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 AMPHORA
 
 / should scarcely be justified in calling him a literary 
 monomaniac. But it is true that Art in general, and the 
 art of literature in particular had for him a very high 
 significance and interest ; and he was always ready to 
 defend the thesis that, all the arts being glorious, the lit- 
 erary art was the most glorious and wonderful of all. 
 He reverenced music, but he was firm in maintaining that 
 in perfect lyrical poetry there is the subtlest and most 
 beautiful melody in the world. 
 
 ARTHUR MACHEN.
 
 M P H O R A 
 
 A COLLECTION OF PROSE 
 AND VERSE CHOSEN BY THE 
 EDITOR OF THE BIBELOT 
 
 PORTLAND MAINE 
 
 THOMAS BIRD MOSHER 
 
 MDCCCCXII
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 THOMAS B MOSHER 
 
 I912
 
 VNPr 
 
 r ■ ■ 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF MY DEAREST FRIEND 
 LEOPOLD LOBSITZ 
 
 "HE, THE MORE FORTUNATE! YEA, HE HATH FINISH'DI 
 FOR HIM THERE IS NO LONGER ANY FUTURE, 
 
 HIS LIFE IS BRIGHT BRIGHT WITHOUT SPOT IT WAS, 
 
 AND CANNOT CEASE TO BE. NO OMINOUS HOUR 
 KNOCKS AT HIS DOOR WITH TIDINGS OF MISHAP. 
 FAR OFF IS HE, ABOVE DESIRE AND FEAR ; 
 NO MORE SUBMITTED TO THE CHANGE AND CHANCE 
 OF THE UNSTEADY PLANETS. O 'T IS WELL 
 WITH him! "
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IX 
 
 PROEM 
 
 FOREWORD xi 
 
 AMPHORA I 
 
 INDEX TO AUTHORS 177
 
 PROEM 
 
 HE shape of the jar was as classi- 
 cal as that of many a vase from 
 the antique.' Antiquity, indeed, 
 ''' possessed an abundance of pre- 
 cisely such jars. Furthermore, when you held 
 the jar in the sun, a spot of insufferable radi- 
 ance came in the middle of its cheek, like a 
 very laugh of light. Then it contained honey 
 — a thing which strikes the dullest imagina- 
 tions with a sense of sweetness and the 
 flowers ; and in addition to the word " honey " 
 outside, was the word "Sicilian" — a very 
 
 musical and reminiscent word 
 
 We propose, as from so many different 
 flowers, to furnish our Jar of Honey, careless 
 whether the flower be sweet or bitter, provided 
 
 I Those who do not know Leigh Hunt's A Jar of 
 Honey from Mount IJybla should make haste to read 
 it. It is of the rare sort that never grows old. Pre- 
 ferably the earliest edition which Richard Doyle 
 illustrated, (1848), is the one to seek in the catalogue 
 of the old bookseller, but any later reissue is better 
 than none. If ever there was a book-a-bosom this is 
 indisputably that blessed volume 1
 
 X PROEM 
 
 the result (with the help of his good-will) be 
 not un-sweet to the reader. For honey itself is 
 not gathered from sweet flowers only ; neither 
 can much of it be eaten without a qualification 
 of its dulcitude with some plainer food. It 
 can hardly be supposed to be as sweet to the 
 bees themselves, as it is to us. Evil is so 
 made to wait upon good in this world — to 
 quicken it by alarm, to brighten it by contrast, 
 and render it sympathetic by suffering — that 
 although there is quite enough superabundance 
 of it to incite us to its diminution (Nature her- 
 self impelling us to do so), yet tears have their 
 delight, as well as laughter ; and laughter itself 
 is admonished by tears and pain not to be too 
 excessive. Laughter has occasioned death : — 
 tears have saved more than life. The readers, 
 therefore, will not suppose that we intend 
 (supposing even that we were able) to cloy 
 them with sweets. We hope that they will 
 occasionally look very grave over their honey. 
 We should not be disconcerted, if some bright 
 eyes even shed tears over it. 
 
 LEIGH HUNT.
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 HE origin of this book can be set 
 forth with becoming brevity. In 
 a sentimental sense it might be 
 W regarded as a breviary for book- 
 lovers. For over twenty years I have had, as 
 publisher, occasion to issue catalogues, and as 
 my point of view included something other than 
 the mere commercial success of my editions, it 
 seemed in keeping with an ideal of what con- 
 stituted the things more excellent, that I should, 
 wherever space permitted, cite such poems and 
 prose passages of unusual truth and beauty 
 as appeared, to me at least, in harmony with 
 this wider outlook concerning Life and Liter- 
 ature. It was also well to avoid repetition of 
 what 1 had used elsewhere, and to have little, 
 if any, recourse to the more obvious quotations, 
 no matter how famous ; preferably seeking out 
 and placing before you some of the lesser 
 known but imperishable utterances, which 
 earHer gatherers of " rose leaves when the
 
 xii FOREWORD 
 
 rose is dead " had never found or had never 
 set out to find. 
 
 This habit of enriching my catalogues by 
 utilizing blank pages whenever they occurred, 
 was not without gratifying results : thus, 
 many requests reached me that at some suit- 
 able time I would bring these spolia optima 
 into a single accessible volume. That time, 
 I feel, has now arrived and I offer, revised, 
 and decreased, it may be, but also augmented 
 and, so to speak, re-integrated, the selections 
 that for two decades have given my annual 
 List of Books an unique position in the minor 
 world of catalogue making.' My aim has been, 
 and is, to print only those things informed by 
 the spirit of beauty — of the souls of books — 
 not hackneyed, by reason of constant use or 
 display. If the book has any demonstrable 
 raison d'itre it is more especially that I have 
 
 I In looking over some of the more recent works 
 that have appealed to me I find The Book of Peace 
 made by Paitiela Tennatit (1900), and who also, as 
 Lady Glenconner, edited and in part wrote The White 
 Wallet (1 9 1 2); A Book of Memory; coTHpiled by 
 Katharine Tynan, (without date, a wretched omission 
 its publishers should be ashamed of) ; The Book- 
 Lovers Anthology edited by R. M. Leonard (191 1).
 
 FOREWORD xiii 
 
 got out of the beaten highway and wandered 
 into bypaths, seeking for fine flowers of the 
 forest rather than for floral displays of the class- 
 ical literary garden. No editor can wholly rid 
 himself of clichks, but sentimentalisms concern- 
 ing " a book in a shady nook " mark a poverty 
 of spirit that should not find and, I hope, has 
 not found an abiding place in this compilation. 
 If, then, Atnphora please the palate at all, it 
 will be from quality rather than quantity of its 
 contents. It is a blended vintage drawn from 
 many sorts of literary grapes, but it is my own, 
 and I can only trust my taste will be shared 
 by others, and that it will come to many with 
 a refreshing flavour, 
 
 " Jasting of Flora and the country green, 
 
 Dance, and Provencal song, and sttn-burnt mirth ! " 
 
 Perhaps it will not at once be seen that 
 Amphora does contain such immortal vintage. 
 It had been easier, and of no great value, 
 methinks, to go over the old travelled roads 
 and fling together a vast quantity of reading 
 matter — and nothing more. This dry-as-dust 
 method shuts out a wider vision for the finer 
 spirit. Far otherwise is it, if the appeal is
 
 xiv FOREWORD 
 
 solely and sincerely made to the heart of man. 
 Many of my selections, you will, therefore, see 
 have nothing to do with books merely as 
 aids to improvement. But there is scarcely a 
 quotation that does not deal with the imagina- 
 tion, or that is not suffused with Beauty as an 
 everliving rose upon the rood of Time ! 
 
 The sources whence this material has been 
 derived aregiven in every instance when known. 
 The fine citation from Garth Wilkinson, for 
 example, is one that even an industrious book- 
 maker might be pardoned for not finding : it 
 was a happy accident that I came across it in 
 his The Human Body and its Connection with 
 Man, (1851). The regrettable custom of so 
 many English periodicals not to allow a poet 
 to sign his contribution, is still kept up, 
 although there are signs that such owlishness 
 has begun to relax. This alone is responsible 
 for the two asterisks, where a selection is 
 anonymous ; a single asterisk shows that the 
 quotation is indeed English but its origin 
 otherwise unknown. Three stars are appended 
 to a few utterances for which the editor is 
 personally responsible. 
 
 A merely bookish book would have failed
 
 FOREWORD XV 
 
 to satisfy any requirement that I myself felt 
 personally. My title is fanciful at best ; some- 
 how it was the only one I found that pleased 
 me. If it does not contain the true wine of 
 the spirit of Love and of Life, it is a vessel 
 empty of all meaning. For it still remains the 
 sweet and solemn truth, " before books and 
 after books is the human soul " ' from whence 
 all verse and prose, all art, all heavenly beauty 
 emanate, which will survive when what else 
 there was of dear and desirable is at end, and 
 " house and tenant go to ground." 
 
 Of old, amphorae were earthen vessels made 
 by the potter's art to contain the more precious 
 liquids : honey, olive oil, wine. The jar which 
 Leigh Hunt so exquisitely imagined as filled 
 with honey from Mount Hybla must have been, 
 it seems to me, a diminutive specimen of the 
 amphora family. At any rate the idea under- 
 lying his delightful title is precisely the same 
 that I had in mind when finally choosing this 
 
 I See Optimos by my friend, Horace Traubel, (New 
 York, B. W. Huebsch, 1910,) especially the section 
 (pp. 131-162) fronm which I have drawn my first title, 
 " Before Books and After Books."
 
 xvi FOREWORD 
 
 antique beautiful word for the sign and symbol 
 of a vase fulfilled and overflowing with wine 
 of spiritual Life. My Amphora, then, O 
 friends whom I may never meet nor greet 
 other than in these words, is not a cinerary 
 urn such as Sir Thomas Browne discovered, 
 filled with ashes of forgotten funeral fires, and 
 so wondrously discoursed upon in a man- 
 ner that shall outlast his unravished relics of 
 some lost Roman camp, but rather a vessel 
 still containing in unspoiled solution a genuine 
 and generous juice of the most high Muses ! 
 
 THOMAS BIRD MOSHER. 
 
 September ii, 19 12. 

 
 AMPHORA
 
 Sing some old exulting sang 
 Out of men's souls distilled with deathless rhyme 
 In the alembic of the -world and time — 
 Triumphant music of the great and strong, 
 IVho, risen from the dust, have swept a thousand strings 
 Vibrant with being ; to the stars arise 
 Their songs of passion and of destinies — 
 Immortal incense out of mortal things. 
 
 *
 
 BEFORE BOOKS AND AFTER BOOKS" 
 
 UPPOSE you heard these words spoken 
 for the first time : 
 
 " Do not weep for me, 
 This is not my true country, 
 I have lived banish'd from my true country, 
 I now go back there, 
 I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn." 
 
 Would you not say that such an utterance revealed 
 one of the brightest visions ever enshrined in that 
 haunted palace, the human heart ? Well, these words 
 Whitman sought out for himself and made over to 
 us, and they read as if he drew his inspiration from 
 the depths of his subliminal soul. Shall we affirm 
 that he was inspired by the Bhagavad-Gita — ethics of 
 the Master drawn from an older source than the 
 Hebrew Bible — or was it what the American seer 
 read into a composite text derived from all that had 
 gone before ? And would you call this a lost point of 
 view ? If it is, then my scheme of things has an insub- 
 stantial value, and any " tidings of great joy " I thought 
 inherent in the selections I have chosen to offer is 
 but a mirage of the mind, the baseless fabric of a 
 vision that fades and leaves no trace. 
 
 Now it appears to me, this 7vas the thing I had 
 most deeply at heart ! It voices another statement, 
 that "before books and after books is the human 
 soul." As Ruskin said : " for the rest, I ate, and 
 drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another; my
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 life was as the vapour and is not ; but this I saw and 
 knew : this, if anything of mine is worth your memory." 
 
 At times I may have unduly insisted upon the fact 
 that it w'as not merely a commercial adventure with 
 me, but the possession of ideals in book-publishing, 
 with the implication that what I did was for a 
 purpose beyond itself : " seeing finally with inexorable 
 vision the way that life comes and the way that life 
 goes whatever may happen with words." The beauty 
 that endures has an inherent divine right even if the 
 cryptic saying of William Butler Yeats, " all the most 
 valuable things are useless," also contains a truth not 
 easily translatable into the common speech of every 
 day. Even so it is this ever-living rose of beauty and a 
 still older ever-living truth underlying life which must 
 come together and harmonize whence, out of the dust 
 and decay of ages, the flower of human hope shall 
 re-emerge, transplanted both as to time and place, — 
 imperishable in its essence. 
 
 It is moreover, the doctrine of Palingenesis as 
 expressed by Longfellow : 
 
 " There was an old belief that in the embers 
 0£ all things their primordial form exists, 
 
 And cunning alchemists 
 Could re-create the rose with all its members 
 From its own ashes, but without the bloom, 
 
 Without the lost perfume." 
 
 Above and beyond this belief of the hermetic philoso- 
 phers the persistence of the lost perfume of Literature 
 remains an established fact : the persistence of Love 
 and Life being co-eternal, — no less human and no.Iess 
 divine ! 
 
 But, oh ! how many things crowd upon us in the 
 evening or rather, shall I say, in the twilight of our
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 days ; and how little time we have to work out the 
 immanent beauty which comes at the close and not at 
 the dawn of life! Finally, it seems to me that all 
 beauty is a slow evolution of this submerged self, and 
 while some at the very start have had The Perfect 
 Vision, to others, indeed to most of us, it is not 
 permitted. We must wait and are fortunate if we lay 
 hold upon the unfading flower which produced them 
 all, — that Protean energy — the hidden Soul of Man. 
 Therefore, it is better to accept these shapes and 
 shadows of undying realities and aspirations and leave 
 you, ... to your own interpretation of the true and 
 permanent in literature. . . . And " as a great verse 
 out of casual speech " is " forged in fire " so, by means 
 of these citations that were in my heart and should 
 reach other hearts, I transmit the living word as I 
 have received it. 
 
 " So many ways, yet only one shall find : 
 So many joys, yet only one .shall bless ; 
 
 So many creeds, yet to each pilgrim mind 
 One road to the divine forgetfulncss." 
 
 THE BELLS OF BATTERSEA 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S bells and Bow bells, 
 O they ring famously, 
 But have you heard in the mist of night 
 The bells of Battersea ? 
 
 St. Diinstan^s and St. Clement Danes', 
 How loud they clang and beat ! 
 
 But O, the bells of Battersea 
 Are twenty times more sweet.
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 The meadows and the trees are gone, 
 IVhere once the birds did sing, 
 
 But often I could dream them there 
 IVhen the old, old peals do ring. 
 
 O, they are like the village bells 
 
 In the place where I was born, 
 IVhere the solemn curfew tolled at night, 
 
 And matins waked the morn. 
 
 And here afar in London town, 
 
 IVhere manj> things ama^e, 
 The sweet bells ring into my heart 
 
 A chime of other days. 
 
 St. Martin's bells and Bow bells, 
 
 O thejf ring famously, 
 But have you heard in the mist of night 
 
 The bells of Battersea ? 
 
 RUSSELL ALEXANDER. 
 
 TO dig into the roots and origin of the great poets 
 is like digging into the roots of an oak or maple 
 the better to increase your appreciation of the beauty 
 of the tree. There stands the tree in all its summer 
 glory. Will you really know it any better after you 
 have laid bare every root and rootlet .'' There stand 
 Homer, Dante, Chaucer and Shakespeare. Read 
 them, give yourself to them, and master them if you 
 are man enough. 
 
 The poets are not to be analyzed ; they are to be 
 enjoyed; they are not to be studied, but to be loved; 
 they are not for knowledge, but for culture — to 
 enhance our appreciation of life and our mastery over
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 its elements. All the mere facts about a poet's work 
 are as chaff as compared with the appreciation of one 
 line or fine sentence. Why study a great poet at all 
 after the manner of the dissecting room ? Why not 
 rather seek to make the acquaintance of his living 
 soul and to feel its power ? 
 
 JOHN BURROUGHS. 
 
 i T^OETRY has a key which unlocks some more 
 1 inward cabinet of my nature than is accessible 
 to any other power. I cannot explain it or account 
 for it, or say what faculty it appeals to. The chord 
 which vibrates strongly becomes blurred and invisible 
 in proportion to the intensity of its impulse. Often 
 the mere rhyme, the cadence and sound of the words, 
 awaken this strange feeling in me. Not only do all 
 
 ', the happy associations of my early life, that before lay 
 scattered, take beautiful shapes, like iron dust at the 
 approach of the magnet ; but something dim and vague 
 beyond these, moves itself in me with the uncertain 
 sound of a far-off sea. 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 " WHERE THE TREE OF LIFE IS BLOOMING " 
 
 WHERE the tree of life is blooming, where the almond 
 strikes the sky. 
 Sun and spirit closelj> cleaving, intermingled sink to 
 
 rest. 
 Sun and spirit peace receiving, sleep held in the gloiving 
 west — 
 
 Ob ! to wander, you and I, 
 Where the tree of life is blooming, where the almond 
 strikes the sky !
 
 8 AMPHORA 
 
 Where the tree of life is strewing rosy snows throughout 
 the land, 
 Hearts enstranged, comprehending, guided by Spring's 
 
 healing feet, 
 Tears pride girded, condescending, souls long isolated 
 meet — 
 
 Oh ! to wander hand in hand 
 Where the tree of life is strewing rosy snows throughout 
 the land. 
 
 Where the tree of life is blooming on a foam-fringed, 
 sea-bound shore. 
 Sun and spirit quickened, waking, rush together great 
 
 with hope, 
 Sun and spirit bondage breaking crown the morn- 
 besprinkled slope — 
 
 Oh ! to wander evermore 
 Where the tree of life is blooming by a foamf ringed, 
 sea-bound shore .' 
 
 VIOLA TAYLOR. 
 
 IF a book come from the heart, it will contrive to 
 reach other hearts ; all art and author-craft are 
 of small account to that. ... In Books lies the soul 
 of the whole Past Time ; the articulate audible voice of 
 the Past, when the body and material substance of it 
 has altogether vanished like a dream. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. 
 
 WE are as much informed of a writer's genius by 
 what he selects as by what he originates. We 
 read the quotation with his eyes, and find a new and 
 fervent sense ; as a passage from one of the poets,
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 well recited, borrows new interest from the rendering. 
 As the journals say, "the italics are ours." The 
 profit of books is according to the sensibility of the 
 reader. The profoundest tliought or passion sleeps as 
 in a mine, until an equal mind and heart finds and 
 publishes it. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 THE sun and moon and stars are mine, 
 The greenwood and the sea ; 
 Then what care I for jewels fine, 
 Castle or barony ? 
 
 The beaiitj) of the waking dajf, 
 
 The glory of the eve. 
 Are they not more than rich array. 
 
 And wherefore should I grieve ? 
 
 A sunset cloud shall be my gown, 
 
 A star shall deck my hair, 
 And these shall last when dust is strown 
 
 O'er all your wealth and care. 
 
 THREE types of men have made all beautiful things. 
 Aristocracies have made beautiful manners, be- 
 cause their place in the world puts them above the 
 fear of life, and the countrymen have made beautiful 
 stories and beliefs, because they have nothing to lose 
 and so do not fear, and the artists have made all the 
 rest, because Providence has filled them with reckless- 
 ness. All these look backward to a long tradition.
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 for being without fear, they have held to whatever 
 pleased them. The others being always anxious have 
 come to possess little that is good in itself, and are 
 always changing from thing to thing, for whatever 
 they do or have, must be a means to something else, 
 and they have so little belief that anything can be an 
 end in itself, that they cannot understand you if you 
 say " All the most valuable things are useless." 
 They prefer the stalk to the flower, and believe that 
 painting and jjoetry exist that there may be instruc- 
 tion, and love that there may be children, and theatres, 
 that busy men may rest, and holidays that busy men 
 may go on being busy. At all times they fear and 
 even hate the things that have worth in themselves, 
 for that worth may suddenly, as it were a fire, consume 
 their book of Life, where the world is represented by 
 cyphers and sym.bols ; and before all else, they fear 
 irreverent joy and unserviceable sorrow. It seems to 
 them, that those who have been freed by position, by 
 poverty, or by the traditions of Art, have something 
 terrible about them, a light that is unendurable to 
 eyesight. They complain much of that commandment 
 that we can do almost what we will, if we do it gaily, 
 and think that freedom is but a trifling with the 
 world. 
 
 If we would find a company of our own way of 
 thinking, we must go backward to turretted walls, to 
 courts, to high rocky places, to little walled towns, 
 to jesters like that jester of Charles the Fifth who 
 made mirth out of his own death ; to the Duke Gui- 
 dobaldo in his sickness, or Duke Frederick in his 
 strength, to all those who understood that life is not 
 lived at all, if not lived for contemplation or excite- 
 
 ^^^ ■ WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS.
 
 AMPHORA II 
 
 DESERnNGS 
 
 THIS ts the height of our deserts : 
 A little pity for life's hurts; 
 A little rain, a little sun, 
 A little sleep when work is done. 
 
 A little righteous punishment. 
 Less for our deeds than their intent ; 
 A little pardon now and then, 
 Because we are hut struggling men. 
 
 A little light to show the way, 
 A little guidance when we stray ; 
 A little love before we pass 
 To rest beneath the kirkyard grass. 
 
 A little faith in days of change, 
 IVhen life is stark and bare and strange ; 
 A solace when our eyes are wet 
 IVith tears of longing and regret. 
 
 True it is that we cannot claim 
 Unmeasured recompense or blame, 
 Because our way of life is small : 
 A tittle is the sum of all. 
 
