them the light of His countenance." "It is," he says subsequently, "one of the most beautiful, natural, and soothing actions of the Church"; which brings the rite close to the tender regards.

TENDERNESS IN NATURAL OBJECTS.

The interest in Nature, including inanimate objects, together with plants and animals, has been already brought into view (p. 53). The Tender interest, in particular, is inseparable from erotic poetry.

Personification and Association combine to impart tender feeling to the outer world; and objects rendered interesting from these causes are introduced into poetry, either as principals or as accessories and surroundings.

The chief liability to failure in all such references is assuming for them a greater height of emotion than the average reader can rise to.

Milton's Night Scene, in the Fourth Book of Paradise Lost, accumulates circumstances of Nature interest, more or less impregnated with tender feeling, and nowise out of harmony with it. Even the celestial allusions, although tending to the sublime, are suited to the calm and repose of the loving emotion.

Now came still Evening on, and Twilight grey
Had in her sober livery all things clad;
Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,
They to their grassy couch, these to their nests
Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale ;
She all night long her amorous descant sung.
Silence was pleased. Now glowed the firmament
With living sapphire; Hesperus, that led
The starry host, rode brightest, till the Moon,
Rising in cloudy majesty, at length

Apparent queen unveiled her peerless light,
And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw.

The accumulated circumstances of autumnal decay are given in Thomson thus :

The pale descending year, yet pleasing still,
A gentler mood inspires; for now the leaf
Incessant rustles from the mournful grove;
Oft startling such as, studious, walk below,
And slowly circles through the waving air.
But should a quicker breeze amid the boughs
Sob, o'er the sky the leafy deluge streams;

NATURE TENDERNESS THOMSON, SHELLEY, KEATS. 207

Till choked, and matted with the dreary shower,
The forest walks, at every rising gale,

Roll wide the withered waste, and whistle bleak.
Fled is the blasted verdure of the fields;
And, shrunk into their beds, the flowery race
Their sunny robes resign. Even what remained
Of stronger fruits falls from the naked tree;
And woods, fields, gardens, orchards, all around
The desolated prospect thrills the soul.

The general effect here is alliance with tender emotion, which is made more decided by the suggestion of decay. It is not difficult to assign the poetical bearing of every one of the circumstances. In some instances, the images are allied to power, as 'the leafy deluge,' 'the rising gale,' the blasted verdure,' but these pass at once into the pathos of decay and desolation.

Even the grandeurs of the world's scenery can easily assume the tender aspect, without a sense of discord. As in Shelley :

She moved upon this earth a shape of brightness,

A power that from its objects scarcely drew

One impulse of her being-in her lightness

Most like some radiant cloud of morning dew,

Which wanders through the waste air's pathless blue,

To nourish some far desert: she did seem

Beside me, gathering beauty as she grew,

Like the bright shade of some immortal dream

Which walks, when tempest sleeps, the wave of life's dark stream. We feel no unsuitability for the poet's aim, which is to inspire love, in quoting objects belonging to the higher sphere of nature's sublimity.

Even the sublime grandeurs of the celestial orbs are subservient to the tender and pathetic interest when they are employed as signs to mark the recurrence of interesting human avocations. As in Milton

The star that bids the shepherd fold.

The following is from Keats:

Together had he left his mother fair
And his twin-sister sleeping in their bower,
And in the morning twilight wandered forth
Beside the osiers of a rivulet,

Full ankle-deep in lilies of the vale.

The nightingale had ceased, and a few stars
Were lingering in the heavens, while the thrush
Began calm-throated. Throughout all the isle
There was no covert, no retired cave

Unhaunted by the murmurous noise of waves,
Though scarcely heard in many a green recess.

Again, in Wordsworth :

All things that love the sun are out of doors;
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth ;
The grass is bright with rain-drops;-

-on the moors

The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist; that, glittering in the sun,

Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

The flowers are especially the ministers of pathos, as the trees are of strength. The rose has the admitted preeminence its charms to the senses are readily augmented by the subtle infusion of protective tenderness, and its value to the poet is correspondingly great. The violet, the primrose, the blue bell, the lily of the valley, and many others have also admitted poetic rank. The daisy, too, has its interest; but has been, perhaps, overtasked both by Wordsworth and by Burns. The ode of Burns To a Mountain Daisy' barely escapes maudlin, notwithstanding the poetic setting in company with the lark. Much less regret would suffice for uprooting a daisy in the plough's track. Moreover, to tag on to such a small incident a series of moral lessons-to the artless maid, to the imprudent bard, and to the unfortunate generally,-seems an inversion of the order of supporting and supported.

