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Stagirius in particular wants but a very little to be a perfect expression of the obstinate questionings of the century; and yet wanting a little, it wants so much! It is, I believe, not so "correct" as it once was to admire this; but I confess indocility to correctness, at least the correctness which varies with fashion.
As reprinted in 1877, this collection dropped The Church of Brou except the third part, and recovered not only Stagirius and others but The New Sirens, besides giving, for the first time in book-form, Haworth Churchyard, printed twenty-two years before in Fraser.
'Shakespeare' I have re-written. 'Cruikshank' I have re-titled, and re-arranged the 'World's Triumphs. 'Morality' I stick to and 'Palladium' also. 'Second Best' I strike out and will try to put in 'Modern Sappho' instead though the metre is not right. In the 'Voice' the falsetto rages too furiously; I can do nothing with it; ditto in 'Stagirius, which I have struck out.
Yet beside such poems as Dover Beach and Stagirius should be placed the lines from Westminster Abbey: For this and that way swings The flux of mortal things, Though moving inly to one far-set goal.
Faded Leaves, grouped with an addition, here appear: Stagirius is called Desire, and the Stanzas in Memory of the Author of Obermann now become Obermann simply. Only two absolutely new poems, a longer and a shorter, appear: the first is Balder Dead, the second Separation, the added number of Faded Leaves. This is of no great value. Balder is interesting, though not extremely good.
He kept this level, though here following not Tennyson or Keats but Shelley, in the three ambitious and elaborate lyrics, The Voice, To Fausta, and Stagirius, fine things, if somehow a little suggestive of inability on their author's part fully to meet the demands of the forms he attempts "the note," in short, expressed practically as well as in theory.
This first collection was advertised as comprehending "the First and Second Series of the Author's Poems and the New Poems," but as a matter of fact half-a-dozen pieces including things as interesting as A Dream and Stagirius are omitted, though the fine In Utrumque Paratus reappears for the first time as a consolation.
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