The Project Gutenberg EBook of Victorian Songs, by Various This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Victorian Songs Lyrics of the Affections and Nature Author: Various Commentator: Edmund Gosse Editor: Edmund H. Garrett Illustrator: Edmund H. Garrett Release Date: September 28, 2008 [EBook #26715] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORIAN SONGS *** Produced by Louise Hope, David Starner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. (This file includes images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) This text uses UTF-8 (unicode) file encoding. If the apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage, you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, make sure that your browser’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set to Unicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change the default font. All Plates except the Frontispiece were originally printed on right-hand pages. Some have been shifted slightly to fall between poems. The List of Illustrations shows their original location (facing page). Spacing of contractions such as I ’ve follows the original. Contents Index of First Lines List of Illustrations Introduction Victorian Songs Victorian Songs Victorian Songs “‘Let some one sing to vs, lightlier move The minvtes fledged with mvsic’.” TENNYSON Frontispiece: Sweet and Low, Sweet and Low (text link below) — Title Page Text — Copyright, 1895. By Edmund H. Garrett. University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. Some editions of the book have a two-page Editor’s Note before the Contents, acknowledging the “publishers and authors who have given permission for the use of many of the songs included in this volume”. It has been omitted from this e-text. Contents Where are the songs I used to know? Christina Rossetti. AÏDÉ, HAMILTON (1830). page Remember or Forget 3 Oh, Let Me Dream 6 Love, the Pilgrim 7 ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM (1824-1889). Lovely Mary Donnelly 9 Song 13 Serenade 14 Across the Sea 16 ARNOLD, SIR EDWIN (1832). Serenade 18 A Love Song of Henri Quatre 20 ASHE, THOMAS (1836-1889). No and Yes 22 At Altenahr 23 Marit 24 vii viii AUSTIN, ALFRED (1835). A Night in June 26 BEDDOES, THOMAS LOVELL (1803-1849). Dream-Pedlary 30 Song from the Ship 33 Song 34 Song 35 Song, by Two Voices 36 Song 38 BENNETT, WILLIAM COX (1820). Cradle Song 39 My Roses blossom the Whole Year Round 41 Cradle Song 42 BOURDILLON, F. W. (1852). Love’s Meinie 43 The Night has a Thousand Eyes 44 A Lost Voice 45 BUCHANAN, ROBERT (1841). Serenade 46 Song 48 COLLINS, MORTIMER (1827-1876). To F. C. 49 A Game of Chess 50 Multum in Parvo 52 Violets at Home 53 My Thrush 54 CRAIK, DINAH MARIA MULOCK (1826-1887). Too Late 56 A Silly Song 58 DARLEY, GEORGE (1795-1846). May Day 60 I ’ve been Roaming 62 Sylvia’s Song 63 Serenade 64 DE TABLEY, LORD (1835). A Winter Sketch 66 The Second Madrigal 69 DE VERE, AUBREY (1788-1846). Song 70 Song 72 Song 74 DICKENS, CHARLES (1812-1870). The Ivy Green 75 DOBSON, AUSTIN (1840). The Ladies of St. James’s 77 The Milkmaid 81 DOMETT, ALFRED (1811-1887). A Glee for Winter 84 A Kiss 86 ix DUFFERIN, LADY (1807-1867). Song 88 Lament of the Irish Emigrant 90 FIELD, MICHAEL. Winds To-day are Large and Free 94 Let us Wreathe the Mighty Cup 96 Where Winds abound 97 GALE, NORMAN (1862). A Song 98 Song 99 GOSSE, EDMUND (1849). Song for the Lute 101 HOOD, THOMAS (1798-1845). Ballad 102 Song 104 I Remember, I Remember 106 Ballad 108 Song 110 HOUGHTON, LORD (RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES) (1809-1885). The Brookside 111 The Venetian Serenade 113 From Love and Nature 115 INGELOW, JEAN (1830). The Long White Seam 116 Love 118 Sweet is Childhood 120 KINGSLEY, CHARLES (1819-1875). Airly Beacon 121 The Sands of Dee 122 Three Fishers went Sailing 124 A Farewell 126 LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE (1775-1864). Rose Aylmer 127 Rubies 128 The Fault is not Mine 129 Under the Lindens 130 Sixteen 131 Ianthe 132 One Lovely Name 133 Forsaken 133 LOCKER-LAMPSON, FREDERICK (1821-1895). A Garden Lyric 134 The Cuckoo 137 Gertrude’s Necklace 139 LOVER, SAMUEL (1797-1868). The Angel’s Whisper 141 What will you do, Love? 143 MACKAY, CHARLES (1814-1889). I Love my Love 145 O Ye Tears! 147 x xi MAHONEY, FRANCIS (1805-1866). The Bells of Shandon 149 MASSEY, GERALD (1828). Song 153 O’SHAUGHNESSY, ARTHUR (1844-1881). A Love Symphony 156 I made Another Garden 158 PROCTER, ADELAIDE ANNE (1825-1864). The Lost Chord 160 Sent to Heaven 162 PROCTER, B. W. (BARRY CORNWALL) (1787-1874). The Poet’s Song to his Wife 165 A Petition to Time 167 A Bacchanalian Song 168 She was not Fair nor Full of Grace 170 The Sea-King 172 A Serenade 174 King Death 176 Sit Down, Sad Soul 178 A Drinking Song 180 Peace! What do Tears Avail? 