But turn we to the works of mortal hands:
Cast in a mould magnificent, how stands
The pile in stately beauty! lo, how break
The gushing waters forth from sculptured urns,
Or fountain-forced, shed rainbow-tinted spray:
Within the house, how splendid the array
Of marble, porphyry, bronze: where'er one turns,
Vase with rich vase, with picture picture vies,
And flower wreaths carved of wood half cheat the wondering eyes.
The respect of mansions seems the only distinct sentiment conveyed by these lines, written in the bewilderment of the housekeeper's information. It is superfluous to point out the inflated triteness of the adjectives, the bathos of such line-endings as 'the deer how sleek'. But to compare this verse with Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College is no barren lesson in the art of poetic description.
The vagueness of which we have been speaking ran riot whenever it came near Nature. And this is one of the marked differences between good poets and bad ones. Good poets may commit sins of taste and sentiment, they may exceed, they may strike a false note, but they are never guilty of vagueness; they care too much, they observe and retain too acutely. And when they approach Nature, the source of so much of their inspiration, they bring their most delicate exactitude into play. To think of the transcendent accuracy of Dante—as literal as if he were not apocalyptic; of the chiselled sobriety of Milton; of the central simplicity of Keats, however richly embroidered the wrappings; of the easy familiarity of Cowper, the vast loving knowledge of Wordsworth, or the exquisite fidelity of Tennyson—is to have a series of clear pictures in one's eyes, and to learn the meaning of poetic realization. Or if it be objected that these are all particularly lucid poets, let us turn elsewhere. Shelley is often considered nebulous in his language, but the nebulousness comes from the heaped up wealth of his images—not
