The Star in the West

THE LOOKING-GLASS 19 epic was of itself a nullity , and that a poem of great length , commencing as it might in exaltation , ended in nine cases out of ten in somnolence . Poetry must stimulate , it must irritate the soul in some definite manner , or else it ceases to be poetry . For when once poetry exerts a soporific power its whole object is lost , and , as a flash of lightning , it must be vivid , bright , flaming for a moment , awful , eloquent , rush ing from the darkness of night through the flashing elements of day into the silence of eternity . And this is exactly the poetry we here find . No poems are of any great length , no poems here contain a labour on the part of the reader to attain the end , though in some places the labours of Hercules seem insignificant compared with the labours of mental un knotting , but even in such places ( where the sense becomes tangled in the reader's mind ) he loses none of the beauty of rime and rhythm , he never becomes bored , never weary . Set in the pure gold of verse and line , lie lyrics of surpassing beauty : Tannhäuser ( the longest of the poems ) would be a magnificent con templation even if we cut from it its sparkling songs , but with them it becomes superb , neither are there too many ; the queen of our poet's ideals is no gilded prostitute , no Theodora hung with a myriad flashing jewels , but rather some chaste priestess carrying on her breast the mystic symbol of Isis , whose belt is a jewelled Zodiac , and in whose hand is the eternal Ankh . This interspersing of lyrics has been carried to a charming intensity of expression , and their effect on the mind is one full of joy , no cloying , no surfeit , no 1 Except perhaps in Orpheus .