182 The Sea 184 ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA G. (1830-1895). Song 186 Song 188 Song 189 Three Seasons 190 ROSSETTI, DANTE GABRIEL (1828-1882). A Little While 191 Sudden Light 193 Three Shadows 194 SCOTT, WILLIAM BELL (1812-1890). Parting and Meeting Again 196 SKIPSEY, JOSEPH (1832). A Merry Bee 198 The Songstress 199 The Violet and the Rose 200 STERRY, J. ASHBY. Regrets 201 Daisy’s Dimples 203 A Lover’s Lullaby 204 SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES (1837). A Match 205 Rondel 208 Song 209 TENNYSON, ALFRED (1809-1892). The Bugle Song 210 Break, Break, Break 212 Tears, Idle Tears 213 Sweet and Low 215 xii xiii Turn, Fortune, Turn thy Wheel 216 Vivien’s Song 217 THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE (1811-1863). At the Church Gate 218 The Mahogany Tree 220 THORNBURY, GEORGE WALTER (1828-1876). Dayrise and Sunset 223 The Three Troopers 225 The Cuckoo 228 decoration An Index to First Lines Listen—Songs thou ’lt hear Through the wide world ringing. Barry Cornwall. page A baby was sleeping Samuel Lover 141 “A cup for hope!” she said Christina G. Rossetti 190 A golden bee a-cometh Joseph Skipsey 198 A little shadow makes the sunrise sad Mortimer Collins 52 A little while a little love Dante Gabriel Rossetti 191 A thousand voices fill my ears F. W. Bourdillon 45 Across the grass I see her pass Austin Dobson 81 Ah, what avails the sceptered race! Walter Savage Landor 127 Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon Charles Kingsley 121 All glorious as the Rainbow’s birth Gerald Massey 153 All through the sultry hours of June Mortimer Collins 54 Along the garden ways just now Arthur O’Shaughnessy 156 Although I enter not William Makepeace Thackeray 218 As Gertrude skipt from babe to girl Frederick Locker-Lampson 139 As I came round the harbor buoy Jean Ingelow 116 Awake!—The starry midnight Hour B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 174 Awake thee, my Lady-love! George Darley 64 Back flies my soul to other years Joseph Skipsey 199 Break, break, break Alfred Tennyson 212 Came, on a Sabbath noon, my sweet Thomas Ashe 23 Christmas is here William Makepeace Thackeray 220 Come, rosy Day! Sir Edwin Arnold 20 Come sing, Come sing, of the great Sea-King B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 172 xv xvi Could ye come back to me, Douglas, Douglas Dinah Maria Mulock Craik 56 Drink, and fill the night with mirth! B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 180 Every day a Pilgrim, blindfold Hamilton Aïdé 7 Fast falls the snow, O lady mine Mortimer Collins 49 First the fine, faint, dreamy motion Norman Gale 98 Hence, rude Winter! crabbed old fellow Alfred Domett 84 How many Summers, love B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 165 How many times do I love thee, dear? Thomas Lovell Beddoes 38 I bring a garland for your head Edmund Gosse 101 I had a Message to send her Adelaide Anne Procter 162 I have been here before Dante Gabriel Rossetti 193 I leaned out of window, I smelt the white clover Jean Ingelow 118 I looked and saw your eyes Dante Gabriel Rossetti 194 I made another garden, yea Arthur O’Shaughnessy 158 I remember, I remember Thomas Hood 106 I sat beside the streamlet Hamilton Aïdé 3 I wandered by the brook-side Lord Houghton 111 I walked in the lonesome evening William Allingham 16 If I could choose my paradise Thomas Ashe 22 If love were what the rose is Algernon Charles Swinburne 205 If there were dreams to sell Thomas Lovell Beddoes 30 I ’m sitting on the stile, Mary Lady Dufferin 90 In Clementina’s artless mien Walter Savage Landor 131 In Love, if Love be Love, if Love be ours Alfred Tennyson 217 Into the Devil tavern George Walter Thornbury 225 It was not in the winter Thomas Hood 102 I ’ve been roaming! I ’ve been roaming! George Darley 62 King Death was a rare old fellow! B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 176 Kissing her hair I sat against her feet. Algernon Charles Swinburne 208 Lady! in this night of June Alfred Austin 26 Last time I parted from my Dear William Bell Scott 196 Let us wreathe the mighty cup Michael Field 96 Little dimples so sweet and soft J. Ashby Sterry 203 Lullaby! O lullaby! William Cox Bennett 42 Lute! breathe thy lowest in my Lady’s ear Sir Edwin Arnold 18 Mirror your sweet eyes in mine, love J. Ashby Sterry 204 Mother, I can not mind my wheel Walter Savage Landor 133 My fairest child, I have no song to give you Charles Kingsley 126 My goblet’s golden lips are dry Thomas Lovell Beddoes 34 My love, on a fair May morning Thomas Ashe 24 My roses blossom the whole year round William Cox