THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

254 The Harmony of Virtuedoubt, his ungoverned youth was most familiar. But instead ofworking them into the main thought he turned to them for a propand, when his imaginative memory failed him, multiplied themto make up the deficiency. This lapse from artistic uprightnessbrought its own retribution, as all such lapses will. From oneerror indeed Kalidasa's vigour and aspiring temperament savedhim. He never relaxed into the cloying and effeminate languorof sensuous description which offends us in Keats' earlier work.The men of the age with all their sensuousness, luxury and worshipof outward beauty were a masculine and strenuous race,and their male and vigorous spirit is as prominent in Kalidasa ashis laxer tendencies. His sensuousness is not coupled with weakself-indulgence, but is rather a bold and royal spirit seizing thebeauty and delight of earth to itself and compelling all the sensesto minister to the enjoyment of the spirit rather than enslavingthe spirit to do the will of the senses. The difference perhapsamounts to no more than a lesser or greater force of vitality,but it is, for the purposes of poetry, a real and importantdifference. The spirit of delightful weakness swooning with excessivebeauty gives a peculiar charm of soft laxness to poemslike the Endymion, but it is a weakening charm to which no viriletemperament will trust itself. The poetry of Kalidasa satisfiesthe sensuous imagination without enervating the virile chords ofcharacter; for virile energy is an unfailing characteristic of thebest Sanskrit poetry and Kalidasa is inferior to none in this respect.His artistic error has, nevertheless, had disastrous effectson the substance of his poem.It is written in six cantos answering to the six Indian seasons,Summer, Rain, Autumn, Winter, Dew and Spring. Nothingcan exceed the splendour and power of the opening. We see thepoet revelling in the yet virgin boldness, newness and strengthof his genius and confident of winning the kingdom of poetryby violence. For a time the brilliance of his work seems to justifyhis ardour. In the poem on Summer we are at once seized bythe marvellous force of imagination, by the unsurpassed closenessand clear strenuousness of his gaze on the object; in theexpression there is a grand and concentrated precision which isour first example of the great Kalidasian manner, and an imperial