The result is pure poetry, or lyric. But when
we come to Suckling's lines we find that there is a difference. The poetic
energy is still here. Suckling has quite clearly experienced something in
a mood of more than common intensity. It does not matter that the material
which has been subjected to the mood is not in itself very profound or
passionate. Another poet, Wither, with material curiously like Suckling's
to work upon, achieves poetry as unquestionable if not so luxuriant as
Keats's.
Shall I, wasting in despair,
Die because a woman's fair?
Or make pale my cheeks with care
Because another's rosy are?
Be she fairer than the day,
Or the flowery mead in May--
If she think not well of me
What care I how fair she be?
To object that there is an emotional gaiety in this which is foreign to
Keats is but to state a personal preference. It is, indeed, a preference
which is common and founded upon very general experience. Most of us have,
from the tradition and circumstance of our own lives, a particular sympathy
with the grave and faintly melancholy beauty which is the most recurrent
note in fine poetry throughout the world, but this does not establish this
particular strain of beauty as being in any way essential to poetry.
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