Bennett 41 O for the look of those pure gray eyes J. Ashby Sterry 201 O happy buds of violet! Mortimer Collins 53 “O Heart, my heart!” she said, and heard Dinah Maria Mulock Craik 58 O lady, leave thy silken thread Thomas Hood 104 O lips that mine have grown into Algernon Charles Swinburne 209 O Love is like the roses Robert Buchanan 48 O May, thou art a merry time George Darley 60 O roses for the flush of youth Christina G. Rossetti 188 O spirit of the Summertime! William Allingham 13 O ye tears! O ye tears! that have long refused to flow Charles Mackay 147 Often I have heard it said Walter Savage Landor 128 Oh, a dainty plant is the Ivy green Charles Dickens 75 Oh, hearing sleep, and sleeping hear William Allingham 14 Oh! let me dream of happy days gone by Hamilton Aïdé 6 Oh, lovely Mary Donnelly, my joy, my only best! William Allingham 9 “Oh, Mary, go and call the cattle home” Charles Kingsley 122 One lovely name adorns my song Walter Savage Landor 133 Peace! what can tears avail? B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 182 xvii Seated one day at the Organ Adelaide Anne Procter 160 Seek not the tree of silkiest bark Aubrey de Vere 72 She was not fair, nor full of grace B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 170 She ’s up and gone, the graceless Girl Thomas Hood 108 Sing!—Who sings B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 168 Sit down, sad soul, and count B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 178 Sleep sweet, belovëd one, sleep sweet! Robert Buchanan 46 Sleep! the bird is in its nest William Cox Bennett 39 Softly, O midnight Hours! Audrey de Vere 70 Strew not earth with empty stars Thomas Lovell Beddoes 35 Sweet and low, sweet and low Alfred Tennyson 215 Sweet is childhood—childhood ’s over Jean Ingelow 120 Sweet mouth! O let me take Alfred Domett 86 Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean Alfred Tennyson 213 Terrace and lawn are white with frost Mortimer Collins 50 Thank Heaven, Ianthe, once again Walter Savage Landor 132 The fault is not mine if I love you too much Walter Savage Landor 129 The ladies of St. James’s Austin Dobson 77 The night has a thousand eyes F. W. Bourdillon 44 The Sea! the Sea! the open Sea! B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 184 The splendour falls on castle walls Alfred Tennyson 210 The stars are with the voyager Thomas Hood 110 The streams that wind amid the hills George Darley 63 The Sun came through the frosty mist Lord Houghton 115 The Violet invited my kiss Joseph Skipsey 200 There is no summer ere the swallows come. F. W. Bourdillon 43 Three fishers went sailing away to the West Charles Kingsley 124 To sea, to sea! the calm is o’er Thomas Lovell Beddoes 33 Touch us gently, Time! B. W. Procter (Barry Cornwall) 167 Turn, Fortune, turn thy wheel and lower the proud! Alfred Tennyson 216 Two doves upon the selfsame branch Christina G. Rossetti 189 Under the lindens lately sat Walter Savage Landor 130 Wait but a little while Norman Gale 99 We have loiter’d and laugh’d in the flowery croft Frederick Locker-Lampson 134 We heard it calling, clear and low Frederick Locker-Lampson 137 What is the meaning of the song Charles Mackay 145 “What will you do, love, when I am going” Samuel Lover 143 When a warm and scented steam George Walter Thornbury 228 When along the light ripple the far serenade Lord Houghton 113 When another’s voice thou hearest Lady Dufferin 88 When I am dead, my dearest Christina G. Rossetti 186 When I was young, I said to Sorrow Aubrey de Vere 74 When Spring casts all her swallows forth George Walter Thornbury 223 When the snow begins to feather Lord de Tabley 66 Where winds abound Michael Field 97 Who is the baby, that doth lie Thomas Lovell Beddoes 36 Winds to-day are large and free Michael Field 94 With deep affection Francis Mahoney 149 Woo thy lass while May is here Lord de Tabley 69 decoration xviii xix xxi List of Illustrations Their songs wake singing echoes in my land. Christina Rossetti. Sweet and low, sweet and low Frontispiece “Oh! let me dream of happy days gone by” 6 Across the Sea 16 “My love on a fair May morning” 24 Song in the Garden 38 The night has a thousand eyes 44 A Game of Chess 50 “I ’ve been roaming, I ’ve been roaming” 62 “A maid I know,—and March winds blow” 82 “That bright May morning long ago” 90 “I remember, I remember” 106 I wandered by the brook-side 112 “Three fishers went sailing away to the West” 124 Ianthe 132 Gertrude’s Necklace 140 “She turned back at the last to wait” 158 King Death 176 “I looked and saw your eyes” 194 Break, Break, Break 212 “When Spring casts all her swallows forth” 224 decoration xxii xxiii N Introduction The writer of prose, by intelligence taught, Says the