 11IAVE caught but a glimpse of the great vision, 
 from which the light and magic died before it 
 touched the printed page ; but the Procession of 
 Genius exists for ever ; it is one that we may summon 
 
 at our will 
 
 In those days we read together " La Bible de 1' 
 Humanite " and drank the prose of Michelet as though 
 it were a sacred wine. Books, then, were a rich elixir
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 to be taken, kneeling, from a chalice ; whose absorp- 
 tion exalted and transformed us, in a vivifying glow ; 
 great authors were divinities to imitate and worship ; 
 and literature a Holy Communion of the mind. How 
 different to-day is our attitude towards letters 1 
 How detached, how objective, and yet how far more 
 intimately curious! To me, at least, the literature of 
 a great nation — in its vast succession and continuity, 
 as it passes down the ages — appears as a spectacle, a 
 progress, a pageant, wherein every figure is not only 
 a marvel in itself but the embodiment of a whole 
 invisible plexus of secret influences, ideas, traditions, 
 and revolts. How like us appear those great human 
 beings whose experience and whose gifts have made 
 us what we are; and yet how unlike — for, if the pas- 
 sions and feelings of men remain almost unaltered, 
 their ideas and their ideals change with every age. 
 Religion is everything to Fenelon, Racine, and their 
 contemporaries ; Liberty and Science attract the 
 genius of Voltaire ; while to the Romantics, as to 
 Faust, " Gefiihl ist Alles"; Nature and Truth have 
 their worshippers ; for each great Ideal in turn draws 
 to itself the tides of a generation. Yet, in all this 
 variety, there is one continuous trend : each man 
 begins where his predecessor stopped, profits by his 
 acquirements and carries on the message of the race. 
 
 A. MARY F. ROBINSON. 
 
 T 
 
 TELL ME. MAMORE 
 
 ELL iiie, tell me, shall I ever 
 from the wounds of love recover ? 
 
 — Friend, my friend, the snow dolh never 
 change its white robe for another.
 
 AMPHORA 13 
 
 — Thou who smtl^st through thy tears, 
 as (he sun through rain appears — 
 
 — Tell me, O Mamore, I pray, 
 must I Death's command ohej> .? 
 
 — Dost jest my friend? Thou know' st it well, . . . 
 we all in Paradise shall dwell. 
 
 — y4nd O Mamore, what wilt thou say 
 to Him who reigneth there alway .? 
 
 — I'll tell Him that this weary earth 
 to heritage of woe gives birth. 
 
 — And O Mamore, dear heart, and kind, 
 in Paradise what shall we find? 
 
 — Harps and crowns of gold are there, 
 and scarves of woven tissues rare. 
 
 — And naught beside, Mamore, Mamore, . . . 
 in Paradise is there no more ? 
 
 — Thine Own am I, — and e'en above, 
 in Paradise, we 'II find our love. 
 
 ^ (Translated from the French of Francis Jainmes) 
 
 A. LENALIE. 
 
 TO the beloved and deplored memory of her who 
 was the inspirer, and in part the author, of 
 all that is best in my writings — the friend and wife 
 whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strong- 
 est incitement, and whose approbation was my chief 
 reward — I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have 
 written for many years, it belongs as much to her as 
 to me ; but the work as it stands has had in a very 
 insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her 
 revision; some of the most important portions having
 
 14 AMPHORA 
 
 been reserved for a more careful re-examination which 
 they are now never destined to receive. Were I but 
 capable of interpreting to the world one-half the great 
 thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her 
 grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to 
 it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can 
 write unprompted and unassisted by her all but unri- 
 valled wisdom. 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 a '~r*HE /eaves of life are falling one hy one'''' — 
 
 1 The woods once thick and green are brown and 
 sere ; 
 Andyoulh with all her bounteous hours is done, 
 
 And age is here. 
 
 "The leaves of life are falling one bj' one " — 
 
 And one bjf one the heavv hours fall past. 
 And the glad hours we prayed might ne'er be gone. 
 
 Are gone at last. 
 
 " The leaves of life are falling one by one " — 
 
 Old dreams, old friends, xve zvalch them fall away ; 
 And all our music takes a minor tone. 
 
 Our skies grow gray. 
 
 " The leaves of life are falling one by one " — 
 
 Best, worst, loved, hated, happy days and sad. 
 Each the inevitable course has run. 
 
 The present had. 
 
 "The leaves of life are falling one by one " — 
 
 Till, after all the gladness and the strife, 
 IVe see the redness of the setting sun 
 
 Light up our life.
 
 AMPHORA 15 
 
 And good seems not so good — ill not so ill ; 
 
 And things look other than they used to seem ; 
 Ourselves more vague, questions of fate and will 
 
 Less like a dream. 
 
 And then 7vhj> leaves should fall we think we know, 
 
 Because the autumn comes before the Spring — 
 The Eternal Spring, when flowers will always blow. 
 
 Birds always sing. 
 
 E. NESBIT. 
 
 IS there anything so delicious as the first exploration 
 of a great library — alone — unwatched ? You 
 shut the heavy door behind you slowly, reverently, 
 lest a noise should jar on the sleepers of the shelves. 
 For as the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus were dead and 
 yet alive, so are the souls of the authors in the care of 
 their ancient leathern binding. You walk gently 
 round the walls, pausing here to read a title, there to 
 draw out a tome and support it for a passing glance — 
 half in your arms, half against the shelf. The passing 
 glance lengthens till the weight becomes too great, 
 and with a sigh you replace it, and move again, peer- 
 ing up at those titles which are foreshortened from 
 the elevation of the shelf, and so roam from folio to 
 octavo, from octavo to quarto, till at last, finding a 
 little work whose value, were it in the mart, would be 
 more than its weight in gold, you bear it to the low 
 leather-covered arm-chair and enjoy it at your ease. 
 But to sip the full pleasure of a library you must be 
 alone, and you must take the books yourself from the 
 shelves. A man to read must read alone. He may 
 make extracts, he may 7vo/-/c at books in company ; 
 but to read, to absorb, he must be solitary. 
 
 RICHARD JEFFERIES.
 
 i6 AMPHORA 
 
 BABYLON 
 " We shall meet again in Babylon " 
 
 I'm going soft If all mjy years in wisdom if in pain — 
 For, oh, the music stirs mjy blood as once it did before, 
 And still I hear in Babylo)i, in Babylon, in Babylon, 
 The dancing feet in Babylon, of those who took my floor. 
 
 I'm going silent all my years, but garnered in my brain 
 Is that swift wit thai used to flash and cut them like a 
 sword — 
 And now I hear in Babylon, in Babylon, in Babylon, 
 The foolish tongues in Babylon of those who took my 
 word. 
 
 I'm going lonely all my days, who was the first to crave 
 The second, fierce, unsteady voice that struggled to speak 
 free — 
 
 A>id now I watch in Babylon, in Babylon, in Babylon, 
 The pallid loves in Babylon of men who once loved me. 
 
 I'm sleeping early by the flame as one content and grey, 
 Bui, oh, I dream a dream of dreams beneath a winter 
 moon, 
 
 I breathe the breath of Babylon, of Babylon, of Babylon^ 
 The scent of silks in Babylon that floated to a tune. 
 
 A hand of years has flogged me out — an exile's fate is 
 mine. 
 To sit with mumbling crones and still a heart that cries 
 withyouth. 
 But, oh, to walk in Babylon, in Babylon, in Babylon, 
 The happy streets in Babylon, when once the dream was 
 truth. 
 
 VIOLA TAYLOR.
 
 AMPHORA 17 
 
 THE POINT OF VIEW 
 
 A SENTIMENTAL INTERLUDE 
 
 Said the Star to the Moth : — 
 
 LOVE is of the Unattainable, the Unrealised. That 
 which is securely won we criticise ; and when 
 Criticism is born, Love dies. Love loves the Unknown. 
 That is why the Moth loves the Star, the Thinker 
 loves his Ideal, the Hero loves the Forlorn Hope, 
 the Man loves the Woman. Not a woman, but 
 Woman. 
 
 Selene had never kissed Endymion nor Endymion 
 Selene. She bathed him in her beams when he was 
 sleeping, but when he awoke, it was Helios — Apollo, 
 the God of Art — looking at him, and not Selene. 
 Apollo — the God of Art — is always the phantasm of 
 a reality, the imitation of a truth. The dream is a fact ; 
 the sun-glare is the symbol, the Maya, the Illusion. 
 
 She had never kissed him save in dreams, nor he 
 her. This was the secret of her mastery. What is the 
 history of Love ? Is it not always joy, eagerness, antic- 
 ipation, in the earlier chapters ? Pain only comes in 
 the later — the unutterable pain of the discovered, the 
 explored, the familiar. 
 
 But one day, she kissed him. For a moment, he was 
 transfigured into the seventh heaven. And then his 
 wings failed him. He knew now. The dream was 
 over. 
 
 Love is of the Unrealised, the Unexperienced. To 
 love is to hope. To know is to cease to love.
 
 i8 AMPHORA 
 
 Said the Moth to the Star : — 
 
 LOVE is not of the bleak uplands. It belongs to 
 the homestead. It is the warmth of encircling 
 arms, the touch of tender hands, the glance of appeal- 
 ing eyes. If I may not draw my love to my side, and 
 know that she irradiates my home, then I must seek 
 her, wherever she may be, even though I dash my 
 head against the cold vault of Heaven. Love is pres- 
 ence, not absence. 
 
 Pygmalion did not love the cold marble ; he divined 
 the woman in the statue his hands had formed. Only 
 when Galatea felt the inspiring breath of Aphrodite 
 and grew rosy with veritable humanity did his love 
 bloom like a flower, and surround her with passionate 
 leaves. 
 
 If Helen never went to Ilium and a mere ghost of 
 her lured the Trojan elders to their ruin, then Paris 
 was no lover ; his passion was only affectation. 
 
 We only love what we know. A Goddess we wor- 
 ship from afar ; we put her on a pedestal ; we offer her 
 incense; we raise to her our hands in prayer — with 
 bowed head and on our knees. But worship and rev- 
 erence are not love. We love a woman — a sinful, 
 erring, inconsistent, fitful, illogical, pitiful, compassion- 
 ate, forgiving, very human woman. Not Woman, but 
 a woman. 
 
 Until she came to me and held out her arms, I never 
 thought of love. Until her face was close to mine, I 
 never realised what love might be. Until my lips met
 
 AMPHORA 19 
 
 hers in the kiss that sums up all life, I never knew 
 what love was. 
 
 That is why if she be not mine, she is nothing. And 
 if I attain not to her level, I am nothing. I will win 
 her, I will win her, though my body be lost in flame, 
 and my perished wings flutter down the unending 
 night. 
 
 W. L. COURTNEY. 
 
 " IVHEN NIGHTFALL COMES, AND DAY 
 IS DONE " 
 
 ORARE divinity of Night ! 
 Season of undisturbed delight : 
 Glad interspace of day and day ! 
 IVitboui, an world of winds at play : 
 IVithin, I hear what dead friends say. 
 
 Dream, who love dreams ! forget all grief : 
 Find, in sleep's nothingness, relief: 
 Better my dreams ! Dear human books, 
 IVith kindly voices, winning looks ! 
 Enchatmt me with your spells of art, 
 And draw me homeward to your heart : 
 Till weariness and things unkind 
 Seem but a vain and passing wind : 
 Till the gray morning slowly creep 
 Upward, and rouse the birds from sleep. 
 
 Then, with the dawn of common day, 
 Rest you ! But I, upon my way, 
 IVhat the fates bring, will cheer Her do. 
 In days not yours, through thoughts of you ! 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON.
 
 20 AMPHORA 
 
 WHAT is a miracle ? We define it as a phenome- 
 non not referable to any general law or repro- 
 ducible by any process explicable to the reason, but 
 appearing to depend on some mystic effluence from a 
 particular personality, human or divine. But true 
 poetry is precisely such a phenomenon. It may be 
 the simplest thing in the world, yet not all the world 
 can compass it save one particular man ; and he can- 
 not tell you how he does it, or, for all the wealth in 
 the world, teach any one else the secret. Take, for 
 instance, such a mere versicle as this : 
 
 Row us out from Desenzano, to your Sirmione row ! 
 So they rowed, and there we landed — " O venusta Sirmio ! " 
 There to me througli all the groves of olive in the summer glow, 
 There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow, 
 Came that " Ave atque Vale " of the Poet's hopeless woe, 
 Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago, 
 " Frate? Ave atque Vale" — as we wandered to and fro. 
 Gazing at the Lydian laughter of the Garda Lake below 
 Sweet Catullus's all-but-island, olive-silvery Sirmio. 
 
 There is here no thought, no wit, no wisdom, no pas- 
 sion, no drama, nothing that can even be called 
 description. There is not a word, except the two or 
 three words of Latin, which a child of seven would 
 not understand. All the writer says is, " We rowed to 
 a certain place and a certain Latin phrase ran in my 
 head." But because the writer happens to be Tenny- 
 son, he creates out of this nothing an ineffably beauti- 
 ful, immortal something, an " unearned increment " of 
 beauty to the EngHsh tongue, a miracle — in short, a 
 
 poem Tennyson's lines are not in the least 
 
 clever. So far as their substance is concerned, they 
 might have been written by a man of the scantiest 
 intelligence. They are magical, that is all ; and the
 
 AMPHORA 21 
 
 abracadabra which summoned them out of nothingness 
 passed away with the magician, 
 
 When that which drew from out the boundless deep 
 Turned again home. 
 
 WILLIAM ARCHER. 
 
 A CONCLUSION 
 
 IF all the dream-like things are vain, 
 If all the strange delight and pain 
 
 Of love and beauty cannot be 
 
 The heirs of immortality, — 
 Then shall I worship all the more 
 Those images I now adore. 
 
 If all things perish, it were best 
 
 To die with beauty, — lie at rest 
 In her great drift of ruined roses, 
 IVith lovely songs to have our closes, — 
 
 Yea, as on some transcendent pyre 
 
 Of sandalwood, to pass in fire 
 Mid broken alabaster, whence 
 /irise great clouds of frankincense, 
 
 Carved ivory and sard, and robes 
 
 Of purple dye, and magic globes 
 Of burning crystal, scattered gems 
 Like flowers, and holy diadems. 
 
 Papyrus writ with perfect rimes, 
 
 And lutes fulfilled of tender chimes, 
 And lucid cups all scriptured round 
 With slim white dancing gods vine-bound. 
 
 And agate lamps, whence tongues of light 
 
 Flare out into the endless night. 
 
 RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR.
 
 22 AMPHORA 
 
 THERE is a beautiful old story of a saint who saw 
 in a vision a shining figure approaching him, 
 holding in his hand a dark and cloudy globe. He held 
 it out, and the saint looking attentively upon it, saw 
 that it appeared to represent the earth in miniature ; 
 there were the continents and seas, with clouds sweep- 
 ing over them ; and, for all that it was so minute, he 
 could see cities and plains, and little figures moving to 
 and fro. The angel laid his finger on a part of the 
 globe, and detached from it a small cluster of islands, 
 drawing them out of the sea; and the saint saw that 
 they were peopled by a folk, whom he knew, in some 
 way that he could not wholly understand, to be dreary 
 and uncomforted. He heard a voice saying, "i% 
 taketh 7ip the isles as a very small thing ; " and it darted 
 into his mind that his work lay with the people of 
 those sad islands ; that he was to go thither, and 
 speak to them a message of hope. 
 
 It is a beautiful story ; and it has always seemed to 
 me that the work of the artist is like that. He is to 
 detach from the great peopled globe what little por- 
 tion seems to appeal to him most; and he must then 
 sav what he can to encourage and sustain men, what- 
 ever thoughts of joy and hope come most home to 
 him in his long and eager pilgrimage. 
 
 E. F. BENSON. 
 
 MA NDRAGORA 
 
 POUR me red wine from out the Venice flask. 
 Pour faster, faster yet ! 
 The joy of ruby thought I do not ask, 
 Bid me forget!
 
 AMPHORA 23 
 
 Breathe slumbrous music round me, sweet and slow, 
 
 To honied phrases set ! 
 Into the land of dreams I long to go. 
 
 Bid me forget ! 
 
 Lay not the rose's bloom against mj> cheek, 
 
 IVith chill tears she is wet. 
 The wrinkled poppy is the/lower I seek. 
 
 Bid me forget ! 
 
 Where is delight ? and what are pleasures now ? — 
 
 Moths that a garment fret. 
 The world is turned memorial, crying, "Thou 
 
 Shalt not forget /" 
 
 MARY E. COLf:RIDGE. 
 
 THE Roman empire perished, it has been said, for 
 want of men ; Greek literature perished for want 
 of anything to say ; or rather, because it found 
 nothing in the end worth saying. Its end was like 
 that recorded of the noblest of the Roman emperors ; 
 the last word uttered with its dying breath was the 
 counsel of equanimity. . . . Resignation was the one 
 lesson left to ancient literature, and this lesson once 
 fully learned, it naturally and silently died. . . . All 
 know how the ages that followed were too preoccupied 
 to think of writing its epitaph. . . . Filtered down 
 through Byzantine epitomes, through Arabic trans- 
 lations, through every sort of strange and tortuous 
 channel, a vague and distorted tradition of this great 
 literature just survived long enough to kindle the 
 imagination of the fifteenth century. The chance of 
 history, fortunate perhaps for the world, swept the 
 last Greek scholars away from Constantinople to the
 
 24 AMPHORA 
 
 living soil of Italy, carrying with them the priceless 
 relics of forgotten splendours. To some broken stones, 
 and to the chance which saved a few hundred manu- 
 scripts from destruction, is due such knowledge as we 
 have to-day of that Greek thought and life which still 
 remains to us in many ways an unapproached ideal. 
 
 J. W. MACKAIL. 
 
 TWH HOUSE OF C/ESAR 
 " The Feast is over and the lamps expire" 
 
 YEA — we have thought of royal robes and red, 
 Had purple dreams of words we uttered, 
 Have lived once more the moment in the brain 
 That stirred the multitude to shout again. 
 /Ill done, all fled, and now wc faint and tire- 
 The Feast is over and the lamps expire. 
 
 Yea — we have launched a ship on sapphire seas, 
 And felt the steed between the gripping knees ; 
 Have breathed the evening when the^ huntsman brought 
 The stiffening trophy of the fevered sport — 
 Have crouched by rivers in the grassy meads 
 To watch for fish that dart amongst the weeds. 
 All well, all good — so hale from sun and mire. 
 The Feast is over and the lamps expire. 
 
 Yet — we have thought of Love as men may think, 
 
 IVho drain a cup because they needs must drink ; 
 
 Have brought a jewel from beyond the seas 
 
 To star a crown of blue anemones. 
 
 All fled, all done — a Ccesar's brief desire. 
 
 The Feast is over and the lamps expire.
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 25 
 
 Yea — and what is there that we have not done, 
 The Gods provided us 'twixt sun and sun ? 
 Have we not watched a hundred legions thinned, 
 y4nd crushed and conquered, succoured and sinned ? 
 Lo — we who moved the loftj> gods to ire. 
 The Feast is over and the lamps expire. 
 
 Yea — and what voice shall reach us and shall give 
 Our earthly self a moment more to live ? 
 IVhat arm shall fold us and shall come between 
 Our failing body and the grasses green ? 
 And the last heart that beats beneath this head. 
 Shall it be heard or unremembered ? 
 All dim, all pale ; so lift me on the pyre. 
 The Feast is over and the lamps expire. 
 
 VIOLA TAYLOR. 
 
 OUR lives must be spent seeking our God, for Cod 
 hides; but his artifices, once they be known, 
 seem so simple and smiling! From that moment the 
 merest nothing reveals his presence, and the greatness 
 of our lives depends on so little. Even thus may the 
 verse of a poet, in the midst of the humble incidents 
 of ordinary days, suddenly reveal to us something that 
 is stupendous. No solemn word has been pronounced, 
 
 and yet why does a vast night, starred with 
 
 angels, extend over the smile of a child, and why, 
 around a yes or no, murmured by a soul that sings 
 and busies itself with other matters, do we suddenly 
 hold our breath for an instant and say to ourselves, 
 "Here is the house of God, and this is one of the 
 approaches lo Heaven ? " 
 
 MAURICE MAETERLINCK.
 
 26 AMPHORA 
 
 SECOND BEST 
 
 HERE t;i the dark, O heart ; 
 Alone with the enduring Earth, and Night, 
 And Silence, and the warm strange smell of clover ; 
 Clear-visioned, though it break j^ou ; far apart 
 From the dead best, the dear and old delight ; 
 Throw down jour dreams of immortality, 
 O faithful, O foolish lover ! 
 Here's peace for you, and surety ; here the one 
 Wisdom — the truth ! — "All day the good glad sun 
 Showers love and labour onyou, wine and song. 
 The greenwood laughs, the wind blows, all day long 
 Till night.'' And night ends all things. 
 
 Then shall be 
 No lamp relumed in heaven, no voices crying. 
 Or changing lights, or dreams and forms that hover ! 
 (And, heart, for all your sighing, 
 That gladness and those tears are over, over. ■ . .) 
 
 And has the truth brought no new hope at all, 
 Heart, that you 're weeping yet for Paradise? 
 Do they still whisper, the old, weary cries ? 
 " Mid youth and song, feasting and carnival, 
 Through laughter, through the roses, as of old 
 Comes Death, on shadowy and relentless feet, 
 Death, unappeasable by prayer or gold : 
 Death is the end, the end ! " 
 Proud then, clear -eyed and laughing, go to greet 
 Death as a friend ! 
 
 Exile of immortality, strongly wise, 
 Strain through the dark with undesiroiis eyes 
 To what may lie beyond it. Sets your star, 
 O heart, for ever ! Yet, behind the Night,
 
 AMPHORA 27 
 
 IVaits/or the great unborn, somewhere afar, 
 Some white, tremendous daybreak. /Ind the light. 
 Returning, shall give back the golden hours, 
 Ocean a windless level. Earth a lawn 
 Spacious and full of sunlit dancing-places, 
 And laughter, and music, and, among the flowers, 
 The gay child-hearts of men, and the child-faces, 
 O heart, in the great dawn ! 
 
 RUPERT BROOKE. 
 
