Page:Poetical sketches reprint (1868).djvu/17

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PREFACE.
xi

into the pseudo-Ossianic grandiloquence, of which there is also a taint in several other pieces, and the last three lines, stumbling and staggering, remind us irresistibly of the same incongruous blending of sublime and ludicrous images (going on halting feet) in Turner's unfortunate "Fallacies of Hope."

The lines to the "Evening Star" are almost Tennysonian in happily-chosen epithet and perfect cadence of music:

"Smile on our loves; and while thou drawest the
"Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew
"On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes
"In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on
"The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,
"And wash the dusk with silver."

"Fair Eleanor"—a sort of blank-verse ballad of the Radcliffe type of crime and mystery and horror—is a somewhat abortive attempt, much in the style of some of Shelley's early poetry of the St. Irvyne and Margaret Nicholson period—not without lines of singular beauty that stand out in relief to the dulness and insipidity of the rest.

But what fitting tribute can we pay to the marvellous beauty of the six lyrics which follow, and of the lines "To the Muses?" We must go back to