The Columbia History of British Poetry (124 page)

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The 1890s
Karl Beckson
Continuities of Victorianism
Although the 1890s have often been called the "Decadent Nineties," the continuities of Victorianism were predominant in late-nineteenth-century poetry. And although fiction had become more widely read in Victorian households, a poem was still regarded as the noble expression of moral vision, an inspiring and comforting depiction of nature's wonders, and a source of insight into the social, political, and religious preoccupations of the age. The monarch's appointment of the poet laureate was, after all, an acknowledgment of the traditional idea that the poet, as sage and visionary, expressed the conscience and mission of the nation.
Many Victorians had been witness to two of the greatest laureates in the history of British poetryWordsworth and Tennysonwhose prominence during the early years of Victoria's reign reinforced earlier Romantic self-exploration as the means of discovering universal truths. Increasingly, however, Victorian social and religious values modified such subjectivity. The evangelistic fervor that permeated the age justified a divinely sanctioned view of Britain's destiny as civilizer of the world. Moreover, scientific discovery and the new, rationalistic approach to biblical study questioned religious dogma, increasingly undermined by doubt and pessimism as the century progressed.
At the threshold of the 1890s, when Tennyson's health became a major concern, William Watson emerged as a formidable contender for the laureateship. A critic at the time who later urged his appointment remarked that Watson was "all for orthodoxy, patriotism, England,
 
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home, and duty." Convinced that Milton and Wordsworth were central to England's poetic tradition, Watson had schooled himself in the grand rhetorical style, emphasizing clarity and epigrammatic force. In "The Sovereign Poet" he envisioned himself in the mantle of the poet as prophet who "sits above the clang and dust of Time, / With the world's secret trembling on his lip.''
Watson's major poem, "Wordsworth's Grave," laments the decline of late-nineteenth-century poetry, echoing Wordsworth's own sonnet "London 1802" ("Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour"). Britain, Watson insisted, was in urgent need of spiritual regeneration at a time of cultural decay, as indicated by contemporary poets who "bowed the knee / To misbegotten strange new gods of song"an allusion to the literary Decadents, both French and domestic. Tennyson had condemned these "strange new gods of song" for their subversion of cultural unity: "Art for Art's sake! Hail, truest Lord of Hell!" Wordsworth, said Watson, provided the "gift of rest" by drawing strength from natureunlike the self-obsessed Decadents, who celebrated the dark side of human experience, who employed a literary language at variance with common speech, and who rejected the Romantic worship of nature by trumpeting the superiority of artifice:
No word-mosaic artificer, he sang
   A lofty song of lowly weal and dole.
Right from the heart, right to the heart it sprang,
   Or from the soul leapt instant to the soul.
Such spontaneous, regenerative power as Wordsworth providedunitinq thought with feelingwas rarely found, said Watson, in late-nineteenth-century poetry:
Where is the singer whose large notes and clear
   Can heal, and arm, and plenish, and sustain?
Lo, one with empty music floods the ear,
   And one, the heart refreshing, tires the brain.
With the death of Tennyson in October 1892 Watson composed "Lacrimae Musarum," an elegy which, in its profusion of
l
s, produces an evocative incantation in mourning the laureate's end:
Low, like another's, lies the laurelled head:
The life that seemed a perfect song is o'er:
Carry the last great bard to his last bed.
 
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Land that he loved, thy noblest voice is mute.
Land that he loved, that loved him!
Deathless eternity is the appropriate resting place for such greatness, for "Him the eternal spring of fadeless fame / Crowns with no mortal flowers."
In identifying Tennyson with the forces of nature, Watson evokes parallels with Tennyson's own tribute to his close friend Arthur Hallam in
In Memoriam
and Milton's similar tribute to his drowned friend Edward King in "Lycidas." Watson's stately iambic pentameter lines provide appropriate rhythms for the profusion of monosyllables, gently invaded and rhythmically enhanced by polysyllables:
Seek him henceforward in the wind and sea,
In earth's and air's emotion or repose,
In every star's august serenity,
And in the rapture of the flaming rose.
And seek him if ye would not seek in vain,
There, in the rhythm and music of the Whole.
In the more than three years during which debates raged over who should be the new poet laureate, the name of Rudyard Kipling emerged as the "Laureate of the Empire," resulting from his depiction of those who served abroad with courage and desperation, if not always with honor. Indeed, to some, Kipling seemed an appropriate choice for the laureateship, since Tennyson had also written poems celebrating England's achievements in building the Empire, which covered approximately one-fourth of the earth's surfacestunning evidence to the social Darwinists that England was indeed the fittest of nations. But the poem that perhaps convinced Victoria's advisors
not
to recommend Kipling for the laureateship was "The Widow at Windsor," which, Robert Graves contended, "had earned Queen Victoria's anger." The speaker in Kipling's poem, a Cockney soldier, queries:
'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor
With a hairy gold crown o'er head?
She 'as ships on the foamshe 'as millions at 'ome,
An' she pays us poor beggars in red.
The soldier alludes to "'alf o' Creation [that] she owns" and with splendid ambivalence, consisting of admiration and regret, concludes with two cheers for those who serve (and die for) the queen:

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