Selected Poems Of Robert Southey PDF Download

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1888 edition. Excerpt: ... robert southey. to say that although the principles of art are in their essentials eternal and changeless, the fashionable canons of artistic criticism are temporal and changing, is a platitude almost unpardonable; but it is one which is inevitably suggested to the critic who should endeavour, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, to write in praise of Robert Southey. The list of England's laureates names no poet more widely separated from the world of to-day than this man. Neglect has been his portion for many years--neglect undeserved, but scarcely unnatural, for the pervading spirit of his work is a calm and equable faith which is indeed unattainable, and perhaps undesired, by us. A poet whose characters are often purely abstract conceptions, unhumanly great alike in their virtues and their vices; a poet whose songs neither sweep our hearts with rushing storms of passion, nor lull us with their swooning sweetness, can hope for scanty audience to-day. And yet signs are not wanting that the artistic temper of the age is undergoing change. For the poetry of passion must, in alarge measure, share the transience of its theme; and though in the works of those modern poets who have sung of this most sweetly, there is much of abiding splendour, there is also much of which the world must soon weary. To immortalise the dream of an instant, to stay the dying glory of an afternoon, are things indeed possible to art; but it is always pertinent to inquire if the dream be of things high and holy, and if the day be fit to remain in our memory as a landmark. If these conditions be not fulfilled, then let the dream dissolve, and the sunset die. It is no disparagement of the vital beauty of contemporary poetry to say that much of it already...