 To the pure spirit of my sister Henrietta, who died 
 at Byblus, September 24, 1861. 
 
 IN the bosom of God, where thou reposest, dost 
 tliou remember those long days at Ghazir, when, 
 alone with thee, I wrote these pages, inspired by the 
 places which we visited together? Sitting silently 
 beside me, thou didst read each sheet and copy it as 
 soon as written, — at our feet, meanwhile, the sea, the 
 villages, ravines and mountains lay unfolded. When 
 the dazzling light had yielded to the countless host of 
 stars, thy keen and subtle questions, thy discreet 
 doubts, brought me back to the sublime object of our 
 common thought. Thou saidst to me one day that 
 thou wouldst love this book, first, because it was writ- 
 ten in thy presence, and, also, because it was after 
 thine own heart. If, at times, thou wast troubled, 
 fearing for it the narrow censure of shallow men, yet 
 wast thou ever persuaded that truly religious souls 
 would delight therein at last. 
 
 In the midst of these sweet meditations Death 
 smote us both with his wing; the sleep of fever came 
 upon us in the same hour and I awoke alone ! Thou 
 sleepest now in the land of Adonis, near the holy
 
 28 AMPHORA 
 
 Byblus and the sacred waters where the women of the 
 ancient mysteries came to mingle their tears. Reveal 
 to me, O good genius, to me whom thou didst love, 
 those truths which conquer death, prevent the fear 
 thereof and make it almost to be loved. 
 
 ERNEST RENAN. 
 
 THE highest object of the critical faculty, it cannot 
 be too often repeated, is not to censure faults, 
 but to disengage excellences. Those who, perhaps 
 with some loss of the earlier sensitiveness and recep- 
 tiveness, have attained a maturer judgment, often 
 look on new poets or new tastes in poetry with uneasy 
 dismay. They lament, as so many generations before 
 them have lamented, as so many more will no doubt 
 go on lamenting until the end of time, what seems to 
 them the pervei'sion or decline of taste. Yet the truth 
 oftener is that youth, an unconscious but instinctive 
 critic, has disengaged and assimilated some excellence 
 in the new poet, some progress made by poetry under 
 the new method, which has escaped wiser, or at least 
 more trained eyes. No one, looking back, ever really 
 regrets one of his own young enthusiasms. It is the 
 enthusiams we did not have that we regret. Why 
 then should we deplore those of others, however unac- 
 countable we may think them? Soon enough these 
 young revolutionaries will find themselves defending 
 their own classics against a still younger generation, to 
 whom they in their turn will be reactionary, obsolete, 
 academic. But all the while for them, as for us, mov- 
 ing high overhead in their silent progress, lordly as at 
 the first day, unobscured by the dust of praise or 
 blame, the immortal lights shine. 
 
 J. W. MACKAIL.
 
 AMPHORA 29 
 
 ROSES 
 
 THE Rose 0/ Passion, heavy with desire, 
 And niatry-petalled, bangs upon the tree — 
 Miscalled fame — of brief mortality, 
 IVherewider strings are snapped of lute and lyre 
 By bleeding hands, the withering Rose's fee, 
 By maddened feet, scorched by the Rose's fire. 
 
 The Rose of the IVorld grows by a shining pool 
 IVhere lily-nymphs dance daylong on gold sands. 
 Crying on man, who brings them with both hands 
 All he has found most rare and beautiful — 
 To hear the laughter of the fleeing bands, 
 And his own image cry to him : " Thou Fool !" 
 
 The Rose of Thought ever of woe bereaves 
 Him who still ga^es on the unfolding grace 
 Of its dim blossom in a lonely place. 
 Until into his inmost dream he weaves 
 The starry glorv of its immortal face : 
 And no man sees the falling of its leaves. 
 
 The Rose of Love, the wildest flower, that grows 
 
 By peasant's hovel, and by queen's high bower, 
 
 Spends all its life to scatter in a shoxver, 
 
 On the grey wind that hither and thither blows. 
 
 The ripe seeds of the Universal Flower ; 
 
 And, where the wind wills, there the seed it sows. 
 
 ELIZABETH GIBSON. 
 
 BOOKS outside of the enchanted realm of art and 
 imagination become spent forces ; men who were 
 the driving agents of their day sink into literary names 
 and take a faded place in the catalogue of exhausted 
 
 influences. 
 
 JOHN MORLEY.
 
 30 AMPHORA 
 
 FINIS 
 
 w 
 
 RIT on a ruined palace in Kashmir : 
 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 IVhere are the voices kings were glad to hear ? 
 IVbere now the feast, the song, the bayadere? 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 Andjionder lovely rose ; alas ! nij> dear ! 
 See the November garden, rank and drear 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 See ! how the rain-drop mingles with the mere. 
 Mark ! how the age devours each passing year. 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 Forms rise and grow and wane and disappear, 
 The life allotted thee is now and here ; 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 Then vex thyself no more with thought austere 
 Take what thou canst while thou abidest here. 
 Seek finer pleasures each returning year ; 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 Joy is the Lord, and Love His charioteer ; 
 Be tranquil and rejoicing ; oh, my dear ! 
 Shun the wild seas, far from the breakers steer ; 
 The end is vision, and the end is near. 
 
 Ah ! banish hope and doubt, regret and fear, 
 Check the gay laugh, but dry the idle tear.
 
 AMPHORA 31 
 
 Search ! Is the light wt'thtn thee burning clear ? 
 The end is vision, and the end is near. 
 
 List to the wisdom learned of saint and seer ! 
 The living Lord is joy, and peace His sphere ; 
 Rebel no more ! throw down thy shield and spear, 
 Surrender all thjyself; true life is here ; 
 The end is vision, and the end is near. 
 
 Forget not this, forget not that, my dear ! 
 'T is all and nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 * * 
 
 FOR our part, we can see in this proposal to shear 
 the edges of books only a threat to one of the 
 chief of the joys of reading. Your lamp is lit on a 
 winter evening. Your fire burns brightly. Up the 
 valley the wheel of the old mill is dipping idly in the 
 hurrying water, and you know as you hear it that it 
 turns no stone. The grain lies in the lofts, the door is 
 barred, and the miller's dog barks in the stillness of 
 the night as some labourer slouches homeward. Your 
 cat has settled by the fire with her paws upon the 
 fender in an attitude of devotion. Behind you, the 
 grandfather clock ticks solemnly. But your thoughts 
 are not of time. The hands turn on the dial, but you 
 heed them no more than the ineffective mill-wheel. 
 The ticking of the clock blends with the purring of 
 the cat, and all the sounds persuade of leisure. Your 
 book is on your knees, and you insert your knife 
 between its pages with a curious anticipation of the 
 pleasures which it will open to you. There is a secret 
 in each four pages. . . . You may stop and muse as
 
 32 AMPHORA 
 
 you advance, a pioneer amid the outworks of the cita- 
 del. You have cut two pages, and you pause to relish 
 the wealth that you still may plunder. What treasure 
 lies between the next two pages ? In due course, with 
 appropriate ritual, that also you will despoil. But a 
 hasty finger should not anticipate the discovery. In 
 such a mood you will not wish to hasten your pleas- 
 ure. . . . To read without cutting the pages is to gorge 
 at a banquet without courses or pauses. It is to drink 
 without toasts. It is to abolish the clinking of glasses. 
 .... This is a commercial age. But two classes of 
 men there are who yet will rally to this losing cause. 
 There is the publisher who sends out his books upon 
 approval. He will not trust the honour of the hasty 
 reader with a book whose pages have been cut. There 
 is also the reviewer, who knows the market value of 
 an uncut book when he sells it second-hand. 
 
 * * 
 
 SONG 
 
 Is there no endiug of song ? 
 IVill lime for ever unloosen 
 New birds of singing for flight — 
 Gold-ptiimed, broad-pinioned and strong 
 To soar through the heart of the night 
 IVith singing and showering light ? 
 
 Is there no ending of mirth ? 
 
 IVill time for ever unloosen 
 
 Fresh founts, clear, bubbling and bright, 
 
 From the drainless youth of the earth 
 
 To sprinkle the heart of the night 
 
 IVith singing and showering light ?
 
 AMPHORA 33 
 
 Is there no ending of grief ? 
 IVill lime for ever unloosen 
 Grey buds that wither to white, 
 And fall as the fading leaf, 
 And sigh in the heart of the night, 
 Or shiver in showering light ? 
 
 Yea, mirth and grieving shall end; 
 But song, upgathering, shall mingle 
 Their perishing beauty and might, 
 And tears and laughter shall blend 
 To shatter the heart of the night 
 IVith singing and showering light. 
 
 WILFRID WILSON GIBSON. 
 
 THE reading of a great poem, or the hearing of 
 a great play, should be like an experience, 
 like Life : when we make acquaintance with them first 
 in youth, they move us with a fine, careless rapture 
 they enchant us with their beauty and magnificence; 
 but as they grow more familiar, it is the thoughts, the 
 truth, the reality, that fill us and impress us more ; 
 and the words take a profounder, often a more pathetic 
 meaning. So it is with the great books of the world ; 
 so it is with Life. 
 
 LAURENCE BINYON. 
 
 FOR out of the panorama of sense man builds his 
 tabernacle, and calls it life, but within the veil 
 there lies hidden beneath a power, that can unlock 
 other worlds, — ^ strange, beautiful worlds, like the 
 mazes of the firmament through which the earth pur- 
 sues its way. 
 
 ROBERT HERRICK.
 
 34 AMPHORA 
 
 ON A COUNTRY ROAD 
 
 ALONG these low pleached lanes, on such a dav, 
 So soft a day as this, through shade and sun, 
 IVith glad grave eyes that scanned the glad wild way. 
 And heart still hovering d' er a song begun, 
 And smile that warmed the world with henison. 
 Our father, lord long since of lordly rhyme. 
 Long since hath haply ridden, when the lime 
 Bloomed broad above him, flowering where be came. 
 Because thy passage once made warm this clime, 
 Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name. 
 
 Each year that England clothes herself with May, 
 She takes thy likeness on her. Time hath spun 
 Fresh raiment all in vain and strange array 
 For earth and man's new spirit, fain to shun 
 Things past for dreams of better to be won, 
 Through many a century since thy funeral chime 
 Rang, and men deemed it death's most direful crime 
 To have spared not thee for very love or shame ; 
 And yet, while mists round last year's memories climb. 
 Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name. 
 
 Bach turn of the old wild road whereon we stray, 
 
 Meseems, might bring us face to face with one 
 
 IVhom seeing we could not but give thanks, and pray 
 
 For England's love our father and her son 
 
 To speak with us as once in days long done 
 
 IVith all men, sage and churl and monk and mime, 
 
 IVho knew not as we know the soul sublime 
 
 That sang for song's love more than lust of fame. 
 
 Yet, though this be not, yet, in happy time, 
 
 Our father Chaucer, here we praise thy name.
 
 AMPHORA 35 
 
 Friend, even as bees about the flowering thyme, 
 Years crowd onjyears, till boar decay begrime 
 Names once beloved ; but, seeing the sun the same, 
 /Is birds of autumn fain to praise the prime, 
 Our father Chaucer, here we praise thj> name. 
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 
 
 ONCE upon a time all books were perpetuated by 
 copying with the hand ; whoever would possess 
 a volume, must undergo the toil of transcribing it, or 
 pay the price of that toil to another. This was the 
 narrowness of the circle of the learned. The perfec- 
 tion of the copyist's art was soon attained, but the 
 utmost rapidity and cheapness in this mode of multi- 
 plying books could not render them to the mass of 
 the public. How was the seeming impossibility to be 
 surmounted.'' By some meaner process which should 
 deteriorate the appearance of books to a degree com- 
 mensurate with the humble fortunes of the poor; so 
 that if the rich man's Bible cost him £2^, a copy of 
 but one-sixtieth the excellence should be produced for 
 one-sixtieth the sum ? Far from it indeed ! The means 
 of making the poor man a proprietor of books, lay in 
 a glorious new art that clothed all literature in a bod- 
 ily frame of surpassing beauty and usefulness, and 
 placed it in the hands of the common people in a form 
 that, before the invention of printing the greatest kings 
 would have envied; and which even Virgil or Cicero 
 would not have disdained as the material pedestal of 
 their immortality. This art, simpler and more uni- 
 versal than writing, was not lower but immeasurably 
 higher than its predecessor, whose services were for 
 the noble and the learned. 
 
 JAMES JOHN GARTH WILKINSON.
 
 36 AMPHORA 
 
 EVEN if good literature entirely lost currency with 
 the world, it would still be abundantly worth 
 while to enjoy it by one's self. But it never will lose 
 currency with the world, in spite of momentary appear- 
 ances ; it never will lose supremacy. Currency and 
 supremacy are ensured to it, not indeed by the world's 
 deliberate and conscious choice, but by something far 
 deeper, by the instinct of self-preservation in human- 
 ity. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 THERE has been twilight here, since one whom some 
 name Life and some Death slid between us the 
 little shadow that is the unfathomable dark and silence. 
 In a grave deeper than is hollowed under the wind- 
 sweet grass lies that which was so passing fair. 
 
 Who plays the Song of Songs upon the Hills of 
 Dream ? It is said Love is that reed-player, for there 
 is no song like his. 
 
 But to-day I saw one, on these dim garths of shadow 
 and silence, who put a reed to his lips and played a 
 white spell of beauty. Then I knew Love and Death 
 to be one, as in the old myth of Oengus of the White 
 Birds and the Grey Shadows. 
 
 Here are the broken airs that once you loved. . . 
 
 " The fable-flowering land wherein they grew 
 Hath dreams for stars, and grey romance for dew." 
 
 They are but the breath of what has been : only are 
 they for this, that they do the will of beauty and 
 regret. 
 
 FIONA MACLEOD.
 
 AMPHORA 37 
 
 \JL T'lTHiN tbe Book, I, reading, found 
 V V /^ saying that was hard to me, 
 IVords that had something in their sound 
 That spoilt Eternitjy. 
 
 I knew a sense of loss, a part 
 
 Of some dear vision gone from me, 
 
 y4s all its meaning smote mjp heart 
 
 There shall be no more Sea. 
 
 Had not mj spirit ranged amid 
 The Kingdoms of Futnritj, 
 Finding in dreams the glories hid 
 From blind humanity. 
 
 And as I read the words that bore 
 Such sad significance to me, 
 I grieved that I should find no more 
 A magic shore and sea. 
 
 No ocean sighing in its sleep. 
 No waves to chant the litanj! 
 Of deep repljying unto deep. 
 In mystic threnody. 
 
 Only a barren landscape fraught 
 IVitb changeless silence : no delight 
 Of green and purple splendours, naught 
 Of wandering waters bright. 
 
 I close the Book and lay it down. 
 And dream a dream that there may be 
 For those who serve the God Unknown, 
 Perchance an unknown sea.
 
 38 AMPHORA 
 
 TO MAURICE ANDREWS BUCKE 
 
 DEAR Maurice : — A year ago to-day, in the prime 
 of youth, of health and of strength, in an 
 mstant, by a terrible and fatal accident, you were 
 removed forever from this world in which your mother 
 and I still live. Of all young men I have known you 
 were the most pure, the most noble, the most honour- 
 able, the most tender-hearted. In the business of life 
 you were industrious, honest, faithful, intelligent and 
 entirely trustworthy. How at the time we felt your 
 loss — how we still feel it — I would not set down 
 even if I could. I desire to speak here of my confi- 
 dent hope, not of my pain. I will say that through 
 the experiences which underlie this volume [Cosmic 
 Coi!sciousness\ I have been taught, that in spite of 
 death and the grave, although you are beyond the 
 range of our sight and hearing notwithstanding that 
 the universe of sense testifies to your absence, you are 
 not dead and not really absent, but alive and well and 
 not far from me this moment. If I have been per- 
 mitted — no, not to enter, but — through the narrow 
 aperture of a scarcely opened door, to glance one 
 instant into that other divine world, it was surely that 
 I might thereby be enabled to live through the receipt 
 of those lightning-flashed words from Montana which 
 time burns only deeper and deeper into my brain. 
 
 Only a little while now and we shall be again 
 together and with us those other noble and well- 
 beloved souls gone before. I am sure I shall meet 
 you and them ; that you and I shall talk of a thousand 
 things and of that unforgettable day and of all that 
 followed it ; and that we shall clearly see that all were 
 parts of an infinite plan which was wholly wise and
 
 AMPHORA 39 
 
 good. Do you see and approve as I write these words ? 
 It may well be. Do you read from within what I am 
 now thinking and feeling? If you do you know how 
 dear to me you were while you yet lived what we call 
 life here and how much more dear you have become 
 to me since. 
 
 Because of the indissoluble links of birth and death 
 wrought by nature and fate between us; because of 
 my love and because of my grief ; above all because 
 of the infinite and inextinguishable confidence there is 
 in my heart, I inscribe to you this book, which, full as 
 it is of imperfections which render it unworthy of your 
 acceptance, has nevertheless sprung from the divine 
 assurance born of the deepest insight of the noblest 
 members of our race. 
 
 So long ! dear boy. 
 
 YOUR FATHER. 
 
 TOASTS IN A LIBRARY 
 
 1 RAISE My; glass (Carthusian brew, 
 And pure the emerald shines), 
 A sip to thee, mj> Rabelais — 
 The wisest of divines. 
 
 But lest thy genial earthjf soul 
 
 Should claim too much of me, 
 I turn to him who to the Lark 
 
 Gave his own ecstasy. 
 
 A subtle drink and delicate 
 
 One owes to Thomas Browne, 
 A)id noble port when Gibbon hands 
 
 Sonorous wisdom down.
 
 40 AMPHORA 
 
 For thee, suave Horace, unperplexed. 
 Well-bred, well-nourished man, 
 
 I would unstop an amphora 
 Of thjy Falernian. 
 
 I name them not (too great to name), 
 
 The choice Hellenic Few, 
 I drink in silence piously : 
 
 Then turn I, friend, toyou.^ 
 
 O, smiling soul, that craved the sun, 
 
 Yet ample suffering bore. 
 This be jour praise : " He loved Art much, 
 
 But men and nature more." 
 
 * * 
 
 LET US consider, too, how differently young and old 
 are affected by the words of some classic author, 
 such as Homer or Horace. Passages, which to a boy 
 are but rhetorical commonplaces, neither better nor 
 worse than a hundred others which any clever writer 
 might supply ; which he gets by heart and thinks very 
 fine, and imitates, as he thinks, successfully in his own 
 flowing versification, at length come home to him, 
 when long years have passed, and he has had experi- 
 ence of life, and pierce him as if he had never before 
 known them, with their sad earnestness and vivid 
 exactness. 
 
 Then he comes to understand how it is that lines, 
 the birth of some chance morning or evening at an 
 Ionian festival or among the Sabine Hills, have lasted 
 generation after generation, for thousands of years ; 
 
 I "R. L. S." — Robert Louis Stevenson.
 
 AMPHORA 41 
 
 with a power over the mind, and a charm, which the 
 current literature of his own day, with all its obvious 
 advantages, is utterly unable to rival. 
 
 CARDINAL NEWMAN. 
 THE BOOKWORM 
 
 THE whole day long I sit and read 
 Of days when meti were men indeed 
 And women km ghtlier far : 
 I fight with Joan of Arc; I fall 
 IVitb Talbot ; from my castle-wall 
 I watch the guiding star . . . 
 
 But when at last the twilight falls 
 And hangs about the book-lined walls 
 
 And creeps across the page, 
 Then the enchantment goes, and I 
 Close up my volumes with a sigh 
 
 To greet a narrower age. 
 
 Home through the pearly dusk I go 
 And watch the London lamplight glow 
 
 Far off in wavering lines : 
 A pale grey world with primrose gleams. 
 And in the IVest a cloud that seems 
 
 My distant Apennines. 
 
 O Life ! so full of truths to teach, 
 O secrets I shall never reach, 
 
 O world of Here and Now ; 
 Forgive, forgive me, if a voice, 
 A ghost, a memory be my choice 
 
 And more to me than Thou ! 
 
 A. MARY F. ROBINSON.
 
 42 AMPHORA 
 
 BALLADE OF THE BOOKWORM 
 
 FAR in the Past I peer, and see 
 A Child upon the Nursery floor, 
 A Child ivith books upon his knee. 
 Who asks, like Oliver, for more ! 
 The number of his years is ly. 
 And yet in Letters hath he skill. 
 How deep he dives in Fairy-lore ! 
 The Books I loved, I love them still ! 
 
 One gift the Fairies gave me : ( Three 
 They commonly bestowed of yore) 
 The Love of Books, the Golden Key 
 That opens the Enchaunted Door ; 
 Behind it Bluebeard lurks, and o''er 
 And o'er doth Jack his Giants kill. 
 And there is all Aladdin's 5/0?-^, — 
 The Books I loved, I love them still ! 
 
 Take all, but leave my Books to tne ! 
 
 These heavy creels of old we bore 
 
 IVe fill not now, nor wander free, 
 
 Nor wear the heart that once we wore ; 
 
 Nor now each River seems to pour 
 
 His waters from the Muses' hill ; 
 
 Though something 's gone from stream and shore. 
 
 The Books I loved, I love them still ! 
 
 Fate, that art Queen by shore and sea, 
 IVe how submissive to thy will, 
 Ah grant, by some benign decree. 
 The Books I loved — to love them still. 
 
 ANDREW LANG.
 
 AMPHORA 43 
 
 WHAT matter though my room be small, 
 Though the red lamp-light looks 
 On nothing but a papered wall, 
 And some few rows of books ? 
 
 For in my hand I hold a key 
 
 That opens golden doors, 
 At whose resistless sesame, 
 
 A tide of sunlight pours. 
 
 In from the basking lawns that lie 
 
 Beyond the boimdary wall ; 
 Where summer broods eternally. 
 
 Where the cicadas call. 
 
 There all the landscape softer is. 
 
 There greener tendrils twine. 
 The bowers are roofed with clema)is. 
 
