BOOKS
55
Does dance on the eye-ball;
It makes beauty effervescent.
At Fell Foot (charm) farm. Rob
This, clover-over-the-dales;
Smells of cows; good hob-
Nail, spike my ear! and kissing pails.
Till the twilight folds and all's
As blue as the bluewashed walls.
The image in the first four lines is creative observation: it adds to the
ability of the eye to see; and the last two lines carry besides possible
observation their own ominous secret symbolism. As for the other lines
(charm) is inexcusable, and together they form a complex trick which
defeats its own solution by being unreadable.
On the next page, a little apart, I find these two contrasted passages.
Not the woundedness of the soul;
Of desire, the joy. And, soaked all. day,
Sky, earth make each other whole,
Tou between, cold mote in the gray.
So he, I go, we
l
Slow to the pelt-rain-drum's rally-
Of-loneliness in rained-on weather.
Of which the first forces an apposition which mayor may not be, how-
ever strained, an excellent image, but is at least readable verse, with
metrical joints and a common speed; and of which the second is not
verse at all, but at most a kind of shrieking notation, from which we
gather that at this point some emotion, not present, was needed ..
I think all the faults listed above, including the banal (charm), are
exemplified in these passages from what I repeat is the most interesting
poem in the book. The whole poem is I think an imitation of Hopkins,
the good passages genuine imitation because Mr. Eberhart had a subject,
and the bad passages gross imitation because Mr. Eberhart lacked his
subject. Hopkins' extraordinary and almost physical grasp of landscape
in words, came, one supposes, from the struggle of an intensely detailed
love to express, not itself, but what was loved; and this in turn came
out of Hopkins' convicted faith that God might best be glorified in the
knowledge of his created things. I do not know what Mr. Eberhart's
motivemay be; but I am sure that he does not naturally suffer from the
disability of language of which Hopkins complained and which he tried
to improve. Mr. Eberhart goes the whole hog, disability and all, of
Hopkins on purpose, using as an expressive means to substitute for
subject matter what was in Hopkins an expressive obstruction. In Hop-
kins even at his worst things forced themselves together and struck in
the impact an inner light. When Mr. Eberhart imitates Hopkins to get
out of his own necessity, his elements hinder each other and fall apart at
