Part 10 (2/2)

And to the antique order of the dead I take the tongueless vows.

we cannot compare with any model. They stand by themselves, unsurpa.s.sable, lines such as are only to be found here and there even in the great poets.

The more one reads this poetry of Thompson's the more one discovers that it is something essentially individual. Harmonies that one may miss on a first reading become more apparent and more insistent as one reads again, and the exquisite, haunting melody of his verse pursues us, and its faultless, rich rhythms seem to create new patterns of form. One may miss not a little of his thought, because the engrossing beauty of the language lays hold of the senses. In almost every poem one finds some lingering phrase:

Whatso looks lovelily Is but the rainbow on life's weeping rain.

Or:

The little sweetness making grief complete.

Often he shows that exact sense of lyrical fitness which Milton pre-eminently possessed, and, second only to him, Sh.e.l.ley. We see it in the pa.s.sage which begins:

Suffer me at your leafy feast To sit apart, a somewhat alien guest, And watch your mirth, Unsharing in the liberal laugh of earth.

_The Hound of Heaven_, I think, has rightly been p.r.o.nounced his greatest poem, for whilst in its wealth of melody, its magnificence of imagery, and its pathos, it is unsurpa.s.sed, it reveals also the finest depths of his thought as he takes us ”down the labyrinthine ways” of his mind's flight. But next to that I would put _The Making of Viola_, a poem which no other, except Rossetti or his sister Christina, could have written:

I

_The Father of Heaven._ Spin, daughter Mary, spin, Twirl your wheel with silver din; Spin, daughter Mary, spin, Spin a tress for Viola.

_Angels._ Spin, Queen Mary, a Brown tress for Viola!

II

_The Father of Heaven._ Weave, hands angelical, Weave a woof of flesh to pall Weave, hands evangelical-- Flesh to pall our Viola.

_Angels._ Weave, singing brothers, a Velvet flesh for Viola!

III

_The Father of Heaven._ Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes, Wood-browned pools of Paradise-- Young Jesus, for the eyes, For the eyes of Viola.

_Angels._ Tint, Prince Jesus, a Dusked eye for Viola!

It may be that he will always be a poet for the few; that his mystical, esoteric spirit, finding its proper expression in baffling imagery and elusive, other-worldly rhythms, will never be wholly congenial to the many. But his place is a.s.sured; for he had no traffic with the things of a day or the language of a day. The beauty which haunts his prose and his verse is of that universal order which can hardly fade by the mere pa.s.sing of time. Only a change in the human spirit can make it dim.

_TWO NEW VOLUMES IN THIS SERIES_

WALT WHITMAN

A CRITICAL STUDY

BY

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