Tennyson's harmonizing faculty finds congenial exercise in this field. The following is from Enone:—

O mother Ida, many-fountained Ida,
Dear mother Ida, harken ere I die.
For now the noonday quiet holds the hill:
The grasshopper is silent in the grass:
The lizard, with his shadow on the stone,
Rests like a shadow, and the winds are dead,
The purple flower droops; the golden bee
Is lily-cradled: I alone awake.

My eyes are full of tears, &c.

SORROW.-PATHOS.

When misery cannot be relieved in kind, that is, by the means strictly adapted to the case, as poverty by alms, sickness by remedies; there is an assuaging power through the display of tender emotion. This may take the shape either of sympathy from others, or of grief on the part of the sufferer, which latter is tenderness towards self. The situation is expressed by Sorrow, and gives the meaning to

CALAMITIES INCIDENT TO THE LOVE PASSION. 209

PATHOS, as a specific mode of evoking the tender feeling. From the circumstances of human life, we have here one of the most frequent occasions for drawing upon the fountains of that emotion.

Thus, in our irretrievable losses by Death, recourse is had to the indulgence of Sorrow as an assuaging influence ; and poetry has greatly contributed to the effect.

Pathos, in the limited sense, finds illustration under all the heads of Tender Feeling; and, in the review of those already given, examples of what is now meant have incidentally occurred. Still, by an express handling, important points connected with the quality of Feeling will receive the prominence due to them.

EROTIC PATHOS.

The griefs of lovers occupy a large space in the poetry of love. The oldest treatment of the passion is devoted to its sorrows. We do not hear of the love-making of Helen and Menelaus; but, in a splendid chorus of the Agamemnon, Eschylus pictures the misery of the husband after his wife's abduction.

The chief calamities incident to the passion are unrequited love, desertion, and loss by death.

When the feeling is once aroused to its passionate height, the distress of unreturned affection is correspondingly great. Poets have endeavoured to console the sufferer, but still oftener have employed ridicule to quench the flame. The Lyric poets are accustomed to express the feelings of the lover by a lament uttered by himself. Burns's Mary Morison' is an example: only high poetic power can secure by such a strain the sympathy of the ordinary reader. Browning's favourite attitude for the rejected lover-quiet resignation, combining deep feeling with continued appreciation of the loved one's excellences-is felt to be the worthier mode of outlet.

In

Being deserted, or forsaken, after having the fruition of love, is a more tragic incident. The chorus of Eschylus can be studied for this situation. All that he attempts is to reflect the grief of Menelaus in his surroundings. his longing, 'a phantom will seem to rule the house. The grace of goodly statues hath grown irksome to his gaze, and in his widowhood of weary eyes all beauty fades away. But

dreams that glide in sleep with sorrow, visit him, conveying a vain joy; for vain it is, when one hath seemed to see good things, and lo, escaping through his hands, the vision flies apace on wings that follow on the paths of sleep.' (Symonds.)

Virgil's masterpiece, the desertion of Dido by Æneas, is pathetic from the wonderful testimony to the strength of her affection, shown at first by her modes of courtship, and in the end by her self-immolation. No solace is provided for herself, and not much for those that may afterwards undergo her fate; but, at a time when the passion of love had been but little celebrated, we are presented with an example at the highest pitch of intense devotion. ancient poet could give such sufferers only the consolation of revenge. The reader is compensated for the pain of the story, partly by the treatment, and partly by an outburst of indignation against the betrayer.

An

Loss by desertion is handled by Burns in many forms. 'Ye banks and braes' is a case of sustained grief, with the usual appeal to sympathetic surroundings. The language is soft and touching throughout; and we cannot but chime in with the forsaken lover's remonstrances to the banks and braes and the singing birds, as a natural mode of venting her feelings.

As in Dido's case, the expression of forsaken love lends itself readily to the passionate forms of Strength, when indignation becomes the leading emotion. We have here the example of Enone.

Forced separation necessarily receives a like treatment with desertion. As an example, we may mention William Motherwell's poem of Jeanie Morrison'-a lyric depicting a love of boyhood interrupted by long separation, yet faithfully clung to. It includes little or no effort to set forth the object of love; she had been but a girl then, and she might be changed now. But the love itself is portrayed in all the forms appropriate to boyhood, together with the feelings of deepest sorrow awakened by its memories, and earnest longings to know whether her feelings are still the same. Thus:

O dear, dear Jeanie Morrison,

Since we were sindered young,

I've never seen your face, nor heard
The music o' your tongue;