It is in that way that Arnold, in Empedocles, paints the Thinker and the Poet, nor is it only in Empedocles. It was a picture that he afterwards changed for a brighter one; but it represented truly during periods of depression, his view of his own, and of a poet's, life.
Of all these poems, written apart from himself, one of the most delicately felt is the third part of the Church of Brou, where the young prince and his duchess lie together, carved on their tomb; and in the silent night when the soft rain is on the roof, or in the sunset when the rose and sapphire glories of the great western window fall on pillar and pavement, wake to cry—This is the bliss of Heaven, this is eternity. That is a fair poem, but the most charming, the most romantic, most in the world of the pure and tender imagination is The Forsaken Merman. To read it is to regret that he could not oftener escape into that ideal region where, at least for a time, our sorrows seem dreams, and the soul is healed of its disease. Moreover, this poem is sweeter in melody than most of his poems, as if his ear had been purged in that loftier and brighter air. There is nothing stranger in a man who dwelt so much on excellence in the poetic art, and who criticised failure in form so sharply, than Arnold's inability to recognise the harshness, the broken sounds, the want of harmony in his own verse. How he could have left unchanged verses so frequently out of tune I cannot understand. His ear was not sensitive, but in the Forsaken