thing that will please, in the way that he ought. Frederick Locker-Lampson. O species of poetry is more ancient than the lyrical, and yet none shows so little sign of having outlived the requirements of human passion. The world may grow tired of epics and of tragedies, but each generation, as it sees the hawthorns blossom and the freshness of girlhood expand, is seized with a pang which nothing but the spasm of verse will relieve. Each youth imagines that spring-tide and love are wonders which he is the first of human beings to appreciate, and he burns to alleviate his emotion in rhyme. Historians exaggerate, perhaps, the function of music in awakening and guiding the exercise of lyrical poetry. The lyric exists, they tell us, as an accompaniment to the lyre; and without the mechanical harmony the spoken song is an artifice. Quite as plausibly might it be avowed that music was but added to verse to concentrate and emphasize its rapture, to add poignancy and volume to its expression. But the truth is that these two arts, though sometimes happily allied, are, and always have been, independent. When verse has been innocent enough to lean on music, we may be likely to find that music also has been of the simplest order, and that the pair of them, like two delicious children, have tottered and swayed together down the flowery meadows of experience. When either poetry or music is adult, the presence of each is a distraction to the other, and each prefers, in the elaborate ages, to stand alone, since the mystery of the one confounds the complexity of the other. Most poets hate music; few musicians comprehend the nature of poetry; and the combination of these arts has probably, in all ages, been contrived, not for the satisfaction of artists, but for the convenience of their public. This divorce between poetry and music has been more frankly accepted in the present century than ever before, and is nowadays scarcely opposed in serious criticism. If music were a necessary ornament of lyrical verse, the latter would nowadays scarcely exist; but we hear less and less of the poets devotion (save in a purely conventional sense) to the lute and the pipe. What we call the Victorian lyric is absolutely independent of any such aid. It may be that certain songs of Tennyson and Christina Rossetti have been with great popularity “set,” as it is called, “to music.” So far as the latter is in itself successful, it stultifies the former; and we admit at last that the idea of one art aiding another in this combination is absolutely fictitious. The beauty—even the beauty of sound—conveyed by the ear in such lyrics as “Break, break, break,” or “When I am dead, my dearest,” is obscured, is exchanged for another and a rival species of beauty, by the most exquisite musical setting that a composer can invent. The age which has been the first to accept this condition, then, should be rich in frankly lyrical poetry; and this we find to be the case with the Victorian period. At no time has a greater mass of this species of verse been produced, not even in the combined Elizabethan and Jacobean age. But when we come to consider the quality of this later harvest of song, we observe in it a far less homogeneous character. We can take a piece of verse, and decide at sight that it must be Elizabethan, or of the age of the Pléiade in France, or of a particular period in Italy. Even an ode of our own eighteenth century is hardly to be confounded with a fragment from any other school. The great Georgian age introduced a wide variety into English poetry; and yet we have but to examine the selected jewels strung into so exquisite a carcanet by Mr. Palgrave in his “Golden Treasury” to notice with surprise how close a family likeness exists between the contributions of Shelley, Wordsworth, Keats, and Byron. The distinctions of style, of course, are very great; but the general character of the diction, the imagery, even of the rhythm, is more or less identical. The stamp of the same age is upon them,—they are hall-marked 1820. It is perhaps too early to decide that this will never be the case with the Victorian lyrics. While we live xxiv xxv xxvi xxvii in an age we see the distinction of its parts, rather than their co-relation. It is said that the Japanese Government once sent over a Commission to report upon the art of Europe; and that, having visited the exhibitions of London, Paris, Florence, and Berlin, the Commissioners confessed that the works of the European painters all looked so exactly alike that it was difficult to distinguish one from another. The Japanese eye, trained in absolutely opposed conventions, could not tell the difference between a Watts and a Fortuny, a Théodore Rousseau and a