The last of the dramatic cycle, “The Masque of Taliesin,” is regarded by most of Mr. Hovey’s critics as the high-water mark of his verse, and it has certainly some of the purest song of his pen, and profoundest in thought and conception; but it has also passages of unresolved metaphysics, whose place, unless the poet had the patience to shape them to a finer issue, should be in a Greek philosophy.
The Masque turns upon the quest of the Graal by Percival, and is in three scenes, or movements, set in the forest of Broceliande, Helicon, and the Chapel of the Graal. It introduces the Muses, Merlin, Apollo, Nimue, King Evelac, guardian of the Graal, and lesser mortals and deities, but chief in interest, Taliesin, a bard, through whom are spoken the finest passages of the play. As the work is cast in the form of a Masque, to obviate the need of adhering to a strict dramatic structure, one may dispense with a summary of its slight plot, and look, instead, at the verse.
The passages spoken by Apollo to Taliesin, in other words, Inspiration defining itself to the poet, are full of glowing thought:
Greaten thyself to the end, I am he for whose breath thou art greatened; Perfect thy speech to a god’s, I am he for whom speech is made perfect; And my voice in the hush of thy heart is the voice of the tides of the worlds. Thou shalt know it is I when I speak, as the foot knows the rock that it treads on, As the sea knows the moon, as the sap knows the place of the sun in the heavens, As the cloud knows the cloud it must meet and embrace with caresses of lightning. When thou hearest my voice, thou art one with the hurl of the stars through the void, One with the shout of the sea and the stampede of droves of the wind, One with the coursers of Time and the grip of God’s hand on their harness; And the powers of the night and the grave shall avail not to stand in thy path.
Genius and its invincible assurance could scarcely be defined better than in this passage.
The Masque contains a litany spoken by King Evelac, and responded to by the choristers at the Chapel of Graal, which is one of its achievements, in point of beauty, though too long to quote, and lyrics of great delicacy are scattered throughout the work; but in the more spiritual passages, spoken chiefly by Taliesin, one gets the finer quality of the verse, as in this noble query addressed to Uriel, the angel who holds the flaming sword before the Graal: