehensive epithet, the force lying in the bold figure combined with the warm epithets 'delight' and 'lovely'. The last line is weak from the idea of the 'momentary' (introduced for a purpose).

Her eyes as stars of Twilight fair;
Like Twilight's, too, her dusky hair.

The first feature introduced is the eyes, and the com-
parison is elevating no doubt, but still remote, and trite
from usage.
The addition of Twilight gives more pic-
turesqueness and force, as indicating the specially brilliant
stars. The dusky hair' is not highly suggestive, and the
resemblance to Twilight is not sufficiently close. These are
the only bodily features referred to.

But all things else about her drawn

From May-time and the cheerful Dawn;
A dancing Shape, an Image gay

To haunt, to startle, and waylay.

The comparisons of her general bearing to May-time and the Dawn have a certain conventional force; yet not much actual suggestiveness or emotional elevation on the whole. The dancing Shape and Image gay' are not especially felicitous, judged by the tests of appropriateness and elevation. The last line works by phrases indicating the effect on the beholder; they do not run to a climax. Possibly one of the ideas, as 'haunt,' expanded into an image might have been more telling: the three words chosen lead the mind into conflicting trains.

I saw her upon nearer view,

A Spirit, yet a Woman too!

This we admire for its terseness and strength of compliment.
Her household motions light and free,
And steps of virgin liberty.

The same cautious determination to combine attractiveness of
demeanour with severe propriety of character.
follows is in a like strain :—

A countenance in which did meet

Sweet records, promises as sweet.

What

Somewhat deep in thought; yet with a certain happy bold-
ness and comprehensiveness that we must accept and admire.
A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,

Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.

Here we have the crowning of the moral side, at the expense, it may be, of the physical. The poet's intention is to keep his ideal as close as possible to the real; and his words are well chosen for the end. He descends from lyric heights to the homely figure of 'daily food'; and completes the sketch by matter of fact enumeration of human realities. And now I see with eye serene

The very pulse of the machine.

Here we have to excuse both a touch of mechanism and an incongruity of figure. It is meant to be terse and comprehensive; while the succeeding lines supply the expansion:--

A Being breathing thoughtful breath,
A Traveller between life and death;
The reason firm, the temperate will,

Endurance, foresight, strength, and skill.

The first lines express in intelligible and suitable figures the poet's idea of a well-balanced mind: the last two employ the usual designations for practical virtue and moral excellence. A perfect Woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command; And yet a Spirit still, and bright With something of an angel light.

Eulogistically iterates the same reconciliation of different qualities. The language is compact and forcible without being original. In using lofty phrases, Wordsworth still observes a sobriety-something of an angel light'.

The whole poem is characteristic of Wordsworth. The

CHARACTERISTICS OF WORDSWORTH'S POEM.

151

picture is idealized, yet it does not pass very far beyond possibility; and, in giving a loving personation, he combines it with the qualities that obviate the frequent and deplorable failures in love attachments. He does not lose sight of those practical virtues that are the seasoning and the safety of life.

The combination of personal description with figurative iteration and the virtues of character, would require a more studied order than Wordsworth gives; at least if he wishes the ode to impress us as a whole. But this is a defect attending more or less all the descriptions of poetry whenever the complication of aims is considerable.

In Wordsworth's Highland Girl,' we have the expression of tenderness well exemplified, although not with a view to the sexual feeling. The most illustrative portion of the poem is the environment :

And these grey rocks: this household lawn:

These Trees, a veil just half withdrawn ;

This fall of water, that doth make

A murmur near the silent Lake;
This little Bay, a quiet road

That holds in shelter thy abode.

As a scenic description this has a merit of its own; as reflecting the beauty of the Highland girl, it has no obvious merit.

We must now advance a step, and open the wide gate of the description of the lover's own feelings by all the arts that have been employed for this purpose. The forms of expression are as numerous as the compass of language, and cannot be classified; yet we may exemplify the more prevalent occasions of success and failure.

