Speak but one word to me over the corn,
Over the tender, bow'd locks of the corn."
It is the very soul of the bridegroom which goes forth to the bride:
inanimate things are longing with him: all the sweetness of the
imaginative loves [221] of the Middle Age, with a superadded
spirituality of touch all its own, is in that!
The Defence of Guenevere was published in 1858; the Life and Death of
Jason in 1867; to be followed by The Earthly Paradise; and the change
of manner wrought in the interval, entire, almost a revolt, is
characteristic of the aesthetic poetry. Here there is no delirium or
illusion, no experiences of mere soul while the body and the bodily
senses sleep, or wake with convulsed intensity at the prompting of
imaginative love; but rather the great primary passions under broad
daylight as of the pagan Veronese. This simplification interests us,
not merely for the sake of an individual poet--full of charm as he
is--but chiefly because it explains through him a transition which,
under many forms, is one law of the life of the human spirit, and of
which what we call the Renaissance is only a supreme instance. Just
so the monk in his cloister, through the "open vision," open only to
the spirit, divined, aspired to, and at last apprehended, a better
daylight, but earthly, open only to the senses. Complex and subtle
interests, which the mind spins for itself may occupy art and poetry
or our own spirits for a time; but sooner or later they come back
with a sharp rebound to the simple elementary passions--anger,
desire, regret, [222] pity, and fear: and what corresponds to them in
the sensuous world--bare, abstract fire, water, air, tears, sleep,
silence, and what De Quincey has called the "glory of motion.
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