378 A COMPARISON OF ELIZABETHAN 



author of * In Memoriam ' struck a false note when he 

 exclaimed : 



I sing but as the linnet sings. 



Nothing can be more unlike a linnet's song than the meta- 

 physical numbers of that justly valued threnody. Clough 

 came closer to the truth when he hinted at the poet's problem 

 in this age as thus : 



To finger idly some old Gordian knot, 

 Unskilled to sunder and too weak to cleave, 

 And with much toil attain to half -believe. 



The most characteristic work of the century has a double 

 object, artistic and philosophical. Poetry is used to express 

 some theory of life. In Byron the world-philosophy is cynical 

 or pessimistic. Shelley interweaves his pantheism with 

 visions of human perfectibility. Wordsworth proclaims an 

 esoteric cult of nature. Swinburne at one time rails against 

 the tyrant gods, at another preaches the gospel of republican 

 revolt. Matthew Arnold embodies a system of ethical and 

 aesthetical criticism in his verse. Clough expresses the 

 changes which the Christian faith has undergone, and the 

 perplexities of conduct. Thomson indulges the blackest 

 pessimism, a pessimism more dolorous than Leopardi's. 

 Browning is animated by a robust optimism, turning fearless 

 somersaults upon the brink of the abyss. Mrs. Browning 

 condenses speculations upon social and political problems. 

 Roden Noel, too little appreciated to be rightly understood, 

 attempts a world-embracing metaphysic of mysticism. Even 

 those poets who do not yield so marked a residuum of 

 philosophy are touched to sadness and gravity by the intel- 

 lectual atmosphere in which they work. Virgil's great line : 

 Sunt lacrimse rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt 



might be chosen as a motto for the corpus poetarum of our 

 epoch. In reading what the age has produced, certain phrases 

 linger in our memory 



Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 



The still, sad music of humanity. 



