Swinburne. It is impossible
in reading this strained laborious matter not to remember
that the case of poetry is precisely that where he who conquers,
conquers without strain. There was a certain damsel who once came
to King Arthur's court, `gert' (as sweet Sir Thomas Malory hath it)
`with a sword for to find a man of such virtue to draw it
out of the scabbard.' King Arthur, to set example to his knights,
first essayed, and pulled at it eagerly, but the sword would not out.
`Sir,' said the damsel, `ye need not to pull half so hard,
for he that shall pull it out shall do it with little might.'"
This is not to say that Lanier simulated poetic expression,
but his words are not inevitable enough. He often lacked simplicity.
Furthermore, he suffered from a tendency to indulge in fancies,
"sucking sweet similes out of the most diverse objects."
He was inoculated with the "conceit virus" of the seventeenth century.
In a letter already quoted, he pointed out this defect to his father,
and he never overcame it. He did not restrain his luxuriant imagination.
The poem "Clover" is almost spoiled by the conceit of the ox
representing the "Course-of-things" and trampling upon
the souls (the clover-blossoms) of the poets. "Sunrise" is marred
by the figure of the bee-hive from which the "star-fed Bee,
the build-fire Bee, . . . the great Sun-Bee," emerges in the morning.
Such examples might be easily multiplied.
Lanier was undoubtedly hampered, too, by his theory of verse.
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