Mr. Grewgious the Un-Poetic Angular Man

It is the unhappy lot of Mr. Grewgious to offer a rebuke to young Edwin Drood, whom Mr. Grewgious correctly observes is much too glib in his references to Rosa Bud, the ward of Mr. Grewgious. In the conversation Mr. Grewgious says, “I am a particularly Angular man, and yet I fancy (if I may use the word, not having a morsel of fancy), that I could draw a picture of a true lover’s state of mind, to-night.”

He then goes on to describe so very credibly that true state of a lover’s fascination with the beloved that he all but betrays that he himself has been disappointed in love. Talking of the true lover who seeks to be constantly in the company of his beloved, he remarks, “If I was to say seeking that, as a bird seeks its nest, I should make an ass of myself, because that would trench upon what I understand to be poetry; and I am so far from trenching upon poetry at any time, that I never, to my knowledge, got within ten thousand miles of it.” Dickens later observes, “”And yet there are such unexplored romantic nooks in the unlikeliest men.” - Charles Dickens in Edwin Drood.

Pale shadows of love, love lost, and perhaps even love betrayed, casts forth upon stony walls that ancient longing that is the wellspring of poetry itself. Such longing is cast as froth upon the waters, but the waters are deep, hidden in the caverns of the earth, a hidden longing at the very core of the human heart. We have lost true Love and are reduced to making romantic poetry about lost romances, or failing that, repressing the very urge of poetry itself so that the love and longing should scarce trouble us; but even Angular men, dispassionate as they may seem, have buried somewhere the longing for Love, hoped for, lost, perhaps never to be found.

A Sonnet from John Donne, that great romantic poet, declares:

XVI
Batter my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend,
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee, and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd , and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely I love you, and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:
Divorce mee, untie, or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish mee.