 With briony and vine. 
 
 There pears and golden apples hang. 
 
 There falls the honey-dew. 
 And there the birds at morning sang, 
 
 When all the world was new. 
 
 Beneath an oak Menalcas woos 
 
 Arachnia's nut-brown eyes ; 
 And still the laughing Faun pursues. 
 
 And still the Dryad flies. 
 
 And you may bear young Orpheus there 
 
 Come singing through the wood. 
 Or catch the gleam of golden hair 
 
 In Dianas solitude.
 
 44 AMPHORA 
 
 So when the world is all awry, 
 IVhen life is out of chime, 
 
 I lake the golden key and fly 
 To that serener clime : 
 
 To those fair sun-lit lawns that lie 
 Beyond the boundary wall : 
 
 IVhere summer broods eternally, 
 And Youth is over all. 
 
 JOHN MEADE FALKNER. 
 
 A BOOK is essentially not a talked thing, but a writ- 
 ten thing; and written, not with a view of mere 
 communication, but of permanence. . . . The author 
 has something to say which he perceives to be true 
 and useful, or helpfully beautiful. ... In the sum of 
 his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, 
 manifest to him ; — this, the piece of true knowledge, 
 or sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has 
 permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down 
 for ever; engrave it on rock, if he could; saying, 
 " This is the best of me ; for the rest, I ate, and 
 drank, and slept, loved, and hated, like another; my 
 life was as the vapour, and is not ; but this I saw 
 and knew : this, if anything of mine, is worth your 
 memory." . . . 
 
 Now, books of this kind have been written in all 
 ages by their greatest men: — by great readers, great 
 statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your 
 choice ; and Life is short. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN.
 
 AMPHORA 45 
 
 1FEEL as I read that if the stage shows us the masks 
 of men and the pageant of the world, Books let us 
 into their souls and lay open to us the secrets of our 
 own. They are the first and last, the most home-felt, 
 the most heart-felt of all our enjoyments! 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 THERE ts a dish to hold (he sea, 
 A brazier to contain the sun, 
 A compass for the galaxy, 
 
 A voice to wake the dead and done ! 
 
 That minister of ministers, 
 
 Imagination, gathers up 
 The undiscovered Universe, 
 
 Like jewels in a jasper cup. 
 
 Its flame can mingle north and south ; 
 
 Its accent with the thunder strive ; 
 The ruddy sentence of its mouth 
 
 Can make the ancient dead alive. 
 
 The mart of power, the fount of will, 
 The form and mould of every star. 
 
 The source and bound of good and ill. 
 The key of all the things that are. 
 
 Imagination, new and strange 
 
 In every age, can turn the year, 
 Can shift the poles and lightly change 
 
 The mood of men, the world's career. 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON.
 
 46 AMPHORA 
 
 A 
 
 i^iTTLE work, a little play 
 To keep us going — and so good-day ! 
 
 A little warmth, a little light 
 
 Of lovers bestowing — and so, good-night ! 
 
 A little fun, to match the sorrow 
 
 Of each day's growing — a>id so, good-morrow ! 
 
 A little trust that when we die 
 
 We reap our sowing ! And so — good-bye ! 
 
 GEORGE DU MAURIER. 
 
 CONSIDER what you have in the smallest chosen 
 library. A company of the wisest and wittiest 
 men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in 
 a thousand years, have set in best order the results of 
 their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were 
 hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, 
 fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did 
 not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out 
 in transparent words to us, the strangers of another 
 age. We owe to books those general benefits which 
 come from high intellectual action. Thus, I think, we 
 often owe to them the perception of immortality. . . . 
 Go with mean people, and you think life is mean. 
 Then read Plutarch, and the world is a proud place, 
 peopled with men of positive (juality, with heroes 
 and demigods standing around us, who will not let us 
 
 sleep 
 
 It seems, then, as if some charitable soul, after losing 
 a great deal of time among the false books, and alight- 
 ing upon a few true ones which made him happy and
 
 AMPHORA 47 
 
 wise, would do a right act in naming those which have 
 been bridges or ships to carry him safely over dark 
 morasses and barren oceans, into the heart of sacred 
 cities, into palaces and temples. 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON. 
 
 THE RETURN 
 
 A LITTLE hand is hiocMng at my heart. 
 And I have closed the door. 
 "I pray thee, for the love of God, depart : 
 Thou shalt come in no more." 
 
 "Open, for I am weary of the way. 
 
 The night is very black. 
 
 I have been wandering many a night and day. 
 
 Open. I have come back." 
 
 The little hand is knocking patiently ; 
 I listen, dumb with pain. 
 " IVilt thou not open any more to me ? 
 I havo come back again." 
 
 "/ will not open any more. Depart. 
 
 I, that once lived, am dead." 
 
 The hand that had been knocking at my heart 
 
 IVas still. "And I ?" she said. 
 
 There is no sound, save, in the winter air. 
 The sound of wind and rain. 
 All that I loved in all the world stands there, 
 And will not knock again. 
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS.
 
 48 AMPHORA 
 
 FALSE again, the fabled link between the grandeur 
 of Art and the glories and virtues of the State, 
 for Art feeds not upon nations, and peoples may be 
 wiped from the face of the earth, but Art h. 
 
 It is indeed high time that we cast aside the weary 
 weight of responsibility and copartnership, and know 
 that, in no way, do our virtues minister to its worth, in 
 no way do our vices impede its triumph ! 
 
 How irksome! how hopeless ! how superhuman the 
 self-imposed task of the nation ! how sublimely vain 
 the belief that it shall live nobly or art perish ! 
 
 Let us reassure ourselves, at our own option is our 
 virtue. Art we in no way affect. 
 
 A whimsical goddess, and a capricious, her strong 
 sense of joy tolerates no dulness, and, live we never so 
 spotlessly, still may she turn her back upon us. 
 
 As from time immemorial, has she done upon the 
 Swiss in their mountains. 
 
 What more worthy people! Whose every Alpine 
 gap yawns with tradition, and is stocked with noble 
 story ; yet, the perverse and scornful one will none of 
 it, and the sons of patriots are left with the clock that 
 turns the mill, and the sudden cuckoo, with difficulty 
 restrained in its box ! 
 
 For this was Tell a hero ! For this did Gessler die 1 
 
 Art, the cruel jade, cares not, and hardens her heart, 
 and hies her off to the East, to find, among the opium- 
 eaters of Nankin, a favourite with whom she lingers 
 fondly — caressing his blue porcelain, and painting his 
 coy maidens, and marking his plates with her six marks 
 of choice — indifferent, in her companionship with 
 him, to all save the virtue of his refinement! 
 
 He it is who calls her — he who holds her! 
 
 J. A. MCNEILL WHISTLER.
 
 AMPHORA 49 
 
 BUT still for Summer dost thou grieve? 
 Then read our Poets — they shall weave 
 A garden of green fancies still, 
 Where thy wish may rove at will. 
 They have kept for after treats 
 The essences of summer sweets, 
 And echoes of its songs that wind 
 In endless music through the mind: 
 They have stamp' d in visible traces 
 The ^^ thoughts that breathe" in words that shine — 
 The flights of soul in sunny places — 
 To greet and company with thine. 
 These shall wing thee on to flow'' rs — 
 The past or future, that shall seem 
 All the brighter in thv dream 
 For blowing in such desert hours. 
 The summer never shines so bright 
 As thought of in a winter^ s night ; 
 And the sweetest loveliest rose 
 Is in the bud before it blows ; 
 
 Dream thou then, and bind thy brow 
 
 With wreath of fancy roses now, 
 
 And drink of Summer in the cup 
 
 Where the Muse hath mix'd it up ; 
 
 The ^^ dance, and song, and sun-burnt mirth" 
 
 With the warm nectar of the earth : 
 
 Drink ! '/ will glow in every vein. 
 
 And thou shall dream the winter through : 
 
 Then waken to the sun again, 
 
 And find thy Summer yision true ! 
 
 THOMAS HOOD.
 
 so 
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 A TRUE and classic book is always the history some 
 human soul has had in its tent of flesh, camped 
 out beneath the stars, groping for the thing they shine 
 to us, trying to find a body for it. In the great wide 
 plain of wonder there they sing the wonder a little 
 time to us, if we listen. Then they pass on to it. 
 Literature is but the faint echo tangled in thousands 
 of years of this mighty, lonely singing of theirs, under 
 the Dome of Life, in the presence of the things that 
 books are about. The power to read a great book is 
 the power to glory in these things, and to use that 
 glory every day to do one's living and reading with. 
 Knowing what is in the book may be called learning, 
 but the test of culture always is that it will not be 
 content with knowledge unless it is inward knowledge. 
 Inward knowledge is the knowledge that comes to us 
 from behind the book, from living for weeks with the 
 author until his habits have become our habits, — 
 until God Himself, through days and nights and deeds 
 and dreams, has blended our souls together. 
 
 GERALD STANLEY LEE. 
 
 ARTIST ill verse, to whom the world appears 
 Most real, andjyet the mirrored form of truth, 
 From whom alone the wasteful lapse of years 
 
 Robs nothing of eartWs beauty or her youth. 
 
 Be grave, but joyous, with no taint of ruth, 
 For thou canst make an April shower of tears 
 Immortal, and so lull the aching ears 
 
 Of grief, that she shall laugh in time to come, 
 IVhen her own melancholy voice she hears 
 
 Grown sweet on lips that never can be dumb. 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE.
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 51 
 
 LULLABY 
 
 ROCK, rock, O weary world, 
 Rock thj> great heart to rest. 
 The wings of all the winds are furled — 
 The stars are hidden out of sight. 
 Rocked on the heaven's breast. 
 The silver moon doth give no light — 
 Closed, closed are all the eyes of night 
 In sleep. So also thou, 
 O weary, weary world, rest now- 
 
 * * 
 
 THE Book Beautiful, then, should be conceived of 
 as a whole, and the self-assertion of any Art 
 beyond the limits imposed by the conditions of its 
 creation should be looked upon as an Act of Treason. 
 The proper duty of each Art within such limits is to 
 cooporate witli all the other arts, similarly employed, 
 in the production of something which is distinctly Not- 
 Itself. The wholeness, symmetry, harmony, beauty 
 without stress or strain, of the Book Beautiful, would 
 then be one in principle with the wholeness, symmetry, 
 harmony, and beauty without stress or strain, of that 
 whole of life zvhich is constituted of ourselves and the 
 world, that complex and marvellous whole which, amid 
 the strife of competitive forces, supremely holds its own, 
 and in the language of life writes, upon the illumined 
 pages of the days, the volumes of the centuries, and 
 through the infniiudes of time and space moves rhythmi- 
 cally onzdhrd to the full development of its astofiishing 
 story the true archetype of all books beautiful or sublime. 
 
 T. J. COBDEN-SANDERSON.
 
 52 AMPHORA 
 
 THE beauty of a statue, a coin, or a flower is the 
 same thing as the beauty of a phrase or sen- 
 tence : it requires the same taste to feel pleasure in 
 the lines of a sea-shell, or a fir-cone, as to enjoy the 
 mould of a fine sonnet or the build of a great poem. 
 But in art and in literature alike one desires to go 
 back beyond the mere results, however fully their 
 worth and significance be understood. The deeper 
 we see into the spirit of the work, the more we wish 
 to know the spirit of the artist or writer, to know how 
 the mind of the maker was made, the stars that met 
 at his birth, the ways of thought and feeling and 
 action of the world in which he moved. 
 
 ALFRED J. BUTLER. 
 
 POETRY 
 
 JAM the realilj}' of things that seem ; 
 The great transmuter, melting loss to gain, 
 Languor to love, and fining Jof from pain. 
 I am the -waking, zcbo am called the dream ; 
 I am the sun, all light reflects my gleam ; 
 I am the altar -fire u-ithin the fane ; 
 I am the force of the refreshing rain ; 
 I am the sea to which flows every stream. 
 I am the utmost height there is to climb ; 
 I am the truth, mirrored in fancy s glass ; 
 I am stability, all else will pass ; 
 I am eternity, encircling time ; 
 Kill me, none may ; conquer me, nothing cdn — 
 / am God^s soul, fused in the soul of man. 
 
 ELLA HEATH.
 
 AMPHORA 53 
 
 No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with 
 him on his expeditions in a precious casket. 
 A written word is the choicest of relics. It is some- 
 thing at once more intimate with us and more universal 
 than any other work of art nearest to life itself. It 
 may be translated into every language, and not only 
 be read but actually breathed from all human lips ; — 
 not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but 
 be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol 
 of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's 
 speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to 
 the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her mar- 
 bles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for 
 they have carried their own serene and celestial atmos- 
 phere into all lands to protect them against the 
 corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of 
 the world and the fit inheritance of generations and 
 nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand natu- 
 rally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. 
 They have no cause of their own to plead, but while 
 they enlighten and sustain the reader, his common- 
 sense will not refuse them. Their authors are natural 
 and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more 
 than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. 
 
 HENRY D. THOREAU. 
 
 GH0S7S /N THE UBRARY 
 
 What company we might all keep if the old lovers 
 of our old books could visit us ! 
 
 SUPPOSE, when now the house is dumb, 
 IVhen lights are out, and ashes fall — 
 Suppose their ancient owners come 
 To claim our spoils of shop and stall,
 
 54 AMPHORA 
 
 Ah me ! within the narrow hall 
 How strange a mob would meet and go, 
 What famous folk would haunt them all, 
 Octavo, quarto, folio ! 
 
 IVhat fatuous folk of old are here! 
 
 A royal duke comes down to us. 
 And greatly wants his Elzevir, 
 
 His Pagan tutor, Lucius. 
 And Beckford claims an amorous 
 
 Old heathen in morocco blue ; 
 And who demands Eobanus 
 
 But stately Jacques Auguste de Thou ! 
 
 They come, the wise, the great, the true. 
 
 They jostle on the narrow stair, 
 The frolic Countess de Verrue, 
 
 Lamoignon, ay, and Longepierre, 
 The new and elder dead are there — 
 
 The lords of speech, and song, and pen, 
 Gamhetta, Schlegel, and the rare 
 
 Drummond of haunted Hawthornden. 
 
 At least in pleasant company 
 
 We bookish ghosts, perchance, may flit ; 
 A man may turn a page, and sigh. 
 
 Seeing one's name, to think of it. 
 Beauty, or Poet, Sage, or Wit, 
 
 May ope our book, and muse awhile. 
 And fall into a dreaming fit. 
 
 As now we dream, and wake, and smile ! 
 
 ANDREW LANG.
 
 AMPHORA 55 
 
 AND Books 1 those miraculous memories of high 
 thoughts and golden moods; those silver shells, 
 tremulous with the wonderful secrets of the ocean of 
 life ; those love-letters that pass from hand to hand 
 of a thousand lovers that never meet ; those honey- 
 combs of dreams ; those orchards of knowledge ; those 
 still-beating hearts of the noble dead ; those mysteri- 
 ous signals that beckon along the darksome pathways 
 of the past ; voices through which the myriad lispings 
 of the earth find perfect speech ; oracles through which 
 its mysteries call like voices in moonlit woods ; prisms 
 of beauty ; urns stored with all the sweets of all the 
 summers of time; immortal nightingales that sing for- 
 ever to the rose of life 1 
 
 RICHARD LE GALI.IENNE. 
 
 CONFESSrO AMANTIS 
 
 WHEN do I love you most, sweet hooks of mine ? 
 In strenuous morns when o'erj'onr leaves I pore, 
 Austerely bent to win austerest lore. 
 For fretting how the dewy meadows shine ; 
 Or afternoons when honeysuckles twine 
 About the seat, and to some dreamy shore 
 Of old romance, where lovers evermore 
 Keep blissful hours, I follow at your sign ? 
 
 Yea ! Ye are precious then, but most to me 
 Ere lamplight dawneth, when low croons the fire 
 To whispering twilight in my little room ; 
 And eyes read not, but sitting silently, 
 I feel your great hearts throbbing deep in quire. 
 And hear your breathing round me in the gloom. 
 
 RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.
 
 56 AMPHORA 
 
 ROMAN GLASSWARE PRESERI^ED /N THE ASHMOLEAN 
 
 FAIR aystal cups are dug from earth'' s old crust, 
 Shattered but lovely ; for, at price of all 
 Their shameful exile from the baiiquet-hall. 
 They have been bargaining beauties from the dust. 
 So, dig my life but deep enough, you must 
 
 Find broken friendships round its inner -wall — 
 IVhich once my careless hand let slip and fall — 
 Brave with faint memories, rich in rainbow-rust. 
 
 ARTHUR UPSON. 
 
 THE great men of culture are those who have had a 
 passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for 
 carrying from one end of society to the other, the best 
 knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have 
 laboured to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, 
 uncouth, difficult, abstract, professional, exclusive ; to 
 humanize it, to make it efficient outside the clique of 
 the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining the />esi 
 knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source, 
 therefore, of sweetness and light. 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD. 
 
 FOR in the end scholarship does not mean raking 
 among the dust of a dead language for relics of 
 roots or atoms of grammar ; it is rather the study of 
 living beauty in shapes of speech, and its highest 
 result is not the knowledge of tenses and particles, 
 but the power of understanding and loving what is 
 beautiful in the writings of great writers and in the 
 world of nature. 
 
 ALFRED J. BUTLER,
 
 AMPHORA 57 
 
 THE LAST JOURNEY 
 
 1KELT the world a-spimnng on its nave, 
 I felt it sheering blindly round I he sun ; 
 I felt the time had come to find a grave : 
 
 I knew it in mjy heart my dajys were done. 
 I took my staff in hand : 1 took the road. 
 And wandered out to seek mjy last abode. 
 Hearts of gold and hearts of lead, 
 
 Sing it j'et in sun and rain, 
 " Heel and toe from daxcn to dusk, 
 Round the world and home again-' ^ 
 
 Mj> feet are heavy now, but on I go, 
 
 Mv head erect beneath the tragic fears. 
 The way is steep, but I would have it so ; 
 
 And dusty, but I lay the dust with tears, 
 Though none can see me weep : alone I climb 
 The rugged path that leads me out of time — 
 Out of time and out of all, 
 
 Singing yet in sun and rain, 
 " Heel and toe from dawn to dusk. 
 Round the world and home again. 
 
 Farewell, the hope that mocked, farewell despair 
 
 That went before me still and made the pace. 
 The earth is full of graves, and mine was there 
 
 Before my life began, my resting-place ; 
 And I shall find it out and with the dead 
 Lie down for ever, all my sayings said. 
 Deeds all done, songs all simg. 
 
 While others chant in sun and rain, 
 " Heel and toe from dawn to dusk. 
 Round the world and home again.*' 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON.
 
 58 AMPHORA 
 
 WHAT is the use, the efficacy, the ultimate good, 
 of such work as Maeterlinck gives us ? This 
 question — pertinent enough from his point of view — 
 is sometimes asked by the practical man whose ears 
 are either not trained to hear, or incapable of hearing, 
 the undertones and subtle harmonies which surround 
 him. He understands the utility of the great scientist 
 — from such work he can perceive manifest gain in 
 discoveries, inventions, appliances for the amelioration 
 of human suffering, additions to the general sum of 
 human happiness and welfare. He can appreciate the 
 utility of the explorer — from this he sees new coun- 
 tries grow, new civilisations extend, new industries 
 form, new rivalries come into being. But from expo- 
 nents of ideals, masters of the written word, he 
 discerns no particular result, save that they may serve 
 to charm away an idle hour. To argue with such a 
 man, worthy fellow though he may be, is dishearten- 
 ing and usually unprofitable ; it is as though one 
 should endeavour to explain to an unmusical person 
 the mysteries of Bach's giant fugue, or the consummate 
 beauty of Chopin's nocturnes. Occasionally, however, 
 he may be brought to realise that there are experi- 
 ences of the soul in quiet hours which transcend the 
 joys of physical action or the pleasures of the money 
 market. " The ground of a man's joy," said R. L. 
 Stevenson, "is often hard to hit . . . the man's true 
 life, for which he consents to live, may lie altogether 
 in the field of fancy " — a statement absolutely and 
 perfectly accurate. " It is in the mind that the ele- 
 ments and conditions of truth and beauty, elswhere 
 dispersed and sown abroad, are brought together and 
 blended into harmony." Truly, again, does Professor 
 Caird remark, in his notable essay on Goethe, that
 
 AMPHORA 59 
 
 " poetic truth does not lie on the surface any more 
 than scientific truth ; the poet ignores or endeavours 
 to get beyond the external mechanism of the world. 
 The poet, like the philosopher, is in search of a deeper 
 truth in things than that which is the object of sci- 
 ence." The difficulty, of course, is to expound this to 
 those who live in a different world and speak a differ- 
 ent tongue. MAETERLINCK AND HIS ART. 
 {The Academy, July 9, iqio.) 
 
 MY BOOKS 
 
 ON level lines of wooduork stand 
 Mv books obedient to nij band ; 
 And Ccvsar pale against the icall 
 Smiles sternly Roman over all. 
 IVitbin the four walls of this room 
 Life finds its prison, j>outh its tomb : 
 For here the minds of other men 
 Prompt and deride the labouring pen ; 
 And here the wisdom of the wise 
 Dances like motes before the ej/es. 
 Outside, the great world spins its way, 
 Here studious night dogs studious day. 
 A mighty store of dusty books, 
 Little and great, fill all the nooks, 
 And line the walls from roof to floor ; 
 And I who read them o'er and o'er, 
 Am I much wiser than of old, 
 IVhen sunlight leaped like living gold 
 Into my boyhood's heart, on fire 
 IVith fervid hope and wild desire ; 
 And when behind no window bars. 
 But free as air I served the stars ? 
 
 JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY.
 
