ABSTRACT
Patmore believed that the poet possesses a supersensual knowledge which he imparts by means of symbols and parables drawn from sensible things.5 This is the unifying principle binding together his earlier and later work. There was no real breach of continuity when, about 1862, his first manner, simple and sentimental to the point of insipidity, modulated into his second style, heightened, ornate, and occasionally sublime. The figure of him drawn
1533' by Francis Thompson is of one who held in one hand "a cup of milk and honey" and in the other "a lightning-bolt." 6 In The Angel in the House the husband tells of the courtship and marital happiness over which the Angel (spiritual love) keeps watch and ward. The art of sinking in poetry has seldom been exemplified more candidly than in the smooth-flowing quatrains of these "idyls of the dining-room and the deanery." 1 But if the poem sinks it can also rise, as it does in the "preludes" and other passages The Odes of symbolic interpretation. Needing a grander style for his symbolism, Patmore resorted to the irregular ode, made up of longer and shorter lines with rimes falling capriciously, which had its precursors in Cowley and Crashaw and in the Canzoniere of Petrarch. Verbal and metrical splendor support themes so simple as to seem inappropriate to the style; yet in this very contrast are found Patmore's finest effects, for from the lowliest experiences of domestic life (as in The Toys) he drew analogies of eternal significance. The prevailing symbols are parental and marital love. For the analogy of the sexual relationship. to the relationship of God and the soul Patmore had the sanction of traditional interpretations of The Song of Songs and the ecstasies of the love-mystics. This symbolism was developed in The Unknown Eros and was, it seems, carried from resemblance to identification in the destroyed Sponsa Dei. In the nature of married love Patmore found a clue to the problems of life. Man, the rational soul, is wedded to woman, the sensitive soul. Only in marriage can humanity's natural goodness and nobility find their scope. Thus an ideal-both a philosophy and a creed-is founded upon commonplace experience. With this love, death is associated in Petrarchan or Pre-Raphaelite fashion, as in the memorials to his wife (The Azalea, Departure, and A Farewell) which are among Patmore's finest odes.
