The earth, and stately tread, or lowly creep,
Witness if I be silent, morn or even,
To hill or valley, fountain, or fresh shade,
Made vocal by my song, and taught his praise.

This note of high imaginative tension is persistent throughout the poem,
and that it should be so masterfully sustained is in itself cause for
delighted admiration. But to be constant in a virtue is not to enhance
its quality. Superbly furnished as _Paradise Lost_ is with this
imaginative beauty, the beauty is as rich and unquestionable in the few
pages of _Lycidas_; there is less of it, that is all. And who shall
say that it is less ecstatic or less perfect in the little orison to Saint
Ben? You may prefer Milton's manner, but then you may, with equal reason,
prefer Herrick's, being grateful for what Keats announced to be truth, in
whatever shape you may find it. In any case we cannot, on this ground,
assign a lower place to the poet who could order those words "religion's,"
"Saint Ben," "Psalter" and the rest of them, with such inspired good
fortune. And yet we know that _Paradise Lost_ is a greater work than
this little flight of certain song, greater, too, than the poet's own
elegy. There is an explanation.

Of all the energies of man, that which I will anticipate my argument by
calling the poetic energy, the energy that created Herrick's song and the
distinguishing qualities of that passage from Milton, is the rarest and the
most highly, if not the most generally, honoured; we have only to think of
the handful of men who at any time out of all the millions can bring this
perfect expression to a mood of the highest imaginative intensity, to know
that the honour is justly bestowed. So splendid a thing is success in
this matter that failure, if it is matched with a will for sincerity and
intelligence of purpose, will often bring a man some durable fame. But the