Part 14 (2/2)

Poetry includes whatsoever of painting can be made visible to the mind's eye, and whatsoever of music can be conveyed by sound and proportion without singing or instrumentation. But it far surpa.s.ses those divine arts in suggestiveness, range, and intellectual wealth;--the first, in expression of thought, combination of images, and the triumph over s.p.a.ce and time; the second, in all that can be done by speech, apart from the tones and modulations of pure sound.

Painting and music, however, include all those portions of the gift of poetry that can be expressed and heightened by the visible and melodious. Painting, in a certain apparent manner, is things themselves; music, in a certain audible manner, is their very emotion and grace. Music and painting are proud to be related to poetry, and poetry loves and is proud of them.

Poetry begins where matter of fact or of science ceases to be merely such, and to exhibit a further truth; that is to say, the connexion it has with the world of emotion, and its power to produce imaginative pleasure. Inquiring of a gardener, for instance, what flower it is we see yonder, he answers, 'a lily'. This is matter of fact. The botanist p.r.o.nounces it to be of the order of 'Hexandria Monogynia'. This is matter of science. It is the 'lady' of the garden, says Spenser; and here we begin to have a poetical sense of its fairness and grace. It is

The plant and flower of _light_,

says Ben Jonson; and poetry then shows us the beauty of the flower in all its mystery and splendour.

If it be asked, how we know perceptions like these to be true, the answer is, by the fact of their existence--by the consent and delight of poetic readers. And as feeling is the earliest teacher, and perception the only final proof, of things the most demonstrable by science, so the remotest imaginations of the poets may often be found to have the closest connexion with matter of fact; perhaps might always be so, if the subtlety of our perceptions were a match for the causes of them. Consider this image of Ben Jonson's--of a lily being the flower of light. Light, undecomposed, is white; and as the lily is white, and light is white, and whiteness itself is nothing _but_ light, the two things, so far, are not merely similar, but identical.

A poet might add, by an a.n.a.logy drawn from the connexion of light and colour, that there is a 'golden dawn' issuing out of the white lily, in the rich yellow of the stamens. I have no desire to push this similarity farther than it may be worth. Enough has been stated to show that, in poetical as in other a.n.a.logies, 'the same feet of Nature', as Bacon says, may be seen 'treading in different paths'; and that the most scornful, that is to say, dullest disciple of fact, should be cautious how he betrays the shallowness of his philosophy by discerning no poetry in its depths.

But the poet is far from dealing only with these subtle and a.n.a.logical truths. Truth of every kind belongs to him, provided it can bud into any kind of beauty, or is capable of being ill.u.s.trated and impressed by the poetic faculty. Nay, the simplest truth is often so beautiful and impressive of itself, that one of the greatest proofs of his genius consists in his leaving it to stand alone, ill.u.s.trated by nothing but the light of its own tears or smiles, its own wonder, might, or playfulness. Hence the complete effect of many a simple pa.s.sage in our old English ballads and romances, and of the pa.s.sionate sincerity in general of the greatest early poets, such as Homer and Chaucer, who flourished before the existence of a 'literary world', and were not perplexed by a heap of notions and opinions, or by doubts how emotion ought to be expressed. The greatest of their successors never write equally to the purpose, except when they can dismiss everything from their minds but the like simple truth. In the beautiful poem of _Sir Eger, Sir Graham and Sir Gray-Steel_ (see it in Ellis's _Specimens_, or Laing's _Early Metrical Tales_), a knight thinks himself disgraced in the eyes of his mistress:--

Sir Eger said, 'If it be so, Then wot I well I must forgo Love-liking, and manhood, all clean!'

_The water rush'd out of his een!_

Sir Gray-Steel is killed:

Gray-Steel into his death thus thraws[26]

He _walters[27] and the gra.s.s up draws;_

_A little while then lay he still (Friends that him saw, liked full ill) And bled into his armour bright._

[26] throes?

[27] welters,--throws himself about.

The abode of Chaucer's _Reeve_, or Steward, in the _Canterbury Tales_, is painted in two lines, which n.o.body ever wished longer:

His wonning[28] was full fair upon an heath, With greeny trees yshadowed was his place.

[28] dwelling.

Every one knows the words of Lear, 'most _matter-of-fact_, most melancholy.'

Pray, do not mock me; I am a very foolish fond old man, Fourscore and upwards: Not an hour more, nor less; and, to deal plainly I fear I am not in my perfect mind.

It is thus, by exquisite pertinence, melody, and the implied power of writing with exuberance, if need be, that beauty and truth become identical in poetry, and that pleasure, or at the very worst, a balm in our tears, is drawn out of pain.

It is a great and rare thing, and shows a lovely imagination, when the poet can write a commentary, as it were, of his own, on such sufficing pa.s.sages of nature, and be thanked for the addition. There is an instance of this kind in Warner, an old Elizabethan poet, than which I know nothing sweeter in the world. He is speaking of Fair Rosamond, and of a blow given her by Queen Eleanor.

With that she dash'd her on the lips, _So dyed double red: Hard was the heart that gave the blow, Soft were those lips that bled._

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