 6o AMPHORA 
 
 JT is not amid the bustle of the live senses, but in 
 an under-world of dead impressions that Poetry 
 works her will, raising that in power which was sown 
 in weakness, quickening a spiritual body from the 
 ashes of the natural body. The mind of man is peo- 
 pled, like some silent city, with a sleeping company 
 of reminiscences, associations, impressions, attitudes, 
 emotions, to be awakened into fierce activity at the 
 touch of words. By one way or another, with a fan- 
 faronade of the marching trumpets, or stealthily, by 
 noiseless passages and dark posterns, the troop of 
 suggesters enters the citadel, to do its work within. 
 The procession of beautiful sounds that is a poem 
 passes in through the main gate, and forthwith the 
 by-ways resound to the hurry of ghostly feet, until the 
 small company of adventurers is well nigh lost and 
 overwhelmed in that throng of insurgent spirits. 
 
 WALTER RALEIGH. 
 
 TO MY WIFE WITH A COPY OF MY POEMS 
 
 I CAN write no stately proem 
 As a prelude to my lay ; 
 From a poet to a poem 
 I would dare to say. 
 
 For if of these fallen petals 
 
 One to you seem fair, 
 Love will waft it till it settles 
 
 On your hair. 
 
 And when wind and winter harden 
 
 All the loveless land, 
 It will whisper of the garden. 
 
 You will understand. 
 
 OSCAR WILDE.
 
 AMPHORA 6i 
 
 70 MY WIFE 
 
 TAKE, dear, my little sheaf of soitgs, 
 For, old or new. 
 All that is good in them belongs 
 Only to you ; 
 
 And, singing as when all was yotmg, 
 
 They will recall 
 Those others, lived but left unsung — 
 
 The best of all. 
 
 W. E. HENLEY. 
 
 BUT is there to be no End to this Purchase of Books ? 
 Oh yes ; and let us see when it is. When there 
 have been redeemed from Time all the valuable intel- 
 lectual Bequests of former Ages ; when there has been 
 garnered up all that preceding Generations had amassed 
 as a sacred and imperishable Inheritance, there will 
 then remain no Duty but to collect what the Age pro- 
 duces. And when literary Ambition shall cease to be 
 excited ; when Genius is no longer bestowed by the 
 Munificence of Heaven ; when Industry no longer col- 
 lects new Facts respecting Man and Nature ; when the 
 forming Hand ceases to reproduce ; when the Streams 
 of human Intellect no longer flow ; when the Springs 
 of Intelligence and Thought are all dried up ; when 
 the Regions of Science and of Mind sleep in universal 
 Lethargy, — then it will be Time to give over buying 
 Books. 
 
 QUOTED BY REUBEN A. GUILD. 
 {The Librarian's Manual, 1858.)
 
 62 AMPHORA 
 
 A PAG /IN HYMN 
 
 1HAVE drunk the Sea^s good wine, 
 And to-daj> 
 Care has bowed his head and gone away. 
 I have drunk the Sea's good wine, 
 IVas ever step so light as mine, 
 IVas ever heart so gaj> ? 
 Old voices intermingle in mj/ brain. 
 Voices that a little boy might bear. 
 And dreams like fiery sunsets come again, 
 Informulate and vain. 
 But great with glories of the buccaneer. 
 Oh, thanks to thee, great Mother, thanks to thee. 
 For this old joy renewed. 
 For tightened sinew and clear blood imbued 
 IVith sunlight and with sea. 
 Behold, I sing a pagan song of old, 
 And out of my full heart. 
 Hold forth my hands that so I would enfold 
 The Infinite thou art. 
 
 IVhat matter all the creeds that come and go, 
 The many gods of men ? 
 My blood outcasts them from its joyous flow, 
 And it is now as then — 
 The Pearl of Morning, and the Sapphire Sea, 
 The Diamond of Noon, 
 The Ruby of the Sunset — these shall be 
 My creed, my Deity ; 
 And I will take some old forgotten tune, 
 And rhythm frolic-free. 
 And sing in little words thy wondrous boon, 
 O Sunlight and O Sea ! 
 
 JOHN RUNCIE.
 
 AMPHORA 6s 
 
 IN what does the plastic beauty of a book consist ? 
 " The beauty that has been tracked home through 
 the suggestions of the world about us, the beauty 
 that has been built up in the ardently fostered and 
 anxiously chastened imagination these, singly or com- 
 bined, form the subject-matter of all arts ; but the 
 materials that embody such discovery or such vision, 
 they also have individual and inherent loveliness : they 
 therefore may be used clumsily and against the grain, 
 or be employed with that intuitive sensitiveness that 
 bespeaks the born craftsman." The chief beauty for 
 the discovery of which a book offers a field, is the 
 most abstract, perhaps the most essential, of all those 
 which man has tracked home: beauty of proportion. 
 Everyone feels the impressiveness of Milton's Adam : 
 " Fair indeed, and tall under a platan," since Keats 
 pointed it out. A tall man, a lofty tree, the relation 
 between them has power over us, we feel its beauty ; 
 and so for the relation between the blank margins and 
 the square of type, or between blank spaces ruled off 
 by lines, a trained sense has a quick preference, is 
 impressed by austerity in one proportion, is charmed 
 by others, and is repelled by the violation of its senti- 
 ment in regard to them, or by indifference to it. 
 
 T. STURGE MOORE. 
 
 FKW of man's works last so long as a well-printed 
 book. Metal rusts and corrodes, stone crum- 
 bles, the robes of kings are eaten by moths, but after 
 four hundred years a printed page is clear, and fresh, 
 and readable as at first. 
 
 F. W. MACDONALD.
 
 64 AMPHORA 
 
 BALLADE OF THE CAXTON HEAD 
 
 NEWS ! Good News ! at the oldj>ear^5 end 
 Lovers of learning, come buj>, come buy, 
 Now to old Holhorn let bookmen wend, 
 
 Though the town be grimv, and grim the sky. 
 News ! Good News .' is our Christmas cry 
 For our feast of reason is richly spread : 
 And hungry bookmen may turn and try 
 The famous Sign of the Caxton Head. 
 
 Let moralists talk of the lifelong friend : 
 
 But books are the safest of friends, say I ! 
 The best of good fellows will oft offend : 
 
 But books can never do wrong : for why ? 
 
 To their lover^s ear, and their lover's eye. 
 They are ever the same as in dear years fled : 
 
 And the choicest haunt, till you bid them fly, 
 The famous Sign of the Caxton Head. 
 
 In one true fellowship let them blend! 
 
 The delicate pages of Italy ; 
 Foulis and Baskerville, bad to lend ; 
 
 And the strong black letter of Germany : 
 
 Here rare French wonders of beauty lie, 
 IVrought by the daintiest of hands long dead, 
 
 All these are waiting, til I you draw nigh 
 The famous Sign of the Caxton Head. 
 
 l'envoi 
 
 Bookmen ! whose pleasures can never die, 
 
 IVhile books are written, and books are read : 
 
 For the honour of Caxton, pass not by 
 The famous Sign of the Caxton Head. 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON.
 
 AMPHORA 65 
 
 "THE VISION SPLENDID" 
 
 IN that great Ode by Wordsworth which first saw the 
 light in print one hundred and five years ago, and 
 as related to all other odes in the English language is 
 a cedar of Lebanon that towers above all otiier trees 
 of the valley, are these great lines : — 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
 The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And Cometh from afar : 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home : 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing Boy, 
 But He beholds the light, and whence it flows 
 
 He sees it in his joy ; 
 The Youth, who daily farther from the east 
 
 Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 
 
 And by the vision splendid 
 
 Is on his way attended ; 
 At length the Man perceives it die away. 
 And fade into the light of common day. 
 
 Is it then a foregone conclusion that our youthful 
 awakening must in the nature of things depart or can 
 we, as the poet would have us believe, retain and 
 strengthen " these shadowy recollections " until they 
 assume for us and for all who will the living semblance 
 of "truths that wake, to perish never?" And if it 
 indeed be so how may we best lay hold upon this 
 wider prospect and become inheritors of the Divine 
 Vision ? It seems to me the answer is very clear : we 
 may have part and parcel in " the years that bring the 
 philosophic mind" through that Idealism which came
 
 66 AMPHORA 
 
 in with our first clothes, and through Culture evolved 
 out of the individual initiative, which again, in the 
 final analysis, is Idealism raised to its highest power. 
 
 As John Addington Symonds tells us. Culture, while 
 one of the "words which have been overworked" may 
 nevertheless be defined " as the raising of previously 
 educated intellectual faculties to their highest potency 
 by the conscious effort of their possessors." We who 
 have read Whitman attentively know that he did not 
 look upon " culture " in this light : but as Symonds 
 acutely remarks, "his arguments . . . are directed 
 against the vulgar conception of culture, as an imita- 
 tive smattering, a self-assertiveness of so-called culti- 
 vated people." Undoubtedly both men were agreed 
 that 
 
 Rhymes and rhymers pass away, poems distilled from poems pass 
 
 away ; 
 The swarms of reflectors and the polite pass, and leave ashes ; 
 Admirers, importers, obedient persons, make but the soil of litera- 
 ture. 
 
 And concerning Idealism which is not of the Schools 
 either to confer or take away, but which a liberal edu- 
 cation can do much to foster, what may we say of it 
 save that it is the underprop of any possible culture, 
 the prerequisite basis underlying both Art and Books ? 
 " Literature, so long as it be idealistic, is the anodyne 
 of the spirit, the mother of faith, the nurse of hope ! " 
 
 You recall the volume of Sophocles that was found 
 on the body of the drowned Shelley. Many of us have 
 carried about memories of books each in its way as 
 infinitely precious as this book was to the dead poet. 
 It is the province of Literature, and of poetry and
 
 AMPHORA 67 
 
 impassioned prose especially, to fasten themselves 
 upon us : to wind their way into our heart of hearts, 
 to make over to manhood and middle age and at last, 
 — if it needs must come — to make over to old age 
 even, the intellectual deposits of the sacred Past. 
 
 To what conclusion would I, therefore, bring you ? 
 To the sole viewpoint I had in mind, the " one thought 
 ever at the fore " in the work I offer : that in it all and 
 transfusing it all should be somewhat of this limitless 
 vision — the Vision Splendid which does not fade 
 away 1 
 
 Rest assured in Idealism there remains an abiding 
 refuge which the Soul of Man has ever sought ; that 
 in Idealism alone we find justified and made perfect 
 " our faith in the incompleteness of the world as we see 
 it, and in the ultimate completeness of the Divine plan. 
 
 * * * 
 
 PREEXIS7ENCE 
 
 1LAID me down upon the shore 
 And dreamed a little space ; 
 I beard the great waves break and roar ; 
 The sun was on my face. 
 
 My idle hands and fingers hrown 
 
 Played with the pebbles grey ; 
 The waves came up, the waves went down. 
 
 Most' thundering and gay. 
 
 The pebbles, they were smooth and round 
 
 And warm upon my hands, 
 Like little people I had found 
 
 Sitting among the sands.
 
 68 AMPHORA 
 
 The grains of sand so shining-small 
 Soft through nif fingers ran ; 
 
 The sun shone down upon it all, 
 And so my dream began : 
 
 How all of this had been before ; 
 
 How ages far awaj> 
 I lay on some forgotten shore 
 
 /4s here I lie to-dajy. 
 
 The waves came shining up the sands, 
 
 As here to-daj> they shine ; 
 And t)i inj> pre-pelasgian hands 
 
 The sand was warm and fine. 
 
 I have forgotten whence I came. 
 
 Or what w_y home might be, 
 Or bj> what strange and savage name 
 
 I called that thundering sea- 
 
 I onlj' know the sun shone down 
 
 As still it shines to-day. 
 And in my fingers long and brown 
 
 The little pebbles lay. 
 
 FRANCES CORNFORD. 
 
 THE man of business, chancing upon some verse, 
 has his moment of illumination and regret and 
 shuts the book, laughing it away. The poet brought 
 to him the sense of the mystic word ; the poet of all 
 men has the power of passing it on. 
 
 WILFRID L. RANDELL.
 
 AMPHORA 69 
 
 WHETHER he be Homer the nondescript, Dante 
 the outcast, Shakespeare the player, or Burns 
 the exciseman, the great poet is always a man apart, 
 separated out by his genius, and by some tragic cir- 
 cumstance. He may have to extort a living as a 
 mendicant ; he may provide for himself handsomely 
 at a terrible cost, until his name " receives a brand," 
 and his nature is almost '"subdued to what it works 
 in ■' ; or he may die of a broken heart gauging whiskey- 
 barrels — that was the most withering tragedy of all : 
 but he is always great, always an imperial person ; 
 he may be neglected and despised in his life-time, but 
 his will is always to live, his will is always set on 
 power, his empire remains. 
 
 JOHN DAVIDSON. 
 
 WHEN finis conies, the Book we close, 
 And somewhat sad/j^, Fancjf goes, 
 JVith backward step, from stage to stage 
 Of that accomplished pilgrimage, . . . 
 The thorn lies thicker than the rose ! 
 
 There is so much that no one knows, — 
 So much un-reached that none suppose ; 
 
 IVhat flaws ! what faults ! — on every page. 
 When Finis comes. 
 
 Still, — they must pass I the swift Tide flows. 
 
 Though not for all the laurel grows, 
 Perchance, in this he-slandered age, 
 The worker, mainly, wins his wage ; — 
 
 And Time will sweep both friends and foes 
 IVben Finis comes ! 
 
 AUSTIN DOBSON.
 
 70 AMPHORA 
 
 OPT/M/SAf 
 
 IF /, not ignorant of defeat and pain, 
 IVonnded hy disenchantment, torn bj> strife 
 'Twixt flesh and spirit, and the laws of life, 
 Ev'n from the dust can raise proud hope again, 
 IVbere hope seemed slain : 
 
 If, caught in the wild clamour of our day. 
 
 That builds on shattered thought its crude beliefs, 
 And noises unto heaven a thousand griefs, 
 
 I learn to cherish love, and haply pray. 
 Another way : 
 
 If, somehow, 'neath the ugliness that springs 
 From passion, and futility, and toil, 
 I see no baneful, beauteous serpent coil ; 
 
 But only truth, that from her treasure brings 
 New and strange things : 
 
 Be patient, O poor world, when from your wrongs 
 I turn to watch the dawn with rosy light 
 Stealing upon the fastnesses of night ; 
 
 And, thrilled by faith, whereto all joy belongs 
 Sing these glad songs. 
 
 DURING a brief and brilliant period the splendour 
 of corporate life had absorbed the life of the 
 citizen; an Athenian of the age of Pericles may have, 
 for the moment, found Athens all-sufficient to his needs. 
 With the decay of that glory it became plain that this 
 single life was insufficient, that it failed in permanence
 
 AMPHORA 71 
 
 and simplicity. We all dwell in a single native country, 
 the universe, said Meleager, expressing a feeling that 
 had become the common heritage of his race. But 
 that country, as men saw it, was but ill governed; and 
 in nothing more so than in the rewards and punish- 
 ments it gave its citizens. To regard it as the vestibule 
 only of another country where life should have its intri- 
 cacies simplified, its injustices remedied, its evanescent 
 beauty fixed, and its brief joy made full, became an 
 imperious instinct that claimed satisfaction, through 
 definite religious teaching or the dreams of philosophy 
 or the visions of poetry. And so the last words of 
 Greek sepulchral poetry express, through questions 
 and doubts, in metaphor and allegory, the final belief 
 in some blessedness beyond death. Who knows 
 whether to live be not death, and to be dead life .'' so 
 the haunting hope begins. The Master of the Portico 
 died young; does he sleep in the quiet embrace of 
 earth, or live in the joy of the other world ? " Even 
 in life what makes each one of us to be what we are is 
 only the soul ; and when we are dead, the bodies of the 
 dead are rightly said to be our shades or images ; for 
 the true and immortal being of each one of us, which 
 is called the soul, goes on her way to other gods, that 
 before them she may give an account." These are the 
 final words left to men by that superb and profound 
 genius the dream of whose youth had ended in the 
 flawless lines whose music Shelley's own could scarcely 
 render: 
 
 Thou wert the Morning Star among the living 
 
 Ere thy fair light was fled ; 
 Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving 
 
 New splendour to the dead. 
 
 J. W. MACKAIL.
 
 72 AMPHORA 
 
 SEA-lVfND 
 
 THE/lesb is sad, alas ! and all the books arc read. 
 Flight, onlj> flight ! I feel that birds are wild to tread 
 The floor of unknown foam, and to attain the skies ! 
 Nought, neither ancient ga7-dens mirrored in the eyes. 
 Shall hold this heart that bathes in waters its delight, 
 
 nights ! nor yet my waking lamp, whose lonely light 
 Shadows the vacant paper, whiteness profits best. 
 
 Nor the young wife who rocks her baby on her breast. 
 
 1 will depart. O steamer, swaying rope and spar. 
 Lift anchor for exotic lands that lie afar ! 
 
 A weariness, outworn by cruel hopes, still clings 
 To the last farewell handkerchief^ s last beckonings ! 
 And are not these, the masts inviting storms, not these 
 That an awakening wind bends over wrecking seas. 
 Lost, not a sail, a sail, a flowering isle, ere long? 
 But, O my heart, hear thou, hear thou the sailors' song! 
 
 ST^PHANE MALLARM^. 
 (Translated by Arthur Symons.) 
 
 IN the glens of Parnassus there are hidden flowers 
 always blooming You will find that youth 
 
 does not vanish with the rose, that you need never 
 close the sweet-scented manuscript of love, science, 
 art or literature. In them youth returns like daf- 
 fodils that come before the swallow dares, and take the 
 winds of March with beauty : or like the snapdragons 
 which Cardinal Newman saw blossoming on the wall 
 at Oxford, and which became for him the symbol of 
 hope. For us they may stand as the symbol of real- 
 ization and the immortality of the human intellect. 
 
 ROBERT ROSS.
 
 AMPHORA 73 
 
 QuiNTUS CuRTlus tells us that, in certain seasons, 
 Bactria was darkened by whirlwinds of dust, 
 which completely covered and concealed the roads. 
 Left thus without their usual landmarks, the wander- 
 ers awaited the rising of the stars, — "To light them 
 on their dim and perilous way." May we not say the 
 same of Literature ? From time to time its pathways 
 are so obscured beneath the rubbish of the age, that 
 many a footsore pilgrim complains of the hidden 
 route. In such times let us imitate the Bactrians ; let 
 us cease to look upon the confusions of the day, and 
 turning our gaze upon the great Immortals who have 
 gone before, seek guidance from their light. 
 
 GEORGE HENRY LEWES. 
 
 SYDNEY PICKERING 
 
 ["This Booke, my Deare Joy, and only Felicity, sweet Sydney 
 Pickering, gave me, whom I utterly love and adore." — Written 
 
 IN AN OLD EDITION OF CoWLEv's PoEMS ] 
 
 THIS is the hook of Sidney Pickering, 
 Mj> sometime Lover and my always King, 
 IVbom I do utterly love and adore. 
 
 Now as before. 
 
 He lived at Greenwich, I in London Town, 
 And both we lived till once we met again. 
 
 To sight mj> vessel slipping swiftly down, 
 He waited, pacing in the sun or rain, 
 A scholar, folded in a claret gown. 
 
 And then a step, a hand upon the latch. 
 
 Some trivial gossip in the half -lit hall — 
 " He haunts St. James's and she wears a patch,' ^
 
 74 AMPHORA 
 
 And then a pause, a flush, and ended all 
 
 Such talk of London in the half-ltt hall. 
 
 Or else a reading from this very hook ; 
 
 And then a silence where the reading ceased ; 
 A word or two about the verse — a look 
 
 Across the parlour, and a riband creased. 
 No more of Cowley for that day at least. 
 
 O Sydney Pickering, bow long it seemed 
 From Westminster to Greenwich for us twain ; 
 
 But life itself proves shorter than we dreamed, 
 And both we live till once we meet again. 
 My vessel slipping to the mooring chain. 
 
 This is the book of Sydney Pickering, 
 My sometime Lover and my always King, 
 IVhom I do utterly love and adore. 
 Now as before. 
 
 VIOLA TAYLOR. 
 
 THE present is in every age merely the shifting point 
 at which past and future meet, and we can have 
 no quarrel with either. There can be no world without 
 traditions; neither can there be any life without move- 
 ment. As Heracleitus knew at the outset of modem 
 philosophy, we cannot bathe twice in the same stream, 
 though, as we know to-day, the stream still flows in an 
 unending circle. There is never a moment when the 
 new dawn is not breaking over the earth, and never a 
 moment when the sunset ceases to die. It is well to 
 greet serenely even the first glimmer of the dawn when 
 we see it, not hastening towards it with undue .speed,
 
 AMPHORA 75 
 
 nor leaving the sunset without gratitude for the dying 
 light that once was dawn. 
 
 In the moral world we are ourselves the light-bearers, 
 and the cosmic process is in us made flesh. For a brief 
 space it is granted to us, if we will, to enlighten the 
 darkness that surrounds our path. As in the ancient 
 torch-race, which seemed to Lucretius to be the symbol 
 of all life, we press forward torch in hand along the 
 course. Soon from behind comes the runner who will 
 outpace us. All our skill lies in giving into his hand 
 the living torch, bright and unflickering, as we ourselves 
 disappear in the darkness. 
 
 HAVELOCK ELLIS. 
 
 FylLSE POETS AND TRUE 
 
 LOOK bow the lark soars upward and is gone, 
 Turning a spirit as be nears tbe sky ! 
 His voice is beard, but bodjy tbere is none 
 To fix tbe vague excursions of tbe eye. 
 So, poets' songs are with us, thd" tbey die 
 Obscured, and hid by deatFs oblivious shroud, 
 And Earth inherits tbe rich melody 
 Like raining music from the morning cloud. 
 Yet, few there be who pipe so sweet and loud 
 Their voices reach us through tbe lapse of space ; 
 The noisy day is deafen' d by a crowd 
 Of undistinguisb'd birds, a twittering race ; 
 But only lark and nightingale forlorn 
 Fill up the silences of night and morn. 
 
 THOMAS HOOD.
 
