All abundance ministers to it, though it is so single.
And here we get the sacrificial quality which is the well-kept secret of
art at this perfection. All the faculties of the poet are used for
preparing this naked greatness--are used and fruitfully spent and shed.
The loveliness that stands and waits on the simplicity of certain of Mr.
Coventry Patmore's Odes, the fervours and splendours that are there, only
to be put to silence--to silence of a kind that would be impossible were
they less glorious--are testimonies to the difference between sacrifice
and waste.
But does it seem less than reasonable to begin a review of a poet's work
with praise of an infrequent mood? Infrequent such a mood must needs be,
yet it is in a profound sense characteristic. To have attained it once
or twice is to have proved such gift and grace as a true history of
literature would show to be above price, even gauged by the rude measure
of rarity. Transcendent simplicity could not possibly be habitual. Man
lives within garments and veils, and art is chiefly concerned with making
mysteries of these for the loveliness of his life; when they are rent
asunder it is impossible not to be aware that an overwhelming human
emotion has been in action.
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