"--
"So they bathed, they read, they roamed in glen and forest;
Far amid blackest pines to the waterfall they shadow,
Far up the long long glen to the loch, and the loch beyond it
Deep under huge red cliffs, a secret."
In many of the images of this poem, as also in the volume
"Ambarvalia," the joint production of Clough and Thomas Burbidge,
there is a peculiar moderness, a reference distinctly to the means
and habits of society in these days, a recognition of every-day fact,
and a willingness to believe it as capable of poetry as that which,
but for having once been fact, would not now be tradition. There is a
certain special character in passages like the following, the
familiarity of the matter blending with the remoteness of the form of
metre, such as should not be overlooked in attempting to estimate the
author's mind and views of art:
"Still, as before (and as now), balls, dances, and evening parties,....
Seemed like a sort of unnatural up-in-the-air balloon work,....
As mere gratuitous trifling in presence of business and duty
As does the turning aside of the tourist to look at a landscape
Seem in the steamer or coach to the merchant in haste for the city."
--p. 12.
"I was as one that sleeps on the railway; one who, dreaming,
Hears thro' his dream the name of his home shouted out,--hears
and hears not,
Faint, and louder again, and less loud, dying in distance,--
Dimly conscious, with something of inward debate and choice, and
Sense of [present] claim and reality present; relapses,
Nevertheless, and continues the dream and fancy, while forward,
Swiftly, remorseless, the car presses on, he knows not whither.
Pages:
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140