Henry Moore. So it is quite possible, it is even probable, that future critics may see a close similarity where we see nothing but divergence between the various productions of the Victorian age. Yet we can judge but what we discern; and certainly to the critical eye to-day it is the absence of a central tendency, the chaotic cultivation of all contrivable varieties of style, which most strikingly seems to distinguish the times we live in. We use the word “Victorian” in literature to distinguish what was written after the decline of that age of which Walter Scott, Coleridge, and Wordsworth were the survivors. It is well to recollect, however, that Tennyson, who is the Victorian writer par excellence, had published the most individual and characteristic of his lyrics long before the Queen ascended the throne, and that Elizabeth Barrett, Henry Taylor, William Barnes, and others were by this date of mature age. It is difficult to remind ourselves, who have lived in the radiance of that august figure, that some of the most beautiful of Tennyson’s lyrics, such as “Mariana” and “The Dying Swan” are now separated from us by as long a period of years as divided them from Dr. Johnson and the author of “Night Thoughts.” The reflection is of value only as warning us of the extraordinary length of the epoch we still call “Victorian.” It covers, not a mere generation, but much more than half a century. During this length of time a complete revolution in literary taste might have been expected to take place. This has not occurred, and the cause may very well be the extreme license permitted to the poets to adopt whatever style they pleased. Where all the doors stand wide open, there is no object in escaping; where there is but one door, and that one barred, it is human nature to fret for some violent means of evasion. How divine have been the methods of the Victorian lyrists may easily be exemplified:— “Quoth tongue of neither maid nor wife To heart of neither wife nor maid, Lead we not here a jolly life Betwixt the shine and shade? “Quoth heart of neither maid nor wife To tongue of neither wife nor maid, Thou wagg’st, but I am worn with strife, And feel like flowers that fade.” That is a masterpiece, but so is this:— “Nay, but you who do not love her, Is she not pure gold, my mistress? Holds earth aught—speak truth—above her? Aught like this tress, see, and this tress, And this last fairest tress of all, —So fair, see, ere I let it fall? “Because, you spend your lives in praisings, To praise, you search the wide world over: Then why not witness, calmly gazing, If earth holds aught—speak truth—above her? Above this tress, and this I touch, But cannot praise, I love so much!” And so is this:— “Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will. “This be the verse yon grave for me: Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from sea, And the hunter home from the hill.” But who would believe that the writers of these were contemporaries? If we examine more closely the forms which lyric poetry has taken since 1830, we shall find that certain influences at work in the minds of our leading writers have led to the widest divergence in the character of lyrical verse. It will be well, perhaps, to consider in turn the leading classes of that work. It was not to be expected that in an age of such complexity and self-consciousness as ours, the pure song, the simple trill of bird-like melody, should often or prominently be heard. As civilization spreads, it ceases to be possible, or at least it becomes less and less usual, that simple emotion should express itself with absolute naïveté. Perhaps Burns was the latest poet in these islands whose passion xxviii xxix xxx xxxi warbled forth in perfectly artless strains; and he had the advantage of using a dialect still unsubdued and unvulgarized. Artlessness nowadays must be the result of the most exquisitely finished art; if not, it is apt to be insipid, if not positively squalid and fusty. The obvious uses of simple words have been exhausted; we cannot, save by infinite pains and the exercise of a happy genius, recover the old spontaneous air, the effect of an inevitable arrangement of the only possible words. This beautiful direct simplicity, however, was not infrequently secured by Tennyson, and scarcely less often by Christina Rossetti, both of whom have left behind them jets of pure emotional melody which compare to advantage with the most perfect specimens of Greek and Elizabethan song. Tennyson did not very often essay this class of writing, but when he did, he rarely failed; his songs combine, with extreme naturalness and something of a familiar sweetness, a felicity of workmanship hardly to be excelled. In her best