And yet this is the field in which its paces
are most superbly shown. No name among all the names of great poets will
recur so soon as Webster's to the reader who knows what it signifies, as
he reads or repeats the verses in which a greater than this great
poet--a greater than all since Shakespeare--has expressed the latent
mystery of terror which lurks in all the highest poetry or beauty, and
distinguishes it inexplicably and inevitably from all that is but a
little lower than the highest.
Les aigles sur les bords du Gange et du Caystre
Sont effrayants;
Rien de grand qui ne soit confusement sinistre;
Les noirs paeans,
Les psaumes, la chanson monstrueuse du mage
Ezechiel,
Font devant notre oeil fixe errer la vague image
D'un affreux ciel.
L'empyree est l'abime, on y plonge, on y reste
Avec terreur.
Car planer, c'est trembler; si l'azur est celeste,
C'est par l'horreur.
L'epouvante est au fond des choses les plus belles;
Les bleus vallons
Font parfois reculer d'effroi les fauves ailes
Des aquilons.
And even in comedy as in tragedy, in prosaic even as in prophetic
inspiration, in imitative as in imaginative works of genius, the
sovereign of modern poets has detected the same touch of terror wherever
the deepest note possible has been struck, the fullest sense possible of
genuine and peculiar power conveyed to the student of lyric or dramatic,
epic or elegiac masters.
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