 76 AMPHORA 
 
 OUR last word on poetry cannot be said ; nor can 
 our first discovery of poetry ever be remade. 
 Yet it is just in so far as we can get near this double 
 impossibility that the poets will bear to us their full 
 meaning. Now and then at least, if we read poetry as 
 it should be read, the reward will come, it may be with 
 some great poem, it may be only with some passage or 
 phrase, of entering fully and freshly into it, as though 
 we read it for the first time and as though it gave the 
 meaning of life. It is in such moments, "solemn and 
 rare," that poetry performs its function for us — or 
 rather, that we perform our function for poetry : 
 
 To see a world in a grain of sand, 
 
 And a heaven in a wild flower, 
 Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, 
 
 And eternity in an hour. 
 
 To attain these moments, no labour is wasted. To 
 communicate them is the glory of the poets. To help 
 towards their communication is the highest privilege, 
 in their subsidiary province, of the exponents of poetry. 
 For criticism is, or ought to be, the interpretation of 
 poetry in some such sense as poetry is itself the inter- 
 pretation of life. ^ ^^ mackail. 
 
 I HAVE desired to go 
 IVhere springs not fail, 
 To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail 
 And a few lilies blow. 
 
 And I have asked to be 
 
 IVhere no storms come ; 
 
 IVhere the green swell is in the havens dumb. 
 
 And out of the swing of the sea. 
 
 FATHER GERARD HOPKINS.
 
 AMPHORA 77 
 
 ON THE FLY-LEAF OF THE CREEK ANTHOLOGY 
 
 SEE, but the urn we hold, 
 Time-worn and thin, 
 IVhere there was life of old. 
 
 Delicate sin, 
 Glorj> and love grown cold 
 IVbite ash within. 
 
 Here, in these ashes blent. 
 
 Lovers and foes, 
 Light joy and sorrow spent, 
 
 Hushed to repose, 
 Sleep among garlands rent 
 
 — Laurel and rose. 
 
 Only the fragrance clings 
 
 The blossom flies — 
 Echo of laughter rings 
 
 Sobbing to sighs. 
 The breath of dying things 
 
 Here never dies. 
 
 DORA G. MCCHESNEY, 
 
 WHILE persons count for much, style, the index 
 to persons, can never count for little. " Speak," 
 it has been said, "that I may know you" — voice- 
 gesture is more than feature. Write, and after you 
 have attained to some control over the instrument, 
 you write yourself down whether you will or no. 
 There is no vice, however unconscious, no virtue, 
 however shy, no touch of meanness or of generosity 
 in your character, that will not pass on to the paper. 
 You anticipate the Day of Judgment and furnish the 
 recording angel with material. The Art of Criticism
 
 78 AMPHORA 
 
 in Literature, so often decried and given a subordinate 
 place among the arts, is none other than the art of 
 reading and interpreting these written evidences. 
 Criticism has been popularly opposed to creation, 
 perhaps because the kind of creation that it attempts 
 is rarely achieved, and so the world forgets that the 
 main business of Criticism, after all, is not to legislate, 
 nor to classify, but to raise the dead. Graves, at its 
 command, have waked their sleepers, oped, and let 
 them forth. It is by the creative power of this art 
 that the living man is reconstructed from the litter of 
 blurred and fragmentary paper documents that he has 
 left to posterity. 
 
 WALTER RALEIGH. 
 
 DISTANT AUTHORS 
 " Aqiii cstii encerrada el alma licenciado Pedro Garcias ' 
 
 DEAR books ! and each the living soul. 
 Our hearts aver, of men unseen, 
 JVhose power to strengthen, charm, control, 
 Surmounts all earth's green miles between. 
 
 For us at least the artists show 
 Apart from fret of work-days jars : 
 
 We know them but as friends may know. 
 Or they are 'known beyond the stars. 
 
 Their mirth, their grief, their soul's desire, 
 IVhen twilight murmuring of streams. 
 
 Or skies far touched by sunset fire, 
 Exalt them to pure worlds of dreams ;
 
 AMPHORA 79 
 
 Their love of good ; their rage at wrong ; 
 
 Their hours when struggling thought makes way ; 
 Their hours when fancy drifts to song 
 
 Lightly and glad as bird-trills may ; 
 
 All these are truths. And if as true 
 
 More graceless scrutiny that reads, 
 " These Jruits amid strange husking grew ;" 
 
 " These lilies blossomed amongst weeds ; " 
 
 Here no despoiling doubts shall blow, 
 
 No fret offend, of work-day jars. 
 We know them but as friends may know. 
 
 Or they are known beyond the stars. 
 
 MARY COLBORNE-VEEL. 
 
 "SACRED THINGS NEVER DIE" 
 
 In every country where two kinds of legal money are in circula- 
 tion, the bad money always drives out the good. 
 
 SIR THOMAS GKBSHAM. 
 
 IN citing what is known to students of Political 
 Economy as Gresham's Law I have in mind a 
 book that cannot be overpraised for its Idealism, 
 wherein this law apparently is applied to Literature in 
 our own immediate day and generation. The depth 
 of the writer's saturnine humour will surely come 
 home to those of us who, like the heroine of Together, 
 have dallied at any news-stand in any one of " the 
 vast eighteen story hotels of New York," or else- 
 where. Here is what we cannot choose but behold : 
 " Gay little books, saucy little books, cheap little 
 books, pleasant little books, — all making their bid to
 
 8o AMPHORA 
 
 curtain cells in the giey matter of these sated human 
 beings ! A literature composed chiefly by women for 
 women, — tons of wood pulp, miles of linen covers, 
 rivers of ink, — all to feed the prevailing taste, like 
 the ribbons, the jewels, the candy, the theatre tickets ! " 
 Precisely I Go where we will in this broad land of 
 ours, these " tons of wood pulp," these " miles of linen 
 covers" confront and confound us. Shall we there- 
 fore confess judgment and, admitting Mr. Robert 
 Herrick to be in the right, admit also that this pre- 
 sentment of his is I he ultimate outcome of Democracy 
 in its literary uplift ? Well, speaking for myself, I do 
 not believe Mr. Herrick, even for a moment, so con- 
 siders it. Like a good physician he first makes sure 
 of his diagnosis. These are the symptoms: the 
 remedy, if such there be, "is all within." For cure, 
 (and I accept his entire novel as an argument of pas- 
 sionate intensity in favour of " a new light, a new 
 life,") the real cure comes from what you and I, 
 meaning all who are of like-mindedness, may do to 
 set in motion and sustain a higher law than that con- 
 trolling a mere monetary currency. Even in the 
 worst reactionary period do you and I seriously believe 
 there ever was any actual danger of the higher being 
 driven out by the lower intellectual coinage ? The 
 currency of the Soul, conceivably, is of another order 
 and of a substance more enduring, — more excellent! 
 
 " Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well 
 
 envelop'd, 
 I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words 
 
 can tell." 
 
 There is, then, no Gresham's Law prevailing in the 
 realm of Books : say, rather, in he audit of the years
 
 AMPHORA 8i 
 
 the base and the bad find their own place ; the words 
 of the Spirit are the only inevitable rulers of " that 
 little infinite thing" the Soul of Man. In a passage 
 doubtless very familiar but which cannot be too often 
 quoted, Emerson transcribes what, for him and for 
 many another gone before him, must have been an 
 actual experience : " The young mortal enters the hall 
 of the firma77tent : he is alone xuith them [the gods'\ alone, 
 they pouring on him betiedictions a7id gifts, and beckon- 
 ing him up to their thrones. On the instant, and 
 incessatitly, fall snow-storms of illusions. He fancies 
 himself in a vast croxvd which sways this way and that, 
 and whose movements and doings he must obey ; he 
 fancies himself poor, orphaned, insignifcatit. . . . 
 Every mo>?tejtt new changes, and new showers of decep- 
 tions, to baffle and distract him. And when, by-and-by, 
 for an itistant, the air clears, and the cloud lifts a little, 
 there are the gods still sitti^ig around him on their 
 thrones, — they alone with hitn alone^'' 
 
 I do not know if this has been used before as an 
 illustration of what arises in one's mind at the outset 
 of -literary study: the perturbation, the seeming 
 incoherence, the planless, pathless jungle one must 
 encounter on his way to the Light. Even so these 
 are the conditions and the reward, — if we press on to 
 the Reality beyond all veils of outer Seeming, — in 
 that vision of the Abiding Ones : they alone with us 
 alone ! 
 
 Such is the thought impressing itself as a finality, 
 and such the words which I adopt as my title : Sacred 
 things never die. Not illusions, and not death, "but 
 always a new world, a new light, a new life ; " realities 
 you and I are finding all around us. And in the last 
 analysis of our beliefs, there remains for us a divine
 
 82 AMPHORA 
 
 law of Joy and Peace summed and sealed up in a 
 single word : " Ecstasy, the secret behind the stars, 
 beyond the verge of the sea, in the great lunar spaces 
 of the spirit." 
 
 " And I saw that there was an Ocean of Darkness 
 and Death : but an infinite Ocean of Light and Love 
 flowed over the Ocean of Darkness : and in that I saw 
 the i?ifinite Love of God." 
 
 THE CRUrSKEEN LAWN 
 
 TAKE it Up and drink of it, 
 In it lies 
 Music of old melodies, 
 Irish love and wit ; 
 If the pathos of a tear. 
 If the shadow of a sigh 
 Rest upon its rim, 
 'Tis the retrospective tear, 
 ' T is the long regretful sigh 
 For the ages dim. 
 
 Take it up and drink of it 
 
 Deep and long, 
 
 Until Muirne's " sleepy song " 
 
 Charm j'ou bit by bit. 
 
 Bright with colours of the dawn, 
 
 Gems of ancient history 
 
 Light it through and through ; 
 
 And this wondrous Cruiskeen Lawn 
 
 Holds the Pearl of Poesj', 
 
 Love-dissolved for vou. 
 
 L. A. C.
 
 AMPHORA 83 
 
 YES, do yeu send me a book for my birthday. Not 
 a bargain book bought from a haberdasher, but 
 a beautiful book, a book to caress — pecuHar, distinc- 
 tive, individual: a book that hath first caught your 
 eye and then pleased your fancy ; written by an author 
 with a tender whim, all right out of his heart. We 
 will read it together in the gloaming, and when the 
 gathering dusk doth blur the page, we '11 sit with 
 hearts too full for speech and think it over. 
 
 DOROTHY WORDSWORTH. 
 
 ALL THINGS 
 
 NOTHING is ours. For an impassioned moment 
 We hold our blessings, but to give away : 
 All, all must go : the fairest flowers and frailest. 
 In our hot holding wither and decaj>. 
 
 Nothing is ours. The joyous rose -souled baby 
 Pursues the laughing years to sordid hells 
 Of worldliness : foul smoke and clutching mammon 
 Devour the edges of the rolling fells. 
 
 Nothing is ours. Love wastes to futile passion ; 
 Beauty, to shame ; and honour, to a word ; 
 Might, to a shadow ; goodness, to a maxim ; 
 And lovely toil becomes a bitter lord. 
 
 " All things are yours > " The cry of God makes answer, 
 Sweeping in love through earth and sea and sky : 
 " Might, goodness, honour ; love and toil and childhood. 
 Pass to the Eternal Beauty, which am I." 
 
 ELIZABETH GIBSON.
 
 84 AMPHORA 
 
 fN WHAT I^ALE? 
 
 WHEN sieep is with the lily, 
 And death is on the rose, 
 Ah, whither speeds their perfume .? 
 And where their beauty goes 
 IVho knows ? 
 
 IVhen song has quit the swallow, 
 
 And laughter left the wren ; 
 IVhen all the laugh, the singing. 
 
 Has faded down the glen ; 
 IVhat then .? 
 
 So, when our words are faded. 
 And dumb what each one saith, 
 
 IVhere rings the crv we uttered. 
 Where sighs our kissing breath 
 In death ? 
 
 lOLO ANEURIN WILLIAMS. 
 
 WHEN we speak of the poetry of any age, or of 
 any poet, as artificial, we perhaps hardly realise 
 how fragile and how^ artificial all poetry is. Its abiding 
 life is not here. It never continues in one stay. Its 
 embodiments are transitory, and its light has no 
 sooner touched any one point than it begins, in the 
 same movement, to glide off it. The images of per- 
 fection which it successively condenses from the flying 
 vapours of the world have only a transcendental per- 
 manence ; w'e can see them forming and melting in 
 one and the same breath. In the earlier Alexandrian 
 poetry we can just catch a last condensation of the 
 Hellenic genius, a gleam of the old light before the
 
 AMPHORA 8s 
 
 chill came with sunset and the eastward-wheeling 
 earth drove the shadow up the wall. With the later 
 poets of the school the light gradually and surely 
 disappears. Morning was kindling elsewhere, and at 
 last they were left with the night. 
 
 J. W. MACKAIL. 
 
 EVERYTHING has an ending: there will he 
 r An ending one sad day for you and me. 
 An ending of the days we had together. 
 The good companionship all kinds of weather. 
 The cross-roads yet shall be where we must part, 
 We who are soul to soul, and heart to heart. 
 
 Then one of us will look back to these days, 
 These days that now we hold so lightly, praise 
 So little that we often wish them over. 
 Ob, our lost country smiling past recover, 
 How heavenly will it gleam to me, to you. 
 The lost land where there was not one, but two ! 
 
 The darkness gathers ; all things have an end; 
 
 Even our days together, lover, friend. 
 
 But, oh, my darling, lest we die of grieving. 
 
 Let us take bold on comfort, warm and living. 
 
 That somewhere past the grave's night and the cold, 
 
 We two shall be together, as of old. 
 
 Let us take hold in comfort ere that^ day 
 When one of us must go and one must stay — 
 We two who never could endure being parted, 
 Let us take hold on comfort, golden-hearted. 
 That lovers meet at last and clasp and kiss. 
 And there are no more endings where that is. 
 
 KATHARINE TYNAN HINKSON.
 
 86 AMPHORA 
 
 A BALLADE OF A BOOK OF HOURS 
 
 WAS tt some sad-eyed Florentine 
 IVithin bis cloistered cell of yore 
 IVho lit this painted page of thine 
 With treasures from his ancient lore, 
 /Ind kneeling in the twilight bore 
 The burden of his Saviour's pain, 
 And ever with the stmrise saw 
 The coming of his Lord again ? 
 
 And when he found the rest he sought, 
 The shadows that he hungered for. 
 
 Perchance a ladjy of the Court 
 IVithin her jewelled bosom wore ■ 
 
 His book among her billets, or 
 Beneath her scented pillow lain, 
 IV ho dailj! in her life foreswore 
 
 The coming of his Lord again. 
 
 And now beneath another sky. 
 Amid the citjr's ceaseless roar 
 
 Unheeded but for such as I, 
 You wait upon a shelf before 
 A dark and dusty bookshop's door, 
 
 And long for loving hands in vain. 
 As he in that dim corridor, 
 
 The coming of his Lord again. 
 
 Book, as my lady's monitor, 
 
 Yon shall forget the world's disdain, 
 So hadyour master sighed no more 
 
 The coming of his Lord again.
 
 AMPHORA 87 
 
 IN that vast cemetery, called the Past, are most of 
 the religions of men, and there, too, are nearly all 
 their gods. The sacred temples of India were ruins 
 long ago. Over column and cornice ; over the painted 
 and pictured walls, cling and creep the trailing vines. 
 Brahma, the golden, with four heads, and four arms ; 
 Vishnu, the sombre, the punisher of the wicked, with 
 his three eyes, his crescent, and his necklace of skulls ; 
 Siva, the destroyer, red with seas of blood ; Kali, the 
 goddess, Draupadi, the white-armed, and Chrishna, 
 the Christ, all passed away and left the thrones of 
 heaven desolate. Along the banks of the sacred 
 Nile, Isis no longer wandering weeps, searching for 
 the dead Osiris. The shadow of Typhon's scowl falls 
 no more upon the waves. The sun rises as of yore, 
 and his golden beams still smite the lips of Memnon, 
 but Memnon is as voiceless as the Sphinx. The 
 sacred fanes are lost in desert sands ; the dusty mum- 
 mies are still waiting for the resurrection promised by 
 their priests, and the old beliefs, wrought in curiously 
 sculptured stone, sleep in the mystery of a language 
 lost and dead. Odin, the author of life and soul, 
 Vili and Ve, and the mighty giant Ymir, strode long 
 ago from the icy halls of the North ; and Thor, with 
 iron glove and glittering hammer, dashes mountains 
 to the earth no more. Broken are the circles, and 
 cromlechs of the ancient Druids ; fallen upon the 
 summits of the hills, and covered with the centuries' 
 moss, are the sacred cairns. The divine fires of 
 Persia and of the Aztecs, have died out in the ashes 
 of the past, and there is none to rekindle, and none to 
 feed the holy flames. The harp of Orpheus is still ; 
 the drained cup of Bacchus has been thrown aside ; 
 Venus lies dead in stone, and her white bosom heaves
 
 88 AMPHORA 
 
 no more with love. The streams still murmur, but no 
 naiads bathe ; the trees still wave, but in the forest 
 aisles no dryads dance. The gods have flown from 
 high Olympus. Not even the beautiful women can 
 lure them back, and even Danse lies unnoticed, naked 
 to the stars. Hushed forever are the thunders of 
 Sinai; lost are the voices of the prophets, and the 
 land, once flowing with milk and honey, is but a desert 
 waste. One by one, the myths have faded from the 
 clouds ; one by one, the phantom host has disappeared, 
 and one by one, facts, truths and realities have taken 
 their places. The supernatural has almost gone, but 
 the natural remains. The gods have fled, but man is 
 here. 
 
 ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 
 
 ro LUCY 
 
 O BEAUTY, / have wandered far ; 
 Peace, I have suffered seeking thee : 
 Life, I have sought to see thy star 
 That other men might see. 
 
 And after wandering nights and days, 
 A gleam in a beloved soul 
 Shows bow life's elemental bla^e 
 
 Goes wandering through the whole. 
 
 Bearing the discipline of earth 
 That earth, controlled, may bring forth flowers. 
 O may our labours help the birth 
 Of nobler souls than ours. 
 
 JOHN MASEFIELD.
 
 AMPHORA 89 
 
 OLD MORTALITY 
 
 WHITE violet garlands, Sprian myrrh, 
 Deep roseate cups of Cbian wine. 
 Sounds that four deepest being stir, 
 Sleek limbs that shine, — 
 
 Ah! take them, Youth, for youth' s fair sake ; — 
 
 Yet, not forgetting human hap : 
 The wreath may fade, the nard-box break. 
 
 The lyre-string snap- 
 Ease, bliss, and beauty, which beget 
 A sensual faith in things that be. 
 Are like a blossoming garden set 
 Down by the sea. 
 
 They flourish, till some night-wind blows 
 
 The swelling tide across the land, 
 And buries tulip, pink, and rose 
 In salt and sand. 
 
 Since, tho' the slow receding tide 
 
 IVithdraw its froth and crawling things, 
 Yet, where that wandering wave hath sighed. 
 No fresh bloom springs. 
 
 EDMUND GOSSE. 
 
 WHEN I speak of Criticism I have in mind not 
 merely the more or less deft use of commentary 
 or indication, but one of the several ways of literature, 
 and in itself a rare and fine art : the marriage of 
 science that knows and of spirit that discerns. The 
 basis of Criticism is imagination, its spiritual quality 
 is simplicity, its intellectual distinction is balance. 
 
 WILLIAM SHARP.
 
 go AMPHORA 
 
 SUNSET 
 
 TEN thousand fears ago, majyie, 
 The sense forlorn now fallen on me 
 Of alien light and of the wide 
 Indifferent calm of evening tide, 
 Troubled no less the soul of one 
 IVho standing here at set of sun 
 Looked forth upon the dajf's decline 
 With grief as wild and strange as mine. 
 
 And baph with a selfsame sense 
 Another climbing long vears hence 
 Bv well-known ways to this green height 
 IVhilej'et the west is filled with light, 
 Shall watch, forlorn of soul as I, 
 The streaming glories pass him bf 
 And as the great sun disappears 
 Be moved, he knows not whj/, to tears. 
 
 W. G. HOLE. 
 
 FOR the actual Shakespeare, we have the key of the 
 Sonnets — if we were sure how to fit it into the 
 lock — and we have Shakespeare's women. But the 
 Iliad and Odyssey rise before us, as they rose before 
 the awakening consciousness of Ilellas two thousand 
 five hundred years ago, like islands out of an unplumbed 
 sea. 
 
 From that same sea, long afterwards, through stages 
 of which we can, with the modern armament of 
 scholarship, dimly trace the rough outline, rose what 
 we know as Greece, the Hellenic art, thought, life. 
 The Iliad and Odyssey had, we may say confidently, 
 assumed their form before then : before the Peisis-
 
 AMPHORA 91 
 
 trataen recension, before the age of the earlier Greek 
 lyric poets, before the beginning of authorised chro- 
 nology. This assumption of form, which in the main 
 issue made them what they are, was the work in each 
 case of a certain poet of supreme genius. It is with the 
 poems themselves, not with the material out of which 
 they were shaped or the stages and processes of the 
 shaping, that we have to do when we are considering 
 poetry as a function of life. The earlier attempts to 
 dissect either poem are now realised to have missed 
 the main point. Later analysis, more skilful and 
 better informed, has but little to do with the nature 
 and progress of poetry. The Iliad and Odyssey are 
 not rhapsodies in the obvious sense of that word, 
 although they imply the work of rhapsodes. The 
 complex product (this cannot be repeated too often) is 
 analogous to a chemical rather than to a mechanical 
 combination. But it is equally essential to remember 
 that even the chemical analogy is far short of the 
 truth. We have to do with life. Both poems are 
 vital organisms, and their growth was organic, whether 
 we regard it as the slow age-long deposit of some 
 coral forest under the sea, or as the bursting into 
 flower, in a single lifetime, of what had been long 
 maturing invisibly in root and stem and bud. In either 
 case they are the final transformation in the life and 
 growth of a poetry which must have been living and 
 growing for generations. The old careless view, due 
 partly to ignorance and partly to misunderstanding of 
 ambiguous terms, that they represent the birth of 
 poetry in some fancied youth of the world, is as nearly 
 as may be the reverse of the truth. They are not the 
 birth of poetry; they are its full maturity, just before, 
 in that particular form, poetry ceased to live and to
 
 92 AMPHORA 
 
 interpret life. And the same is true of all the greatest 
 poetry, as it is true, even more widely, of all the 
 greatest art. Poetry itself, art itself, is indeed 
 immortal. But its progress passes from one to another 
 manifestation. We speak locally of sunrise and sun- 
 set, but over the world as a whole the sun is always 
 rising and always setting. And when art fulfils itself, 
 it is on the point of passing on elsewhither, of dismis- 
 sing its finished task and seeking a new world to 
 conquer and transform. For the age and country in 
 which they came into being, the Iliad and Odyssey 
 represent not sunrise but sunset, though to us, further 
 towards the darkening west .... they appear to be 
 coloured with morning glories, to lie far off towards 
 the sunrise and the dawn. 
 