songs, Miss Rossetti is scarcely, if at all, his inferior; but her judgment was far less sure, and she was more ready to look with complacency on her failures. The songs of Mr. Aubrey de Vere are not well enough known; they are sometimes singularly charming. Other poets have once or twice succeeded in catching this clear natural treble,—the living linnet once captured in the elm, as Tusitala puts it; but this has not been a gift largely enjoyed by our Victorian poets. The richer and more elaborate forms of lyric, on the contrary, have exactly suited this curious and learned age of ours. The species of verse which, originally Italian or French, have now so abundantly and so admirably been practised in England that we can no longer think of them as exotic, having found so many exponents in the Victorian period that they are pre-eminently characteristic of it. “Scorn not the Sonnet,” said Wordsworth to his contemporaries; but the lesson has not been needed in the second half of the century. The sonnet is the most solid and unsingable of the sections of lyrical poetry; it is difficult to think of it as chanted to a musical accompaniment. It is used with great distinction by writers to whom skill in the lighter divisions of poetry has been denied, and there are poets, such as Bowles and Charles Tennyson-Turner, who live by their sonnets alone. The practice of the sonnet has been so extended that all sense of monotony has been lost. A sonnet by Elizabeth Barrett Browning differs from one by D. G. Rossetti or by Matthew Arnold to such excess as to make it difficult for us to realize that the form in each case is absolutely identical. With the sonnet might be mentioned the lighter forms of elaborate exotic verse; but to these a word shall be given later on. More closely allied to the sonnet are those rich and somewhat fantastic stanza-measures in which Rossetti delighted. Those in which Keats and the Italians have each their part have been greatly used by the Victorian poets. They lend themselves to a melancholy magnificence, to pomp of movement and gorgeousness of color; the very sight of them gives the page the look of an ancient blazoned window. Poems of this class are “The Stream’s Secret” and the choruses in “Love is enough.” They satisfy the appetite of our time for subtle and vague analysis of emotion, for what appeals to the spirit through the senses; but here, again, in different hands, the “thing,” the metrical instrument, takes wholly diverse characters, and we seek in vain for a formula that can include Robert Browning and Gabriel Rossetti, William Barnes and Arthur Hugh Clough. From this highly elaborated and extended species of lyric the transition is easy to the Ode. In the Victorian age, the ode, in its full Pindaric sense, has not been very frequently used. We have specimens by Mr. Swinburne in which the Dorian laws are closely adhered to. But the ode, in a more or less irregular form, whether pæan or threnody, has been the instrument of several of our leading lyrists. The genius of Mr. Swinburne, even to a greater degree than that of Shelley, is essentially dithyrambic, and is never happier than when it spreads its wings as wide as those of the wild swan, and soars upon the very breast of tempest. In these flights Mr. Swinburne attains to a volume of sonorous melody such as no other poet, perhaps, of the world has reached, and we may say to him, as he has shouted to the Mater Triumphalis:— “Darkness to daylight shall lift up thy pæan, Hill to hill thunder, vale cry back to vale, With wind-notes as of eagles Æschylean, And Sappho singing in the nightingale.” Nothing could mark more picturesquely the wide diversity permitted in Victorian lyric than to turn from the sonorous and tumultuous odes of Mr. Swinburne to those of Mr. Patmore, in which stateliness of contemplation and a peculiar austerity of tenderness find their expression in odes of iambic cadence, the melody of which depends, not in their headlong torrent of sound, but in the cunning variation of catalectic pause. A similar form has been adopted by Lord De Tabley for many of his gorgeous studies of antique myth, and by Tennyson for his “Death of the Duke of Wellington.” It is an error to call these iambic odes “irregular,” although they do not follow the classic rules with strophe, antistrophe, and epode. The enchanting “I have led her home,” in “Maud,” is an example of this kind of lyric at its highest point of perfection. A branch of lyrical poetry which has been very widely cultivated in the Victorian age is the philosophical, or gnomic, in which a serious chain of thought, often illustrated by complex and various imagery, is held in a casket of melodious verse, elaborately rhymed. Matthew