Recent English Poetry – 4 201Here we have the reconciliation, already suggested by Whitman,
of the full power and meaning of the individual with the full
power and meaning of the universal, eternal and infinite, but
it is concentrated and brought to bear on a single feeling for
its enlargement with a great power of intuitive and revealing
suggestion. This enlarging of the particular to meet and become
one with the universal and infinite — Tennyson’s knowing of
what God and man is from a deep and intimate perception of all
that is meant by Nature in a single little flower in the crannies —
is a very characteristic and indicative feature of this new poetry.
The same turn emerges in a more indirect and subtle, but not
less significant way of treatment even in lines which apparently
seek only to concentrate for the thought the essence of a common
human idea and emotion. When the poet speaks of
Beautiful friendship tried by sun and wind,
Durable from the daily dust of life,or of Marpessa’s maternal human longing,
And he shall give me passionate children, not
Some radiant god that will despise me quite,
But clambering limbs and little hearts that err,the thought in itself is not uncommon, but what makes it uncom-
mon is the turn of the utterance which by an intuitive pressure
towards some deeper significance of the personal thought and
emotion carries it beyond the personality of the idea and feeling
into a suggestion of profound universality, a rhythm and light
of some entire vibration from the depths of life caught up and
held by a human self-knowledge. The same force of suggestion
emerges in the treatment of Nature, whether it takes the form
of an intensity of sensation,
the moment deep
When we are conscious of the secret dawn
Amidst the darkness that we feel is green,