Thus _Departure_, _If I were Dead_,
_A Farewell_, _Eurydice_, _The Toys_, _St. Valentine's
Day_--though here there is in the exquisite imaginative play a
mitigation of the bare vitality of feeling--group themselves apart as the
innermost of the poet's achievements.
Second to these come the Odes that have splendid thought in great images,
and display--rather than, as do the poems first glanced at, betray--the
beauties of poetic art. Emotion is here, too, and in shocks and throes,
never frantic when almost intolerable. It is mortal pathos. If any
other poet has filled a cup with a draught so unalloyed, we do not know
it. Love and sorrow are pure in _The Unknown Eros_; and its author
has not refused even the cup of terror. Against love often, against
sorrow nearly always, against fear always, men of sensibility
instantaneously guard the quick of their hearts. It is only the approach
of the pang that they will endure; from the pang itself, dividing soul
and spirit, a man who is conscious of a profound capacity for passion
defends himself in the twinkling of an eye. But through nearly the whole
of Coventry Patmore's poetry there is an endurance of the mortal touch.
Nay, more, he has the endurance of the immortal touch.
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