'It was to be foreseen,' I insisted. 'I knew he'd miss the best, because in Shakespeare's dramatic writings the miracles of wisdom and insight are invariably declared by the learned commentators to be from some other hand; some inferior collaborator has touched the zenith Shakespeare couldn't reach. At least that's my experience.'
'You must really write your book on Shakespeare,' said Oscar seriously; 'it will do you all the good in the world. Fancy a western cowboy,' he laughed delightedly, 'teaching Oxford how to discover new beauties in Shakespeare.
It'll make your reputation in England,' he added.
'Once I hoped so,' I replied, 'now I doubt. Swinburne discovered Blake for the English, but no one reads him, and James Thomson is still unknown. No, it takes time and more generations than one to separate the sinners from the saints.'
'Well, Frank, the shiners are more amusing-eh?'
There is another sonnet of Shakespeare's that comes from the same height of inspiration-a personal sonnet:
That time of year thou mayest in me behold, When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs, which shake against the cold Bare, ruin'd choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
Here, too, I am intimately pleased by the profound art of the verse; line after line of simple iambics, and then the discord in the last line that makes the melody harmonious-'Bare, ruin'd choirs'-and then the music taken up again-'where late the sweet birds sang.'
Of course there are other great sonnets in English, for example Wordsworth's sonnet on Toussaint l'Ouverture has the finest sextet to be found anywhere:
Thou hast left behind Powers that will work for thee; air, earth and skies;
There's not a breathing of the common wind That will forget thee; thou hast great allies;
Thy friends are exultations, agonies,
And love, and man's unconquerable mind.
And I often think the sextet of Lord Alfred Douglas' sonnet about himself and his death is worthy to rank even with this:
For in the smoke of that last holocaust, When to the regions of unsounded air That which is deathless still aspires and tends, Whither my helpless soul shall we be tossed?
To what disaster of malign Despair,
Or terror of unfathomable ends?
That 'terror of unfathomable ends' is as sublime as anything in Dante.
But I can't say I like the sonnet in English; in Italian it's easy, for Italian is full of rhymes; but English is poor in rhymes, and a perfect sonnet in English is in my opinion almost impossible. Yet at its best it's like a fugue by Bach, beyond praise, as in two or three of Shakespeare's and two or three of Wordsworth's, and a couple of Keats's.
When I began writing on Shakespeare in the Saturday Review, Theodore Watts, Swinburne's friend and housemate and the critic of the Athenaeum, was very much interested and wrote to me. We met several times and he was frankly astonished that I cared so much for poetry. He had evidently always thought of me as an American who could hardly grapple with such high things.
One evening at the Cafe Royal I tempted him with some rare Musigny, soft to the palate as velvet and of an exquisite lingering bouquet. It unlocked the tongue of 'the little sick walrus,' as I used to call him to myself and other ribald juniors, and he began to swell in self-praise.
'Shakespeare's sonnets are no true sonnets,' he insisted. 'He neither knew nor perhaps cared for the true sonnet form; but Rossetti knew it and so do I. Do you know the sonnet I wrote on-'
'No,' I replied. 'Won't you recite it to me?' I added for courtesy's sake.
'I will if I can remember it,' he replied, and at once began to recite verses that were good enough technically but without any inspiration or touch of beauty. I listened patiently and nodded my head at the close, as if in mute admiration, the truth being that I hate to tell flattering lies about high things.
Watts seemed to sense my coldness and was piqued by it, for at length he took his courage in both hands and said solemnly: 'Rossetti said that was the most perfect sonnet in English!'
'Really!' I cried, startled out of all politeness, for I knew Rossetti's keenness of mind and reverence for good work, and such a judgment shocked me.
But Watts repeated the phrase, nodding his head the while like a mandarin.
While he was speaking, it came to me that possibly Rossetti had said, 'The most perfect sonnet,' meaning simply in verse-form, and wishing above all things to praise a genial, ingratiating, but commonplace creature. And once started on this disdainful way, suddenly a thought struck me, and though it was dreadfully rude, I thought Watts was probably too intoxicated to notice it, and so I resolved to say the thing.
Everybody knows that Theodore Watts was a solicitor and practiced law for a good many years before he went over to literature. Now the usual fee of a solicitor or attorney in England is six shillings and eight pence.
'Oh, I see what Rossetti meant,' I cried.
'What's that?' interjected Watts suspiciously.
'Well, you were sure, weren't you, to make the form perfect?' I queried.
'What do you mean?' he asked.
'I mean,' I replied, 'that you had had such a lot of practice beforehand in sixes and eights.'
He glared at me and then snuffled. I really feared he was going to cry and felt a little ashamed of myself. Shortly afterwards we parted; I think it was the end of our attempt at friendly relations. Afterwards we just bowed and left it at that. That the sick walrus should think of matching himself with the greatest of the world's poets seemed to me worse than absurd. I reminded myself of Shakespeare's verses: … These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. Sir, I am vex'd;
Bear with my weakness; my old brain is troubled:
Be not disturb'd with my infirmity:
If you be pleased, retire into my cell And there repose: a turn or two I'll walk, To still my beating mind.
'My beating mind'-the most tell-tale phrase in all Shakespeare.
Goethe, too, reached the highest height of poetry in Gretchen's appeal to the Madonna:
Ach neige,
Du Schmerzenreiche,
Dein Antlitz gnadig meiner Not!
Das Schwert im Herzen,
Mit tausend Schmerzen
Blickst auf zu deines Sohnes Tod.
Wer fuhlet,
Wie wuhlet
Der Schmerz mir im Gebein?
Was mein armes Herz hier banget,
Was es zittert, was verlanget,
Weisst nur du, nur du allein!
Ich bin, ach! kaum alleine,
Ich wein, ich wein, ich weine,
Das Herz zerbricht in mir.
Wohin ich immer gehe
Wie weh, wie weh, wie wehe
Wird mir im Busen hier!
After that I feel inclined to quote here the earliest English poem that I know of, which is really fine:
What if Art be slowe,
