The Visions of England | Page 2

and at the same time, by
the fact of our insular position, so stamped with unity, that from days
very remote it has supplied matter for song. This, among Celts and
Angles, at first was lyrical. But poetry, for many centuries after the
Conquest, mainly took the annalistic form, and, despite the ability often
shown, was hence predoomed to failure. For a nation's history cannot
but present many dull or confused periods, many men and things
intractable by poetry, though, perhaps, politically effective and
important, which cannot be excluded from any narrative aiming at
consecutiveness; and, by the natural laws of art, these passages, when
rendered in verse, in their effect become more prosaic than they would
be in a prose rendering.
My attempt has therefore been to revert to the earlier and more natural

conditions of poetry, and to offer,--not a continuous narrative; not
poems on every critical moment or conspicuous man in our long
annals,--but single lyrical pictures of such leading or typical characters
and scenes in English history, and only such, as have seemed amenable
to a strictly poetical treatment. Poetry, not History, has, hence, been my
first and last aim; or, perhaps I might define it, History for Poetry's sake.
At the same time, I have striven to keep throughout as closely to
absolute historical truth in the design and colouring of the pieces as the
exigencies of poetry permit:--the result aimed at being to unite the
actual tone and spirit of the time concerned, with the best estimate
which has been reached by the research and genius of modern
investigators. Our island story, freed from the 'falsehood of
extremes,'--exorcised, above all, from the seducing demon of
party-spirit, I have thus here done my best to set forth. And as this line
of endeavour has conducted and constrained me, especially when the
seventeenth century is concerned, to judgments--supported indeed by
historians conspicuous for research, ability, and fairness, but often
remote from the views popularized by the writers of our own
day,--upon these points a few justificatory notes have been added.
A double aim has hence governed and limited both the selection and
the treatment of my subjects. The choice has necessarily fallen, often,
not on simply picturesque incident or unfamiliar character, but on the
men and things that we think of first, when thinking of the long
chronicle of England,--or upon such as represent and symbolize the
main current of it. Themes, however, on which able or popular song is
already extant,--notably in case of Scotland,--I have in general avoided.
In the rendering, my desire has been always to rest the poetry of each
Vision on its own intrinsic interest; to write with a straightforward eye
to the object alone; not studious of ornament for ornament's sake;
allowing the least possible overt intrusion of the writer's personality;
and, in accordance with lyrical law, seeking, as a rule, to fix upon some
factual picture for each poem.

To define, thus, the scope of what this book attempts, is, in itself, a
confession of presumptuousness,--the writer's own sense of which is

but feebly and imperfectly expressed in the words from Vergil's letter
to Augustus prefixed as my motto. In truth, so rich and so wide are the
materials, that to scheme a lyrical series which should really paint the
Gesta Anglorum in their fulness might almost argue 'lack of wit,' vitium
mentis, in much greater powers than mine. No criticism, however
severe, can add to my own consciousness how far the execution of the
work, in regard to each of its aims, falls below the plan. Yet I would
allow myself the hope, great as the deficiencies may be, that the love of
truth and the love of England are mine by inheritance in a degree
sufficient to exempt this book, (the labour of several years), from
infidelity to either:--that the intrinsic worth and weight of my subject
may commend these songs, both at home, and in the many Englands
beyond sea, to those who, (despite the inevitably more engrossing
attractions of the Present, and the emphatic bias of modern culture
towards the immediate and the tangible), maintain that high and
soul-inspiring interest which, identifying us with our magnificent Past,
and all its varied lessons of defeat and victory, offers at the same
time,--under the guidance from above,--our sole secure guarantee for
prosperous and healthy progress in the Future.
The world has cycles in its course, when all
That once has been, is
acted o'er again;
and only the nation which, at each moment of political or social
evolution, looks lovingly backward to its own painfully-earned
experience--Respiciens_, _Prospiciens, as Tennyson's own chosen
device expresses it--has solid reason to hope, that its movement is true
Advance--that its course is Upward.

It remains only to add, that the book has been