The lover's feelings assume two opposite forms; the joys of prosperous love, and the pains of being thwarted. Both rank among the intensest forms of human emotion; and poetry assists in bodying them forth, even to excess.

The mingling of subjective description with all the arts previously illustrated, still further complicates the erotic strain of composition. It renders a consecutive order more and more difficult, without, however, doing away with the advantages of method.

Taking this new circumstance along with those previously named, and confining ourselves to the joyous side of love

emotion, we may next pass in review Tennyson's 'Gardener's Daughter' considered as a highly artistic specimen of erotic art.

Passing over the introduction, we take up the narrative at the point where the two friends, both painters, take the road to the gardener's cottage :

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love.
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;
And, sitting muffled in dark leaves, you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock.

The fields between

Are dewy-fresh, browsed by deep-udder'd kine.

These descriptive and concrete allusions, and more to the same effect-not specially in the style of the author, but common to him with poets generally,-give the interval to be gone over to the gardener's cottage.

The delineation of the beauty herself commences

Who had not heard

Of Rose, the gardener's daughter? Where was he,
So blunt in memory, so old at heart,

At such a distance from his youth in grief,

That, having seen, forgot? The common mouth,
So gross to express delight, in praise of her
Grew oratory. Such a lord is love,

And Beauty such a mistress of the world.

This very usual mode of celebrating beauty merely whets appetite; it is but a prelude to some more definite picture that we can in some measure conceive.

The poet's art shines forth in what comes next. It is the feverish anticipation of the visitor that his soul would be taken possession of, and his joy at the mere thought. But we are not yet admitted to the sacred presence. A long scenic description must intervene, ere the company reach the cottage. It is worked up so as to be in harmony with the lover's state of mind :

All the land in flowery squares,

Beneath a broad and equal-blowing wind,

Smelt of the coming summer, as one large cloud
Drew downward. . .

...

-From the woods

Came voices of the well-contented doves.

The lark could scarce get out his notes for joy,
But shook his song together as he near'd
His happy home, the ground.

The approaches to the garden are given in the poet's picturesque style. The beauty herself is first disclosed in the act of fixing a rose tree :

One arm aloft

Gown'd in pure white, that fitted to the shape-
Holding the bush, to fix it back, she stood.
A single stream of all her soft brown hair
Pour'd on one side: the shadow of the flowers
Stole all the golden gloss, and, wavering
Lovingly lower, trembled on her waist-
Ah, happy shade—and still went wavering down,
But, ere it touch'd a foot, that might have danced
The greensward into greener circles, dipt,
And mix'd with shadows of the common ground!
But the full day dwelt on her brows, and sunn'd
Her violet eyes, and all her Hebe bloom,
And doubled his own warmth against her lips,
And on the bounteous wave of such a breast
As never pencil drew.

The poet takes full advantage of an active attitude, and fills in the particulars by degrees, but without order, and without much coherence. Yet his epithets are all emotionally interesting, while some of them aid the picture: the soft brown hair, the golden gloss, the violet eyes, the bounteous wave of the breast. 'As never pencil drew' is an adjunct stale with repetition, but yet not to be dispensed with.

She is ignorant of the approach of the two visitors, until the entranced lover breaks in upon her with a speech of stunning and cruel exaggeration :

One rose, but one, by those fair fingers cull'd,
Were worth a hundred kisses press'd on lips
Less exquisite than thine.

Taken by surprise, she had no words to reply, but the asking of the rose came to her relief. She gave the rose, and 'statue-like' moved away.

The remainder of the poem is occupied with the lover's feelings, which are intensified by a wide variety of descriptive touches. First, he could not leave the spot till dusk. Going home, he is exposed to his companion's banter, but without effect. Then he is sleepless, kisses the rose, recalls her glance in the giving of it. He feels

Such a noise of life

Swarm'd in the golden present, such a voice
Call'd to me from the years to come, and such
A length of bright horizon rimm'd the dark.