THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE 209 



by wild storms of emotion, but at the same time of 

 sane and beneficent potentiality. Neither in it nor 

 in either of the others is there the building-up of a 

 fair verbal structure, a symmetrical piece of mechan- 

 ism, whose last stone is implied and necessitated in 

 the first. 



"The critic's great error," says Heine, "lies in 

 asking, ' What ought the artist to do ? ' It would 

 be far more correct to ask, ' What does the artist 

 intend?'" 



It is probably partly because his field is so large, 

 his demands so exacting, his method so new (neces- 

 sarily so), and from the whole standard of the poems 

 being what I may call an astronomical one, that the 

 critics complain so generally of want of form in him. 

 And the critics are right enough, as far as their ob- 

 jection goes. There is no deliberate form here, any 

 more than there is in the forces of nature. Shall 

 we say, then, that nothing but the void exists ? The 

 void is filled by a Presence. There is a controlling, 

 directing, overarching will in every page, every 

 verse, that there is no escape from. Design and 

 purpose, natural selection, growth, culmination, etc., 

 are just as pronounced as in any poet. 



There is a want of form in the unfinished statue, 

 because it is struggling into form; it is nothing 

 without form; but there is no want of form in the 

 elemental laws and effusions — in fire, or water, or 

 rain, or dew, or the smell of the shore or the plung- 

 ing waves. And may there not be the analogue of 

 this in literature, — a potent, quickening, exhilara- 



