[
270]
taking
Longfellow's great gift in this direction as it was, we can see that it was somewhat akin to this quality of ‘composition,’ rather than of inspiration, which marked his poems.
He could find it delightful
To lie
And gaze into a summer sky
And watch the trailing clouds go by
Like ships upon the sea.
But it is a vast step from this to
Browning's mountain picture
Toward it tilting cloudlets prest
Like Persian ships to Salamis.
In
Browning everything is vigorous and individualized.
We see the ships, we know the nationality, we recall the very battle, and over these we see in imagination the very shape and movements of the clouds; but there is no conceivable reason why
Longfellow's lines should not have been written by a blind man who knew clouds merely by the descriptions of others.
The limitation of
Longfellow's poems reveals his temperament.
He was in his perceptions essentially of poetic mind, but always in touch with the common mind; as individual lives grow deeper, students are apt to leave
Longfellow for
Tennyson, just as they forsake
Tennyson for
Browning.
As to action, the tonic of life, so far as he had
