292 The Future Poetry
To bottomless perdition.At a more temperate pitch and more capable of a certain subtlety
of suggestion we can see the adequate changing into the more
rhetorical poetic manner, as in many passages of Wordsworth, —
And oft when in my heart was heard
Thy timely mandate, I deferred
The task in smoother walks to stray.A richer, subtler and usually a truer poetic effectivity is attained
not by this rhetorical manner, but through a language succeeding
by apt and vivid metaphor and simile, richness and beauty of
phrase or the forceful word that makes the mind see the body
of the thought with a singularly living distinctness or energy of
suggestion and nearness, — Wordsworth’s
Her eyes as stars of twilight fair,
Like twilight’s too her dusky hair,
But all things else about her drawn
From Maytime and the cheerful dawn:Shelley’s
When hearts have once mingled,
Love first leaves the well-built nest,
The weak one is singled
To endure what it once possessed;or
Its passions will rock thee,
As the storms rock the ravens on high;
Bright reason will mock thee
Like the sun from a wintry sky.In this manner English poetry is especially opulent and gets from
it much of its energy and power; but yet we feel that this is not
the highest degree of which poetic speech is capable. There is
a more intimate vision, a more penetrating spiritual emotion,