 J. W. MACKAIL. 
 MAY-MUSrC 
 
 OH ! lose the winter from thine heart, the darkness 
 from thine ejyes, 
 And from the low hearth-chair of dreams, mj> Love-o'- 
 
 May, arise ; 
 y4nd let the maidens robe thee like a white white-lilac tree. 
 Oh! Hear the call of Spring, fair Soul, — and wilt thou 
 come with me ? 
 
 Even so, and even so ! 
 Whither thou goest, I will go. 
 I would follow thee. 
 
 Then wilt thou see the orange trees star-flowering aver 
 
 Spain, 
 Or arched and mounded Kaiser-towns that moulder mid 
 
 y4lmain.
 
 AMPHORA 93 
 
 Or through the cypress-gardens go of magic Italy ? 
 Oh ! East or IVest or South or North, saj>, wilt thou come 
 with me ? 
 
 Even so, or even so ! 
 Whither thou goest, I will go. 
 I will follow thee. 
 
 But wilt thou farther come with me through hawthorn red 
 
 and white 
 Until we find the wall that hides the Land of Heart's 
 
 delight ? 
 The gates all carved with olden things are strange and 
 
 dread to see : 
 But I will lift thee through, fair Soul. Arise and come 
 
 with me ! 
 
 Even so, Love, even so ! 
 Whither thou goest, I will go! 
 Lo, I follow thee. 
 
 RACHEL ANNAND TAYLOR. 
 
 BUT it is at night, and after dinner, that the best 
 hour comes. There are no such pipes to be 
 smoked as those that follow a good day's march ; the 
 flavour of the tobacco is a thing to be remembered, it 
 is so dry and aromatic, so full and so fine. If you 
 wind up the evening with grog, you will own there 
 was never such grog ; at every sip a jocund tranquillity 
 spreads about your limbs, and sits easily in your heart. 
 If you read a book — and you will never do so save 
 by fits and starts — you find the language strangely 
 racy and harmonious ; words take a new meaning ;
 
 94 
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 single sentences possess the ear for half an hour 
 together; and the writer endears himself to you, at 
 every page, by the nicest coincidence of sentiment. It 
 seems as if it were a book you had written yourself in 
 a dream. To all we have read on such occasions we 
 look back with special favour. "It was on the loth 
 of April, 1798," says Hazlitt, with amorous precision, 
 " that I sat down to a volume of the new ' Heloise,' 
 at the Inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a 
 cold chicken." I should wish to quote more, for 
 though we are mighty fine fellows nowadays, we can- 
 not write like Hazlitt. And, talking of that, a volume 
 of Hazlitt's essays would be a capital pocket-book on 
 such a journey ; so would a volume of Heine's songs ; 
 and for " Tristram Shandy " I can pledge a fair expe- 
 rience. 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. 
 
 ARS VIC7R1X 
 
 YES ; when the wajys oppose — 
 When the hard means rebel. 
 Fairer the work out- grows, — 
 More potent far the spell. 
 
 O Poet, then, forbear 
 
 The loosely sandalled verse, 
 Choose rather thou to wear 
 
 The buskin — strait and terse ; 
 
 Leave to the tjrro's hand 
 
 The limp and shapeless stvle ; 
 
 See that thy form demand 
 The labour of the file.
 
 AMPHORA 95 
 
 Sculptor, do thou discard 
 
 The yielding clay, — consign 
 To Paros marble hard 
 
 The beauty of thy line ; — 
 
 Model thv Satyr's face 
 
 For bronze of Syracuse ; 
 In the veined agate trace 
 
 The profile of thy Muse. 
 
 Painter, that still must mix 
 
 But transient tints anew. 
 Thou in the furnace fix 
 
 The firm enamel's hue ; 
 
 Let the smooth tile receive 
 Thy dove-drawn Erycine ; 
 Thy sirens blue at eve 
 Coiled in a wash of wine. 
 
 All passes. Art alone 
 
 Enduring stays to us ; 
 The bust outlasts the throtte, — 
 
 The coin, Tiberius ; 
 
 Even the gods must go ; 
 
 Only the lofty rhyme 
 Not countless years o'erthrow, — 
 
 Not long array of time. 
 
 Paint, chisel, then, or write ; 
 
 But, that the work surpass, 
 IVith the hard fashion fight, — 
 
 IVith the resisting mass. 
 
 AUSTIN DOBSON. 
 (From Th^ophile Gautier.)
 
 96 AMPHORA 
 
 "THE GREAT COMPANIONS" 
 
 Allons ! after the great Companions, and to belong to them ! . . . . 
 They go ! they go ! 1 know that they go, but I know not where they go, 
 But I know that they go toward the best — toward something great. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 RECENTLY much has been heard of the three or five 
 foot shelf of books, which, perused with dili- 
 gence, possibly would lead on to the liberal education 
 that has been, presumably, beyond reach of the aver- 
 age man and woman in America. We are reminded 
 also of the Best Hundred Books which came at an 
 earlier period and did so much for the publisher and 
 so little for those who pinned their faith to this crass 
 method of laying hold upon the intellectual treasure- 
 trove of the ages. These rough and ready schemes 
 undoubtedly keep the word of promise to the ear : 
 whether they do not succeed in breaking it to the 
 heart is a question that I for one rather leave open or 
 frankly dispute. 
 
 In other words, I do not believe that all the systems 
 of culture in the world can bring either you or me into 
 touch with literature unless there are associations of 
 ideas slowly developed and, if I must say so, subject 
 to spiritual laws almost impossible of definition. 
 What were the first books, the first poems that at- 
 tracted us .'' Again, speaking for myself, I say those 
 chosen at haphazard, the chance acquaintance one 
 might conceivably form in the winding and not very 
 reputable byways of an old city — of Bookland. I 
 once mentioned how I came to the appreciation of 
 Virgil, or what for the most of us is all we can know 
 of Virgil — in translation. It was chance, but the 
 time was ripe for it, that first brought me within hail
 
 AMPHORA 97 
 
 of that wonderful drift-heap of three centuries known 
 as Old Plays. The same applies to almost everything 
 else absorbed from books that I have endeavoured to 
 make,over to others. 
 
 Of old it was said, memory draws from a deep well : 
 within us, waiting to emerge, a chance touch may reveal 
 an unsuspected continuity linking the Rosa Mystica of 
 love beheld of Catullus with the least last versifier, 
 who is yet of the singing ones of all ages — to-day as 
 of yesterday and so on forever. I confess I cared 
 little for coins until I saw one which cancelled in 
 a moment the eighteen centuries that had elapsed 
 since it was current. It was by no means an uncom- 
 mon coin as numismatists reckon it, this piece of metal 
 bearing the features of the wife of Antoninus Pius, 
 the daughter of Annius Verus, the mother of Faustina 
 the Younger, who in turn was the wife of Marcus 
 Aurelius and mother of Commodus. Pater in a mem- 
 orable chapter of Marius the Epicurean, brings the 
 court life of the great Stoic emperor before us. Thus, 
 the coin glanced at casually, mere lump of bronze 
 begrimed and battered lying in a dealer's tray, evoked 
 Faustina and the desire for her image and super- 
 scription. This, then, was the beauty lurking at the 
 heart of things beheld by Swinburne in a London 
 street, with the result that the world possesses a 
 poem which may outlast the Roman eagles. 
 
 Once again : in that vast portrait gallery bequeathed 
 by the Wizard of the North to all the years that run, 
 you will recall the figure of Old Mortality at his patient 
 task of recutting the names of the worthy dead who, 
 lacking his pious aid, were in danger of being forgot- 
 ten by the living world about them. Well, I have 
 sometimes thought that in a manner I was following
 
 98 AMPHORA 
 
 those Old World footsteps of the stonecutter when, 
 for example, I made the first reprint in 1891 of George 
 Meredith's Modern Lorue. In some of these books 
 " are the broken airs you once loved " — or might 
 come to love if from now on you knew them. In 
 others there is the message of the consecrated ones 
 — the Great Companions of whom we know as they 
 moved and spoke among men only by the record that 
 remains — their book — their Bible ! 
 
 But it would sound unduly egoistic if I took up the 
 various titles and themes, which, so to speak, I have 
 " resown in fields their authors never knew." What 
 I have wished to emphasize is the finely fortuitous 
 manner whereby our bookish loves come to exist and 
 "the unconquerable resurgence of beauty" derived 
 from a long vanished past. It is admittedly some- 
 times difficult to decide as to the letter or the spirit 
 or to what ultimate purpose, even, these men have 
 written. For it must be conceded that " we know 
 very few words of the Divine Language. Most of its 
 sounds are too low and large for us to hear, their 
 vibrations are too infrequent ; we are only aware that 
 a word has been spoken, and some of us do not trouble 
 about it." But one thing we shall find ; all enduring 
 literature " must be writtefi in faith" and this appeal 
 " works solely upon the lonely mind, and has no out- 
 ward aid Those who work for the moment 
 
 have their reward. In every generation they have 
 
 audience fit though many But the few who 
 
 have ears to listen to the voice of Life itself, 7nust 
 it>o)-k by faith. They speak to their kindred in far-off 
 places and far-off times assured of recognition, for, as 
 the poet said, the gods are known to each other." 
 
 * * *
 
 AMPHORA 99 
 
 AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE 
 
 WHAT magic halo rings thj> head, 
 Dream-maiden of a mimtrel dead ? 
 IVhat charm of faerie round thee hovers, 
 That all who listen are thj> lovers ? 
 
 IVhat power yet makes our pulses thrill 
 To see thee at thy window-sill. 
 And by that dangerous cord down-sliding. 
 And through the moonlit garden gliding ? 
 
 True maiden art thou in thy dread ; 
 True maiden in thy hardihead ; 
 True maiden when, thy fears half -over, 
 Thou lingerest to try thy lover. 
 
 And ah ! what heart of stone or steel 
 But doth some stir unwonted feel. 
 When, to the day new brightness bringing. 
 Thou standest at the stair-foot singing ! 
 
 Thv slender limbs in boyish dress. 
 Thy tones half glee, half tenderness, 
 Thou singest, 'neath the light tale's cover. 
 Of thy true love to thy true lover. 
 
 O happy lover, happy maid, 
 Together in sweet story laid ; 
 Forgive the hand that here is baring 
 Your old loves for new lovers' staring ! 
 
 Yet, Nicolette, why fear' st thou fame ? 
 No slander now can touch thy name,
 
 100 AMPHORA 
 
 Nor Scandal's self a fault discovers, 
 Though each newjyear thou hast new lovers. 
 
 Nor, Aucassin, need'st thou to fear 
 These lovers of too late a year. 
 Nor dread one jealous pang's revival ; 
 No lover now can be thj> rival. 
 
 IVbat flower considers if its blooms 
 Light haunts of men, or forest glooms ? 
 IVhat care ye though the world discovers 
 Your flowers of love, O flower of lovers! 
 
 F. W. BOURDILLON. 
 
 AT other times I might mention luxuriating in 
 books, with a peculiar interest in this way, as I 
 remember sitting up half the night to read Paul attci 
 Virginia, which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater, 
 after being drenched in the rain all day ; and at the 
 same place I got through two volumes of Madame 
 d'Arblay's Cainilla. It was on the loth of April, 1798, 
 that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the 
 inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold 
 chicken. The letter I chose was that in which St. 
 Preux describes his feelings as he first caught a 
 glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de 
 Vaud, which I had brought with me as a boti bouche to 
 crown the evening with. It was my birthday, and I 
 had for the first time come from a place in the neigh- 
 bourhood to visit this delightful spot. The road to 
 Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham ; 
 and on passing a certain point you come all at once 
 upon the valley, which opens like an amphitheatre, 
 broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on either
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 side, with "green upland swells that echo to the bleat 
 of flocks " below, and the river Dee babbling over its 
 stony bed in the midst of them. The valley at this 
 time " glittered green with sunny showers," and a bud- 
 ding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the chiding 
 
 stream But besides the prospect which 
 
 opened beneath my feet, another also opened to my 
 inward sight, a heavenly vision, on which were written, 
 in letters large as Hope could make them, these four 
 words, Liberty, Genius, Love, Virtue; which have 
 since faded into the light of common day, or mock my 
 idle gaze. 
 
 The beautiful is vanished, and returns not. 
 
 WILLIAM HAZLITT. 
 
 SPENT LOVE 
 
 WHEN inj;our distant book-lined room, between 
 Grey busts of Clytie and of Socrates, 
 The window glimmers where the ilex trees 
 Have touched the sunset with their fingers green. 
 And twilight blurs the page upon your knees ; 
 
 You stir the coal to make a little flame — 
 /t little fame to idle by and think 
 Of all the squandered work of pen and ink 
 
 Yoit used to send her — and the classic name 
 
 You traced, as dawn came piercing through a chink. 
 
 IV bat has endured ? The fever in the brain ? 
 The fret of meetings where the sapphire seas 
 Gleamed down the avenue of ilex trees — 
 
 The long, long talks that gave some peace again, 
 The longer silence with the evening breeze ?
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 tVbat has survived of love made manifest ? 
 The bright reflection in the convex glass 
 Of golden combs that held the hair like brass ? 
 
 The spell of shape with happy colour blest ? 
 
 Or her bleak words, that all these things should pass ? 
 
 There is a frie{e where a Greek girl secures 
 A loosened sandal. Shej>et lives upon 
 Some stotie that tells us she is dead and gone — 
 
 So round the dome of Time a word endures, 
 
 And she, who uttered it, in Thought, lives on, 
 
 VIOLA TAYLOR. 
 
 SOME thirty years ago, Mr. Lang, in a fine sonnet, 
 drew an imaginative analogy between Homer 
 and the Nile. It is one full of suggestion. Out of 
 trackless and apparently endless desert, the River de- 
 scends into a land of which it is the highway and the 
 life, which it fertilises and renders habitable. Its own 
 life and growth are remote and unknown. Another 
 modern poet has extended the analogy to poetry 
 itself : — 
 
 Or I am like a stream that flows 
 Full of the cold springs that arose 
 
 In morning lands, in distant hills ; 
 And down the plain my channel fills 
 With melting of forgotten snows. 
 
 Modem exploration has tracked the Nile to its source 
 and mapped out its channel and its tributaries. The 
 hidden course of that other stream we cannot retrace ; 
 it still issues in all its volume and splendour out of a 
 land of mystery: nee licuit popnlis parviim te,Homere, 
 videre. 
 
 J. W. MACKAIL.
 
 AMPHORA 103 
 
 PRIVATE collections of books always existed, and 
 these were the haunts of learning, the little glim- 
 mering hearths over which knowledge spread her cold 
 fingers, in the darkest ages of the world 
 
 It is a curious reflection, that the ordinary private 
 person who collects objects of a modest luxury, has 
 nothing about him so old as his books. If a wave of 
 the rod made everything around him disappear that 
 did not exist a century ago, he would suddenly find 
 himself with one or two sticks of furniture, perhaps, 
 but otherwise alone with his books. Let the work of 
 another century pass, and certainly nothing but these 
 little brown volumes would be left, so many caskets 
 full of passion and tenderness, disappointed ambition, 
 fruitless hope, self-torturing envy, conceit aware, in 
 maddening lucid moments, of its own folly 
 
 Perhaps the ideal library, after all, is a small one, 
 where the books are carefully selected and thought- 
 fully arranged in accordance with one central code of 
 taste, and intended to be respectfully consulted at any 
 moment by the master of their destinies 
 
 Voltaire never made a more unfortunate observation 
 than when he said that rare books were worth noth- 
 ing, since, if they were worth anything, they would 
 not be rare. We know better nowadays ; we know 
 how much there is in them which may appeal to only 
 one man here and there, and yet to him with a voice 
 like a clarion. There are books that have lain silent 
 for a century, and then have spoken with the trumpet 
 of a prophecy. We shall disdain nothing ; we shall 
 have a little criticism, a little anecdote, a little bibliog- 
 raphy ; and our old book shall go back to the 
 shelves before it has had time to be tedious in its 
 babbling. edmund gosse.
 
 I04 AMPHORA 
 
 ON AN OLD SONG 
 
 LITTLE snatch of ancient song, 
 IVhat has made thee live so long ? 
 F/).'ing on thy wings of rhyme 
 Lightly down the depths of time, 
 Telling nothing strange or rare, 
 Scarce a thought or image there, 
 Nothing but the old, old tale 
 Of a hapless lover's wail ; 
 Offspring of an idle hour, 
 Whence has come thy lasting power ? 
 Bv what term of rhythm or phrase. 
 By what subtle careless grace, 
 Can thy music charm our ears 
 After full three hundred years ? 
 
 Landmarks of the human mind 
 One by one are left behind, 
 And a subtle change is wrought 
 In the mould and cast of thought ; 
 Modes of reasoning pass away. 
 Types of beautv lose their sway ; 
 Creeds and causes that have made 
 Many noble lives must fade, 
 And the words that thrilled of old 
 Now seem hueless, dead, and cold; 
 Fancy s rainbow tints are flying. 
 Thoughts, like men, are slowly dying ; 
 All things perish, and the strongest 
 Often do not last the longest ; 
 The stately ship is seen no more, 
 The fragile skiff attains the shore;
 
 AMPHORA los 
 
 And while the great and wise decajy, 
 And all their trophies pass awaj>, 
 Some sudden thought, some careless rhyme, 
 Still floats above the wrecks of Time- 
 
 W. E. H. LECKY. 
 
 DOWN to the year 1501 Aldus used the type known 
 as " Roman," which continues in common use 
 to the present day. During that year, however, he 
 introduced a new style of type, copied, it is said, from 
 the handwriting of Petrarch, and cut out by an artist 
 of Bologna. The Virgi/ oi 1501 was the first book in 
 which it was employed, and from that time onwards 
 he used it exclusively. This Prjidentiiis, [referring to 
 the edition of January, 1501], the first of two volumes 
 of Christian Poets that he designed to publish, is 
 probably the last work issued by him in " Roman " 
 type. 
 
 The sign or trade -mark of an Anchor entwined by 
 a Dolphin first appears in the second volume, issued 
 in the course of the year 1502, and was continued in 
 all the publications of the house of Aldus until, after 
 a century of work, it came to an end in 1597. The 
 Anchor and Dolphin were intended to symbolise the 
 two qualities that Aldus sought to combine in his 
 undertakings — swiftness of execution and tenacity of 
 purpose, or speed with caution. To quote his own 
 words, " I can surely affirm that I have as my constant 
 companions the dolphin and the anchor. I have 
 accomplished much by holding fast, and much by 
 pressing on." It was his habit to " make haste slowly." 
 
 F. W. MACDONALD,
 
 io6 AMPHORA 
 
 LIFE is a wild flame. It flickers, the wind blows it, 
 the tides drown it. Perfect life, or that which 
 we on earth call God, is no thunderous thing, clothed 
 in the lightning, but something lovely and unshaken 
 in the mind, in the minds about us, that burns like a 
 star for us to march by, through all the night of the 
 soul. 
 
 JOHN MASEFIELD. 
 
 COMPENSATION 
 
 THOUGH we grow old and slow 
 The children are not so. 
 Their world 's a rose new-oped. 
 Gold-hearted, pearl^' cupped. 
 Golden io-dav : to-morrow ? 
 IVho talked of fear and sorrow ? 
 Their world spreads endlesslv. 
 Golden from sea to sea. 
 
 Our daj>s turn as a wheel 
 
 Flying, a miracle ; 
 
 So fast, without surcease. 
 
 The senses ache for peace. 
 
 So short our days, so long 
 
 Theirs, between song and song, 
 
 So much to see and do 
 
 In a world of gold and blue. 
 
 That which we have foregone 
 Their hands take hold upon. 
 Finish what we let fall ; 
 Make good, atone for all.
 
 AMPHORA 107 
 
 The little beads inherit 
 The crown we missed, and wear it ; 
 The darling shoulders bear 
 Our gold and miniver. 
 
 Though we grow old and pass, 
 The lad we made, the lass, 
 Dance in the wind of Spring, 
 IVhen flowers break, thrushes sing. 
 Gather the daffodil 
 By many a golden bill. 
 Yea, though our suns be set 
 Make us immortal j>et. 
 
 KATHARINE TYNAN. 
 
