Page:Four Victorian poets; a study of Clough (IA fourvictorianpoe00broorich).pdf/96

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Four Victorian Poets

years, he republished Empedocles on Ætna, he had grown into a wiser but sorrowful calm. It was not the calm of the stoic, but of one who, realising with passion the sorrow of humanity yet looked forward with hope, even at times with a chastened joy, to its redemption. Life at least was worth the living; the battle was to be without despair. It pleased him then, now that his feet were set on a rock and his goings ordered, to republish this picture of his youth and its disordered wavering, to realise afresh how much he had gained. Moreover, it pleased the artist in him to feel through all the wailing of the poem, the freshness of youth in it, its intensity and the pleasure of its pain,

Even when it was written, the poem was not all melancholy or monotonous. Callicles lives in it as well as Empedocles—Callicles, the lyrist and the poet, young and exulting in his youth, inspired by the beauty of Nature and the romantic stories of Greece, loving women and song, feasting and the dance— incarnate joy—yet tender of heart, wise through rever- ence of wisdom, and with that deep common sense which born of love and imagination is one of the first attributes of genius, When Arnold created him he was half way to a higher region of thought, feeling, and action than he could ever have attained by stoic- ism on the one hand, or by wailing and indignation on the other. But he did not create him excellently. It is a thing half done—half flesh and blood, half marble, like the poor prince in the Arabian Nights. Callicles