With this root, indeed, rather than with any potential flowering, the poem is mainly concerned. Yet there is an increasing tendency, notably throughout the Preludes, toward a mystical interpretation of sexual love. The "pathos of eternity" has blown across the face of passion: and in the Victories of Love (as the latter part of the work was called) there is even more of this divine pathos than there is of nuptial joy.
Although the Angel was never completed according to Patmore's original design, few of us will feel that it could desirably be longer. The last word is spoken in that extraordinary "Wedding Sermon," which brings the poem to a close. Here, where the claims of body and spirit are reconciled with so sweet and austere an eloquence, we realise that the home of love is no longer upon our humble earth. Out from the house of human felicity must the angel now adventure—out into realms higher and more loving: although to men of goodwill the body's bond may still reveal itself as
All else utterly beyond
In power of love to actualise
The soul's bond which it signifies.
Here, for those who could receive it, was anticipated the whole tremendous doctrine of Patmore's future odes!
The metrical scheme of the Angel—an iambic octosyllabic line, rhyming throughout the First Part in quatrains, throughout the Second in couplets—has often been subjected to ridicule. It is, in fact, a metre trembling perilously upon the border of the commonplace, and lending itself with staggering ease to parody and perversion. But the poet had chosen it deliberately as the vehicle best suited to a simple and for the most
