Yes, I can tell such a key, I do know such a place,
Where, whatever's prized and passes of us, everything that's fresh and
fast flying of us, seems to us sweet of us and
swiftly away with, done away with, undone,
Undone, done with, soon done with, and yet clearly and dangerously sweet
Of us, the wimpled-water-dimpled, not-by-morning-matched face,
The flower of beauty, fleece of beauty, too too apt to, ah! to fleet,
Never fleets more, fastened with the tenderest truth
To its own best being and its loveliness of youth....'
Than this, Hopkins truly wrote, 'I never did anything more musical.' By
his own verdict and his own standards it is therefore the finest thing
that Hopkins did. Yet even here, where the general beauty is undoubted,
is not the music too obvious? Is it not always on the point of
degenerating into a jingle--as much an exhibition of the limitations of
a poetical theory as of its capabilities? The tyranny of the 'avant
toute chose' upon a mind in which the other things were not stubborn and
self-assertive is apparent.
Pages:
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94