The Sword of Song

THE SWORD OF SONG IV dared to voice in bald language what Shelley sang in words of surpassing beauty : for of course the thought in one or two passages of this poem is practically identical with that in certain parts of “Queen Mab” and “Prome- theus unbound.” But the very beauty of these poems (especially the latter) is its weakness : it is possible that the mind of the reader, lost in the sensuous, nay ! even in the moral beauty of the words, m ay fail to be impressed by their most important meaning. Shelley himself recognised this later: hence the direct and simple vigour of the “Masque of Anarchy.” It has often puzzled atheists that a man of Milton’s genius could have written as he did of Christianity . But we m ust not forget that Milton lived immediately after the m ost important Revolution in Religion and Politics of modern times : Shelley on the brink of such another Political upheaval. Shake- speare alone sat enthroned above it all like a god, and is not lost in the mire of contro- versy.* This, also, though “I’m no Shakes- peare, as too probable,” I have endeavoured to avoid : yet I cannot but express the hope that my own enquiries into religion may be the reflection of the spirit of the age ; and that plunged as we are in the midst of jingoism and religious revival, we may be standing on the edge of some gigantic precipice, over which we may cast all our impedimenta of lies and trickeries, political, social, moral and religious, and (ourselves) take wings and fly . The comparison be- tween myself and the m asters of English thought I have named is unintentional though perhaps unavoidable ; and though the presumption is, of course, absurd, y et a straw will show which way the wind blows as well as the m ost beautiful and elaborate vane : and in this sense it is m y most eager hope that I may not unjustly draw a com- parison between my self and the great re- formers of eighty years ago. * So it is usually supposed. Maybe I shall one day find wor ds to com bat, perhaps to over throw, this position. P.S. As, f or exam ple, the Note to this I ntroduction. As a pr omise-keeper I am the original eleven stone three Peacherine.—A.C. I must apologise (perhaps) for the new note of frivolity in m y work : due doubtless to the frivolity of m y subject : these poems being written when I was an Advaitist and could not see why —everything being an illusion—there should be any particular object in doing or thinking any thing. How I have found the answer will be evident from my es say on the s ubject.* I m ust indeed apologise to the illustrious Shade of Robert Browning for m y audacious parody in title, style, and matter of his “Christmas Eve and Easter Day.” The more I read it the eventual anticlimax of that wonderful poem irritated me only the m ore. But there is hardly any poet living or dead who so commands alike my personal affection a nd moral admiration. My desire to find the Truth will be my pardon with him, whose sole life was spent in admiration of the Truth, though he never turned its form idable engines against the Citadel of the Almighty. If I be appealed of blasphemy or irreve- rence in m y treatm ent of these subjects, I will take refuge in Browning’s own apology, from the very poem I am attacking : “I have done: and if any blames me, Thinking that merely to touch in brevity The topics I dwell on were unlawful— Or worse, that I trench with undue levity On the bounds of the holy and the awful— I praise the heart and pity the head of him, And refer myself to Thee, instead of him, Who head and heart alike discernest, Looking below light speech we utter Where frothy spume and frequent splutter Prove that the soul’s depths boil in earnest !” But I have after all little fear that I am seriously wrong. That I show to m y critics the open door to the above city of refuge my be taken as merely another gesture of contemptuous pity, the last insult which may lead my antagonists to that surrender which is the truest victory. PEACE TO ALL BEINGS * Vide infra, “Berashith.”