In the grave and solemn stanzas with which the poem opens, he calls the songs that follow _wild and wandering cries, confusions of a wasted youth_. But in truth they are the expression of the deepest and most heartfelt sorrow: the most musical and imaginative outpouring of every mood, and every trouble, of a noble love and regret: the cries of a soul stricken with doubt born of anguish, and darkened with shadows of disbelief and despair: the deeper brooding over the eternal problems of life, thought, knowledge, religion: the gradual groping toward a faith rather divined than proved, and slowly passing through storm into peace. The poem took seventeen years to write, and when it appeared the Poet was at the summit of his great powers. His instinct chose a metre at once strong, simple, fresh, flexible, and grave, and noble--equally adapted to every mood, every form of thought or feeling--the passionate, the meditative, the solemn, the imaginative--for description, argument, aspiration, even for prayer. The tone varies: there are lighter and deeper touches: but it is hardly too much to say, there is not an insignificant stanza, nor a jarring note, from beginning to end. In a poem where all is so familiar--which has meant and means so much to all who care for poetry--it is difficult to quote. I will take a few stanzas, so chosen, if possible, as to show somewhat of the variety, the range, the subtlety, the charm, and the power of this great work. He goes to the house in London where the dead friend lived: the gloom without typifies and harmonizes with the darkness of his sorrowful thoughts. Dark house, by which once more I stand Here in the long unlovely street: Doors, where my heart was wont to beat So quickly, waiting for a hand,-- A hand that can be clasped no more-- Behold me--for I cannot sleep-- And like a guilty thing I creep At earliest morning to the door. He is not here; but far away The noise of life begins again, And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain On the bald street breaks the blank day. One of the most important motives concerns the doubts raised by the new truths which science was beginning to teach, almost seeming to make in a sense a new heaven and a new earth. The old simple beliefs seemed to the Poet threatened--these misgivings are evil dreams: _Nature_ seems to say: ... A thousand types are gone: I care for nothing, all shall go. Thou makest thine appeal to me; I bring to life, I bring to death; The spirit does but mean the breath: I know no more... Then the Poet breaks out: And he, shall he, Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, Such splendid purpose in his eyes, Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies, Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer-- Who trusted God was love indeed, And love Creation's final law-- Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw With ravine, shriek'd against his creed--