24 



REV. JONES VERY, IN MEMORIAM ; 



Poets describe themselves in their verse. Milton 

 "builds the lofty rhyme," Wordsworth has "the accom- 

 plishment of verse," Byron is "the exulting and abound- 

 ing river," Shelley pours his verse "in profuse strains of 

 unpremeditated art," " like light dissolved in star showers 

 thrown," and his poetry 



"Round western isles with incense blossoms bright, 

 Lingering, suspends the soul in its voluptuous flight." 



Shelley has passages of passion in the poems referred 

 to, very memorable in English verse, bringing in more 

 sensitively the soul, the whole being, than any other 

 writer, so that the lines tremble with their own emotion, 

 and the whole ocean sags in the style and ebbs and flows 

 and edges irresistibly, or sweeps with its incommunicable 

 wave : and the verse is as the sands and the snow, 

 moulded by the winds and waves, moulded and wrought. 

 The breeze quivers in the lines. The whole scene is 

 mirrored in his powerful style and penetrating feeling. 

 Language vibrates under his touch as reeds quiver in the 

 wind, or the waves beat the sea. The dense sweep of 

 the verse and liquid note are as if Nature's own hand 

 were on the strings. It is one with nature, she is poured 

 into it as into a mould. This is sympathetic versification 

 and it is greater than imitative harmony. It paints the 

 picture broadly in the feeling not in the eye, subjective, 

 emotional, and who would not have such an eye to see 

 with? He opens a window in the soul from which the 

 world is as created anew. 



Emerson's poetry is bare of sentiment, romance, as- 

 sociation ; too mainly intellectual. There is no " lyri- 

 cal cry," no sense of continuity and music in it, the 

 careless running line where versification trips off with the 

 soul upon its back, free as the winds, — too serious. Per- 

 fect as the Humble Bee is in sympathetic drone and buzz, 



