call aloud upon it, under personal and palpable symbols, in the old
imaginative, _poetic_ way, rather than fool ourselves with thin
mysticities, vague intuitions, and the "sounding brass" of "ethical
ideals"!

The earlier poems of Milton are among the most lovely in the
English language. Lycidas is, for those who understand what poetry
means, the most lovely of all. There is nothing, anywhere, quite like
this poem. The lingering, elaborate harmonies, interrupted in pause
after pause, by lines of reverberating finality; and yet, sweetly,
slowly leading on to a climax of such airy, lucid calm--it is one's
"hope beyond hope" of what a poem should be.

The absence of vulgar sentiment, the classic reserve, the gentle
melancholy, the delicate gaiety, the subtle interweaving of divine,
rhythmic cadences, the ineffable lightness of touch, as of cunning
fingers upon reluctant clay; is there anything in poetry to equal these
things? One does not even regret the sudden devastating apparition
of that "two-handed engine at the door." For one remembers how
wickedly, how mercilessly, the beauty of life is even now being
spoiled by these accursed "hirelings"--and now, as then, "nothing
said."

The Nativity Hymn owes half the charm of its easy, natural grace to
the fact that the victory of Mary's infant son over the rest is treated
as if it were the victory of one pagan god over another--the final
triumph being to him who is the most "gentle" and "beautiful" of all
the gods. In the famous argument between the Lady and her
Tempter, in Comus, we have an exquisite example of the sweet,
grave refinement of virginal taste which shuns grossness as "a false
note." The doctrine of Comus--if so airy a thing can be supposed to
have a doctrine--is not very different from the doctrine of Marius the
Epicurean. One were foolish to follow the bestial enchanter; not so
much because it is "wrong" to do so, as because, then, one would
lose the finer edge of that heavenly music which turns the outward
shape "to the soul's essence."

Milton's Sonnets occupy a place by themselves in English Literature,
and they may well be pondered upon by those who think that the
relinquishing of the "old forms" makes it easier to express one's
personality. It makes it, as a matter of fact, much harder, just as the
stripping from human beings of their characteristic "outer garments"
makes them so dreadfully, so devastatingly, alike! Nothing could be
more personal t