SOURCE: "Exile in Eden: William Barnes's Lyrics of Romantic Encounter," in University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 2, Winter, 1986-87, pp. 308-18.

In the following essay, Hertz analyzes the imagery and versification of Barnes's romantic lyric poems.

Despite its overwhelming lushness, a poem by William Barnes often seems strangely artificial, a kind of verbal topiary. Isolated in an anthology, its self-consciously limited vocabulary and rich, stylized imagery can appear merely an eccentric and unproductive impoverishment of the medium. Seen in the proper context, however, it stands revealed as part of a large and interesting literary enterprise. The poems I call lyrics of romantic encounter—those about unexpected meetings with irresistible women—undergo just such a transformation. On their own, they seem no more than highly wrought curiosities, but the appearance of superficiality is misleading, for beneath the pruned and polished surface lie deep emotion and profound thought. These lyrics...