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The Rhythm of Life-Part8_Alice Meynell(1847-1924)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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Lycidas, the Mrs. Anne Killigrew, the Intimations, and Emerson's



Threnody, considered merely for their versification, fulfil their

laws so perfectly that they certainly move without checks as without



haste. So with the graver Odes--much in the majority--of Mr.

Coventry Patmore's series. A more lovely dignity of extension and



restriction, a more touchingsweetness of simple and frequent rhyme,

a truer impetus of pulse and impulse, English verse could hardly



yield than are to be found in his versification. And what movement

of words has ever expressed flight, distance, mystery, and wonderful



approach, as they are expressed in a celestial line--the eighth in

the ode To the Unknown Eros? When we are sensible of a metrical



cheek it is in this way: To the English ear the heroic line is the

unit of metre, and when two lines of various length undesignedly add



together to form a heroic line, they have to be separated with

something of a jerk. And this adding--as, for instance, of a line



of four syllables preceding or following one of six--occurs now and

then, and even in such a masterly measure of music as A Farewell.



It is as when a sail suddenly flaps windless in the fetching about

of a boat. In The Angel in the House, and other earlier poems, Mr.



Coventry Patmore used the octosyllabic stanzaperfectly, inasmuch as

he never left it either heavily or thinly packed. Moreover those



first poems had a composure which was the prelude to the peace of

the Odes. And even in his slightest work he proves himself the



master--that is, the owner--of words that, owned by him, are

unprofaned, are as though they had never been profaned; the capturer



of an art so quick and close that it is the voice less of a poet

than of the very Muse.



INNOCENCE AND EXPERIENCE

I shall not ask the commentators whether Blake used these two words



in union or in antithesis. They assuredly have an inseverable union

in the art of literature. The songs of Innocence and Experience are



for each poet the songs of his own separate heart and life; but to

take the cumulative experiences of other men, and to use these in



place of the virginal fruit of thought--whereas one would hardly

consent to take them for ordering even the most habitual of daily



affairs--is to forego Innocence and Experience at once and together.

Obviously, Experience can be nothing except personal and separate;



and Innocence of a singularly solitary quality is his who does not

dip his hands into other men's histories, and does not give to his



own word the common sanction of other men's summaries and

conclusions. Therefore I bind Innocence and Experience in one, and



take them as a sign of the necessary and noble isolation of man from

man--of his uniqueness. But if I had a mind to forego that manner



of personal separateness, and to use the things of others, I think I

would rather appropriate their future than their past. Let me put



on their hopes, and the colours of their confidence, if I must

borrow. Not that I would burden my prophetic soul with unjustified



ambitions; but even this would be more tolerable than to load my

memory with an unjustifiable history.



And yet how differently do the writers of a certain kind of love-

poetry consider this matter. These are the love-poets who have no



reluctance in adopting the past of a multitude of people to whom

they have not even been introduced. Their verse is full of ready-



made memories, various, numerous, and cruel. No single life--

supposing it to be a liberal life concerned with something besides



sex--could quite suffice for so much experience, so much

disillusion, so much deception. To achieve that tone in its fulness



it is necessary to take for one's own the praeterita (say) of Alfred

de Musset and of the men who helped him--not to live but--to have



lived; it is necessary to have lived much more than any man lives,




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