Arnold was a master of this kind of poetry, which takes its form, through Wordsworth, from the solemn and so- called “metaphysical” writers of the seventeenth century. We class this interesting and abundant section of verse with the lyrical, because we know not by what other name to describe it; yet it has obviously as little as possible of the singing ecstasy about it. It neither pours its heart out in a rapture, xxxii xxxiii xxxiv xxxv xxxvi xxxvii nor wails forth its despair. It has as little of the nightingale’s rich melancholy as of the lark’s delirium. It hardly sings, but, with infinite decorum and sobriety, speaks its melodious message to mankind. This sort of philosophical poetry is really critical; its function is to analyze and describe; and it approaches, save for the enchantment of its form, nearer to prose than do the other sections of the art. It is, however, just this species of poetry which has particularly appealed to the age in which we live; and how naturally it does so may be seen in the welcome extended to the polished and serene compositions of Mr. William Watson. Almost a creation, or at least a complete conquest, of the Victorian age is the humorous lyric in its more delicate developments. If the past can point to Prior and to Praed, we can boast, in their various departments, of Calverly, of Locker-Lampson, of Mr. Andrew Lang, of Mr. W. S. Gilbert. The comic muse, indeed, has marvellously extended her blandishments during the last two generations, and has discovered methods of trivial elegance which were quite unknown to our forefathers. Here must certainly be said a word in favor of those French forms of verse, all essentially lyrical, such as the ballad, the rondel, the triolet, which have been used so abundantly as to become quite a feature in our lighter literature. These are not, or are but rarely, fitted to bear the burden of high emotion; but their precision, and the deftness which their use demands fit them exceedingly well for the more distinguished kind of persiflage. No one has kept these delicate butterflies in flight with the agile movement of his fan so admirably as Mr. Austin Dobson, that neatest of magicians. Those who write hastily of Victorian lyrical poetry are apt to find fault with its lack of spontaneity. It is true that we cannot pretend to discover on a greensward so often crossed and re-crossed as the poetic language of England many morning dewdrops still glistening on the grasses. We have to pay the penalty of our experience in a certain lack of innocence. The artless graces of a child seem mincing affectations in a grown-up woman. But the poetry of this age has amply made up for any lack of innocence by its sumptuous fulness, its variety, its magnificent accomplishment, its felicitous response to a multitude of moods and apprehensions. It has struck out no new field for itself; it still remains where the romantic revolution of 1798 placed it; its aims are not other than were those of Coleridge and of Keats. But within that defined sphere it has developed a surprising activity. It has occupied the attention and become the facile instrument of men of the greatest genius, writers of whom any age and any language might be proud. It has been tender and fiery, severe and voluminous, gorgeous and marmoreal, in turns. It has translated into words feelings so subtle, so transitory, moods so fragile and intangible, that the rough hand of prose would but have crushed them. And this, surely, indicates the great gift of Victorian lyrical poetry to the race. During a time of extreme mental and moral restlessness, a time of speculation and evolution, when all illusions are tested, all conventions overthrown, when the harder elements of life have been brought violently to the front, and where there is a temptation for the emancipated mind roughly to reject what is not material and obvious, this art has preserved intact the lovelier delusions of the spirit, all that is vague and incorporeal and illusory. So that for Victorian Lyric generally no better final definition can be given than is supplied by Mr. Robert Bridges in a little poem of incomparable beauty, which may fitly bring this essay to a close:— “I have loved flowers that fade, Within whose magic tents Rich hues have marriage made With sweet immemorial scents: A joy of love at sight,— A honeymoon delight, That ages in an hour:— My song be like a flower. “I have loved airs that die Before their charm is writ Upon the liquid sky Trembling to welcome it. Notes that with pulse of fire Proclaim the spirit’s desire, Then die, and are nowhere:— My song be like an air.” Edmund Gosse. Victorian Songs “Short swallow-flights of song” TENNYSON xxxviii xxxix xl xli 1