ABSTRACT
Mr. Clough's poems, which it is our intention principally to notice … belong to that description of poetry which to ourselves is more interesting than any other. It is an everyday observation, that in all persons, more or less, but more especially in all persons of lively and keen sensibilities, there is an inward life, in which they far more truly live, than in the external and visible one. The customs of society, the necessities of every-day duties, the hopelessness of meeting with sympathy, these and other causes conspire in giving a certain external sameness to all educated men. The devout religionist, the man of the world, and the debauchee, may unite for political or other purposes, or may meet together, if they so please, and sustain conversation on no very unequal terms. Nay, even in his domestic circle, where the Englishman especially loves to unbend, his deepest thoughts, those which are most of all the centre round which his whole life turns, are often still secrets; he cannot disclose them even if he would. But if he have the divine gift and publish poetry,—poetry, we mean, of that particular kind which is here in question,—then we begin to see his real self, stripped of disguises and conventionalities; then we learn what are those cherished and deeply enshrined objects, on which his heart and his imagination rest and are supported.
