Recent English Poetry – 1 165may satisfy the English reader, but can never satisfy the ear
or the mind that has once listened to the singer’s own native
and magical melodies. And this is so even though the intellec-
tual substance, the intellectual precision and distinctness of the
thought are often more effective, carry home more quickly in
the translation, because in the original the intellectual element,
the thought limits are being constantly overborne and are some-
times almost swallowed up by the waves of suggestion that come
stealing in with the music: so much more is heard than is said
that the soul listening goes floating into that infinity and counts
the definite contribution of the intelligence as of a lesser value.
Precisely there lies the greatest power of poetic rhythm for the
very highest work that the new age has to do, and that it can be
done by a new use of the poetic method without breaking the
whole form of poetry, Tagore’s own lyrical work^1 in his mother
tongue is the best evidence.
Whitman’s aim is consciently, clearly, professedly to make a
great revolution in the whole method of poetry, and if anybody
could have succeeded, it ought to have been this giant of poetic
thought with his energy of diction, this spiritual crowned athlete
and vital prophet of democracy, liberty and the soul of man and
Nature and all humanity. He is a great poet, one of the greatest
in the power of his substance, the energy of his vision, the force
of his style, the largeness at once of his personality and his
universality. His is the most Homeric voice since Homer, in spite
of the modern’s ruder less elevated aesthesis of speech and the
difference between that limited Olympian and this broad-souled
Titan, in this that he has the nearness to something elemental
which makes everything he says, even the most common and
prosaic, sound out with a ring of greatness, gives a force even
to his barest or heaviest phrases, throws even upon the coarsest,
dullest, most physical things something of the divinity; and he
has the elemental Homeric power of sufficient straightforward
(^1) This cannot quite be said or not in the same degree about other work of Tagore’s
where this great lyrist is not so much himself in his movement, though he is always a
master of rhythm.