 TO attempt " to see things as they are in them- 
 selves " is the splendid forlorn hope allotted to 
 Science : it is no work for Poetry. The business of 
 Poetry is to see spirits as they are, and all things as they 
 are in the life of the spirit. This does not imply any 
 forsaking of the ancient way, the way that great poetry 
 has gone in all ages. There will be no forgetting the old 
 beauty, the visible and audible beauty of the never-too- 
 much-loved earth : but it will be remembered and 
 loved as the half-translucent veil of that other beauty, 
 the beauty that is true with the only truth and lasting 
 with the only immortality that are given to us to know. 
 And it may be that that is not all: it may be that 
 there is in poetry the power to reach a still deeper 
 truth, a still profounder being, to draw at times 
 directly from that unseen, unsounded, underlying 
 Pool of Personality, of which our own lives are but 
 momentary jets flung into sunlight. Some among our
 
 io8 AMPHORA 
 
 poets have believed this and transmitted their belief, 
 none in more beautiful lines than these of Mr. Binyon's : 
 
 " There is no longer grief nor joy for me 
 
 But one infinity of life tliat flows 
 
 From the deep ocean heart that no man knows, 
 
 Out into these unnumbered semblances 
 
 Of earth and air, mountains and beasts and trees, 
 
 One timeless flood which drives the circling star 
 
 In furthest heaven, and whose weak waves we are. 
 
 Mortal and broken oft in sobbing foam, 
 
 Yet ever children of that central home, 
 
 Our Peace, that even as we flee, we find ; 
 
 The Road that lies before us and behind, 
 
 By which we travel from ourselves, in sleep 
 
 Or waking, towards a self more vast and deep." 
 
 HENRY NEWBOLT. 
 
 THANATOs, th)> praise I sing, 
 Thou immortal, jyouthful king! 
 Glorious offerings I will bring ; 
 For men saj> thou hast no shrine, 
 And I find thou art divine 
 As no other god : tly rage 
 Doth preserve the Golden Age, 
 IVbat zee blame is tbjy delay ; 
 Cut the flowers ere they decay! 
 
 Come, we would not derogate, 
 Age and nipping pains we hate. 
 Take us at our best estate : 
 JVhile the head burns with the crown. 
 In the battle strike us down ! 
 At the bride-feast do not think 
 From thj> summons we should shrink ; 
 IV e would give our latest kiss 
 To a life still warm with bliss.
 
 AMPHORA 109 
 
 Come and take us to thj> train 
 Of dead maidens on the plain 
 Where white lilies have no slain ; 
 Take us to thejyouths, that thou 
 Lov'st to choose, of fervid brow, 
 Unto whom tbj> dreaded name 
 Hath been simply known as Fame : 
 IVith these unpolluted things 
 Be our endless revellings. 
 
 MICHAEL FIELD. 
 
 WE read the Pagan sacred books with profit and 
 dehght. With myth and fable we are ever 
 charmed, and find a pleasure in the endless repetition 
 of the beautiful, poetic, and absurd. We find, in all 
 these records of the past, philosophies and dreams, 
 and efforts stained with tears, of great and tender 
 souls who tried to pierce the mystery of life and 
 death, to answer the eternal questions of the Whence 
 and Whither, and vainly sought to make, with bits of 
 shattered glass, a mirror that would, in very truth, 
 reflect the face and form of Nature's perfect self. 
 
 These myths were born of hopes, and fears, and 
 tears, and smiles, and they were touched and colored 
 by all there is of joy and grief between the rosy dawn 
 of birth, and death's sad night. They clothed even 
 the stars with passion, and gave to gods the faults 
 and frailties of the sons of men. In them, the winds 
 and waves were music, and all the lakes, and streams, 
 and springs, — the mountains, woods and perfumed 
 dells were haunted by a thousand fairy forms. They 
 thrilled the veins of Spring with tremulous desire ; 
 made tawny Summer's billowed breast the throne and
 
 no AMPHORA 
 
 home of love; filled Autumn's arms with sun -kissed 
 grapes, and gathered sheaves ; and pictured Winter 
 as a weak old king who felt, like Lear upon his 
 withered face, Cordelia's tears. 
 
 ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 
 PAIN 
 
 DISMAL and purposeless and grey 
 The world and all its woe, we say, 
 Poor slaves! who in hot hours of pain 
 Yearn for the night to come again. 
 
 Like tortured men at length set free, 
 We stagger from our misery. 
 And -watch zvith foolish, pain-dimmed eyes 
 yague lands and tinrememhered skies. 
 
 IVhen lo ! what sudden splendour spreads 
 Its heaven of rose above our beads ! 
 What soft winds visit our despair ; 
 What lights, what voices ever^nvhere ! 
 
 Ere sorrow taught us, knew we these 
 Stupendous bills, amazing seas ? 
 Shone there such moonlight on the lawn ; 
 So deep a secret in the dawn ? 
 
 What wandering hue from Paradise 
 Has found a home in children's eyes ? 
 What women these, whose faces bless 
 Life with such tranquil tenderness ? 
 
 When earth and sky and man seem fair, 
 Be this my watchword, this my prayer : 
 Grant me, O Gods, to prize aright 
 Sorrow, since sorrow gives me sight. 
 
 ST. JOHN LUCAS.
 
 AMPHORA lit 
 
 NOTES AND NAMES IN BOOKS 
 
 WHAT a pity it is that all owners of books do not 
 put their signatures on a fly-leaf! — it is more 
 interesting than a book-plate, and takes up less room. 
 It is interesting to learn who have been our predeces- 
 sors, and to trace them, perhaps for four hundred 
 years, would be of exceeding interest. They might 
 add the price they paid, and the place of purchase, as 
 Sir Mark Sykes has done, in an Aldine Fustinus, in 
 red morocco, with yellow silk lining, penes me. But 
 men have owned that book for nearly four centuries, 
 and there is nothing to tell us who they were. Our 
 predecessors in proprietorship shared our tastes, at all 
 events, and if they had taken the trouble to write their 
 names, they might receive from us, and we from them, 
 a slight telepathic impact of a friendly character. 
 
 Our old books are haunted things, but in an obscure 
 way, when they lack signatures. Even marginal notes 
 I own to liking. 
 
 I have an Angler's Vade Mecum, of 1682, with 
 e.\cellent contemporary wrinkles as to flies, on the 
 margins. But who was the angler that indited them > 
 There is nothing to tell. We know we had a friend 
 two hundred years ago, but he is anonymous. As to 
 sketching on margins, do not our old school and col- 
 lege books preserve the profiles of her who then was 
 the fairest fair .-' The melancholy years must have 
 made the designs unrecognizable long ago. 
 
 While thus sympathetic with the habit of impress- 
 ing one's personality on a book, let me add that it 
 must not be a borrowed book, nor an old book, nor a
 
 112 AMPHORA 
 
 beautiful book. We must not scribble on a Shake- 
 speare quarto or folio, but if "the old corrector" has 
 really done so in his day, we might be grateful to him 
 now. 
 
 ANDREW LANG. 
 
 QUOD SEMPER 
 
 Child 
 
 WHAT wind is this across the roofs so softly takes 
 his zvajf, 
 That hardly makes the wires to sing, or soaring smokes 
 to swap ? 
 
 Wind 
 
 / am a wearjy southern wind that blows the livelong day 
 
 Over the stones of Babylon, Babylon, Babylon, 
 The ruined walls of Babylon, all fallen in decay. 
 
 Oh, I have blown o'er Babylon when royal was her state, 
 IVhen fifty men in gold and steel kept watch at every gate, 
 IVhen merchant-men and boys and maids thronged early 
 by and late 
 Under the gates of Babylon, Babylon, Babylon, 
 The marble gates of Babylon, when Babylon was great. 
 
 Child 
 
 Good weary wind, a little while pray let your course be 
 
 stayed. 
 And tell me of the talk they held, and what the people said, 
 The funny folk of Babylon before that they were dead, 
 That walked abroad in Babylon, Babylon, Babylon, 
 Before the towers of Babylon along the ground were laid.
 
 AMPHORA 113 
 
 Wind 
 The folk that walked in Babylon, thejy talked of wind 
 
 and rain, 
 Of ladies' looks, of learned books, of merchants' loss and 
 
 gain, 
 How sitch-an-one loved such-a-maid that loved him not 
 again 
 {For maids were fair in Babylon, Babylon, Babylon), 
 Also the poor in Babylon of hunger did complain. 
 
 Child 
 But this is what the people say as on their way they go, 
 Under my window in the street, I hear them down below. 
 
 Wind 
 IVhat other should men talk about five thousandyears ago ? 
 
 For men they were in Babylon, Babylon, Babylon, 
 That now are dust in Babylon I scatter to-andfro. 
 
 LUCY LYTTELTON. 
 
 THE glory of the world would be lost in oblivion if 
 God had not provided mortals with a remedy in 
 Books. . . . Towers are razed to the earth, cities are 
 overthrown, triumphal arches mouldered to dust ; . . . 
 as long as the Book exists the author cannot perish. 
 
 These are the masters who instruct us without rods 
 and ferrules, without hard words and anger, without 
 clothes or money. If you approach them, they are not 
 asleep ; if investigating you interrogate them, they con- 
 ceal nothing ; if you mistake them, they never grumble ; 
 if you are ignorant, they never laugh at you. 
 
 In Books we find the dead as it were living ; in 
 Books we foresee things to come ; in Books warlike 
 affairs are methodized ; the rights of peace proceed 
 from Books. richard de bury.
 
 114 AMPHORA 
 
 DEy]D POE-TS 
 
 WHERE be they that once would sing, 
 Poets passed from wood and dale ? 
 Fainiljy, now, we touch the string. 
 Faithless, now, we seek the Grail : 
 Shakespeare, Spenser, nought avail, 
 Herrick, England's Oberon, 
 
 Sidney, smitten through his mail. 
 Souls of Poets dead and gone ! 
 
 Ronsard's Roses blossoming 
 
 Long are faded, long are frail ; 
 
 Gathered to the heart of Spring 
 He that sung the breezy flail. ' 
 Ah! could prayer at all prevail. 
 
 These should shine where once they shone. 
 These should 'scape the shadowy pale — 
 
 Souls of Poets dead and gone ! 
 
 IVhat clear air knows Dante's wing ? 
 
 IVhat new seas doth Homer sail ? 
 By what waters wandering 
 
 Tells Theocritus his tale ? 
 
 Still, when cries the Nightingale, 
 Singing, sobbing, on and on. 
 
 Her brown feathers seem to veil 
 Souls of Poets dead and gone. 
 
 Charon, when my ghost doth hail 
 
 O'er Cocytus' waters wan. 
 Land me where no storms assail 
 
 Souls of Poets dead and gone. 
 
 ROSAMUND MARRIOTT WATSON. 
 I Joachim du Bellay.
 
 AMPHORA 115 
 
 IN THE BRIGHT LEXICON OF YOUTH" 
 
 I do not doubt that the passionately-wept deaths of young men 
 are provided for. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 BECAUSE many of the dearest associations of life are 
 centered in and about books, — the tale read to 
 a child by some loved voice forever stilled, — the poem 
 recited under the wide and starry sky in hours of the 
 soul that youth alone reveals to us, — I want to speak 
 of my own experience at a period I can recall with 
 precision, which after more than thirty years seems as 
 of yesterday. 
 
 If I could have my wish granted I would re-live a 
 summer's brief vacation in Springfield, Massachusetts, 
 where, in 1875, I found my friend to be, Leo, a youth- 
 ful High School graduate of that city, whose bright 
 day came to an unexpected end barely four years later.' 
 At this formative epoch of our lives we read the poets 
 old and new. Browning among moderns being our lode- 
 star : — Paracelsus z.n6. The Ring and the Book to-day 
 still weave their magic spell around me. Whitman 
 was not absent from our thought though it must be 
 confessed the Leaves did not pierce home to my heart 
 and brain as they were destined to do a few years later 
 in St. Louis. Extensive if, no doubt, superficial read- 
 ings in Buckle, Draper, Lecky, Spencer, Darwin, Hux- 
 ley, Mill, became joint enthusiasms in the few years 
 
 I His full name was Leopold Lobsitz, and to his memory I have 
 inscribed Amphora. He was born in New York City, October ist, 
 1858, and came with his family to Springfield in 1864. His sudden 
 death took place in Boston, at the Massachusetts General Hospital, 
 February 17th, 1879. Father and mother have since followed their 
 son, whose untimely end wrought such shipwreck of their hope.
 
 ii6 AMPHORA 
 
 we knew each other, and, as I find by reference to a 
 little packet of Leo's letters, our discussions took on at 
 times a varied and even recondite air of investigation ! 
 
 Thus, endowed with a gleam of the Vision Splendid, 
 and like an earlier Marius and Flavian, (whose career 
 as yet " upon the knees of the Gods," we knew not 
 of), we forsook the busy streets and book in hand lost 
 ourselves on long rambles about the beautiful country 
 roads, or, again, in light-oared skiff adventured the 
 broad-bosomed river which steals past Agawam shore 
 on its winding and willow-fringed way to meet and 
 mingle with the flashing waters of the distant Sound. 
 
 Is it not well to speak of these things ? This boy 
 with his love of the True, the Beautiful, the Good, 
 became my friend when conceivably without him I had 
 suffered irreparable life-long loss, — a friendship still 
 having its beneficent results in the best I may hope to 
 achieve. 
 
 Now, whenever I open one of our books of that old 
 time, I am comforted by the words wherein Caponsac- 
 chi takes leave of Pompilia : 
 
 "All this, how far away ! 
 Mere delectation, meet for a minute's dream ! — 
 Just as a drudging student trims his lamp, 
 Opens his Plutarch, puts him in the place 
 Of Roman, Grecian ; draws the patched gown close, 
 Dreams, " Thus should I fight, save or rule the world ! " — 
 Then smilingly, contentedly, awakes 
 To the old solitary nothingness. 
 So I, from such communion, pass content." 
 
 Thus it is I have come to see that the thing of beauty 
 in art, in letters, in music, — in a word the beauty of 
 an idea, — is given to few to create, while to enjoy 
 should be the inalienable birthright of all. Hence I
 
 AMPHORA 117 
 
 accept Literature for what it seemed in those golden 
 hours to my friend and myself, a guidewith whom we 
 could trust ourselves in the dark as with a lamp that 
 the night of ages has never extinguished. What, 
 think you, are all its messages and ministries if not 
 addressed to this eternal need in the soul of man ? 
 
 They cannot fail us — the "prayers of Saints that 
 inly burned," the words of seekers after the Perfect 
 Way. How else evolve a deeper and undying music 
 out of an otherwise dead and dumb Past, — a music 
 born of love and longing inseparable from " that little 
 infinite thing the human heart ? " It was the revela- 
 tion of just this truth, which over thirty years ago 
 came to me and my friend, that I wish to transmit to 
 others who pass along the self-same way. 
 
 " There will come a time, when it shall be light ; and 
 when man shall awaken from his lofty dreams, and Jind 
 his dreams still there, and that nothing has gone save 
 his sleep.^'' * « * 
 
 I TOOK a hansom on to-day 
 For a round I used to know — 
 That I used to take for a woman's sake 
 In a fever of to-and-fro. 
 
 There were the landmarks one and all — 
 iVhat did they stand to show ? 
 
 Street and square and river were there — 
 Where was the antient woe ? 
 
 Never a hint of a challenging hope 
 Nor a hope laid sick and low. 
 
 But a longing dead as its kindred sped 
 A thousand years ago ! 
 
 W. E. HENLEY.
 
 ii8 AMPHORA 
 
 IF we grow tired of an antique time, and desire to 
 to realize our own age in all its weariness and sin, 
 are there not books that can make us live more in one 
 single hour than life can make us live in a score of 
 shameful years ? Close to your hand lies a little vol- 
 ume, bound in some Nile-green skin that has been 
 powdered with gilded nenuphars and smoothed with 
 hard ivory. It is the book that Gautier loved, it is 
 Baudelaire's masterpiece. Open it at that sad madri- 
 gal that begins 
 
 " Que m'importe que tu sols sage.' 
 Sois belle ! et sois triste ! " 
 
 and you will find yourself worshipping sorrow as you 
 
 have never worshipped joy Read the whole 
 
 book, suffer it to tell even one of its secrets to your 
 soul, and your soul will grow eager to know more, and 
 will feed upon poisonous honey, and seek to repent of 
 strange crimes of which it is guiltless, and to make 
 atonement for terrible pleasures that it has never 
 known. And then, when you are tired of these flow- 
 ers of evil, turn to the flowers that grow in the garden 
 of Perdita, and in their dew-drenched chalices cool 
 your fevered brow, and let their loveliness heal and 
 restore your soul ; or wake from his forgotten tomb 
 the sweet Syrian, Meleager, and bid the lover of Heli- 
 odore make you music, for he too has flowers in his 
 song, red pomegranate-blossoms, and irises that smell 
 of myrrh, ringed daffodils and dark-blue hyacinths, 
 and marjoram and crinkled ox-eyes. Dear to him 
 was the perfume of the bean-field at evening, and dear 
 to him the odorous eared-spikenard that grew on the 
 Syrian hills, and the fresh green thyme, the wine-cup's 
 charm. 
 
 OSCAR WILDE.
 
 AMPHORA 119 
 
 SELF-QUESrrON 
 
 Is this wide world not large enouffh to fill thee, 
 Nor Nature, nor that deep man's Nature, Art ? 
 Are they too thin, too weak and poor to still thee, 
 Thou little heart ? 
 
 Dust art thou, and to dust again returnest, 
 
 A spark of fire within a heating clod. 
 Should that be infinite for which thou bnrnest ? 
 Must it be God .? 
 
 MARY E. COLERIDGE. 
 
 MANY a time I have stood before a stall, or a book- 
 seller's window, torn by conflict of intellectual 
 desire and bodily need. At the very hour of dinner, 
 when my stomach clamoured for food, I have been 
 stopped by sight of a volume so long coveted, and 
 marked at so advantageous a price, that I could not 
 let it go ; yet to buy it meant pangs of famine. My 
 Heyne's Tihullus was grasped at such a moment. It 
 lay on the stall of the old book-shop in Goodge Street 
 — a stall where now and then one found an excellent 
 thing among quantities of rubbish. Sixpence was the 
 price — sixpence ! At that time I used to eat my mid- 
 day meal (of course my dinner) at a coffee-shop in 
 Oxford Street, one of the real old coffee-shops, such 
 as now, I suppose, can hardly be found. Sixpence 
 was all I had — yes, all I had in the world; it would 
 purchase a plate of meat and vegetables. But I did 
 not dare to hope that the Tibullus would wait until 
 the morrow, when a certain small sum fell due to me. 
 I paced the pavement, fingering the coppers in my 
 pocket, eyeing the stall, two appetites at combat
 
 120 AMPHORA 
 
 within me. The book was bought and I went Home 
 with it, and as I made a dinner of bread and butter I 
 gloated over the pages. 
 
 In this Tibullus I found pencilled on the last page : 
 " Perlegi, Oct. 4, 1792." Who was that possessor of 
 the book, nearly a hundred years ago ? There was no 
 other inscription. I like to imagine some poor scholar, 
 poor and eager as I myself, who bought the volume 
 with drops of his blood, and enjoyed the reading of 
 it even as I did. How much that was I could not 
 easily say. Gentle-hearted Tibullus ! — of whom there 
 remains to us a poet's portrait more delightful, I think, 
 than anything of the kind in Roman literature. 
 
 An taciturn silvas inter reptare salubres, 
 Curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque est ? 
 
 GEORGE GISSING, 
 "EX UBRIS" 
 
 IN an old book at even as I read 
 Fast fading words adown my shadouy P^S^^ 
 I crossed a tale of how, in other age, 
 At Arqua, with his hooks around him, sped 
 The word to Petrarch ; and with noble head 
 Bowed gently 0'' er his volume that sweet sage 
 To Silence paid bis willing seigniorage. 
 And they who found him whispered, " He is dead! " 
 
 Thus timely from old comradeships would I 
 To Silence also rise. Let there be night, 
 Stillness, and only these staid watchers by. 
 And no light shine save my low study light — 
 Lest of his kind intent some human cry 
 Interpret not the Messenger aright, 
 
 ARTHUR UPSON.
 
 AMPHORA 121 
 
 O WORLD ! whose days like sunlit waters glide, 
 IVhose music links the midnight with the morrow, 
 JVbo for thine own hast Beauly, Power and Pride — 
 O IVorld, what art thou .? And the IVorld replied : 
 "■^ A bush of pleasure round a heart of sorrow" 
 
 O Child of God ! thou who hast sought thy way 
 iVhere all this music sounds, this sunlight gleams, 
 'Mid Pride, and Power, and Beauty day by day — 
 And what art thou ? I heard my own soul say : 
 " A wandering sorrow in a world of dreams.'" 
 
 * 
 
 IT is a pleasant theory to nourish, that every deserv- 
 ing book sooner or later finds its way to those 
 that can love it best. There is fate in these matters : 
 a destiny that leads readers — by devious ways, it is 
 true, and often very slowly, but surely enough — to 
 those authors in whom they find most of that sympathy 
 or attraction which it is the reader's end in life to 
 discover. Some optimistic fatalists go farther and 
 maintain that one always comes to a book at the right 
 moment, and it is certainly true that in any time of 
 stress or dubiety one never fails to find in one's read- 
 ing some striking pertinence or even parallel. Destiny, 
 we may at least affirm, is ever watchful to effect 
 wise introductions. Sometimes her instrument is the 
 reviewer : oftener this meeting grows out of conversa- 
 tions — a new friend always can tell us of a new book : 
 and now and then a belated appreciation performs the 
 office. It pleases me to think at this moment that 
 Destiny has ordained this essay. 
 
 E. V. LUCAS.
 
 122 AMPHORA 
 
 THE THREE FAUSTS 
 
 THE MUSIC OF HELL 
 
 I HAD a dream of wizard harps of hell 
 Beating through starry worlds a pulse of pain 
 That held them shuddering in a fiery spell. 
 Yea, spite of all their songs — a fell refrain 
 IVhich, leaping from some red orchestral sun, 
 Through constellations and through eyeless space 
 Sought some pure core of bale, and finding one 
 (An orb whose shadows flickering on her face 
 Seemed tragic shadows from some comic mime, 
 Incarnate visions mouthing hopes and fears 
 That Fate was playing to the Fiend of Time), 
 Died in a laugh ^mid oceanic tears : 
 " Berlio^," I said, " thy strong hand makes me weep, 
 That God did ever wake a world from sleep.'^ 
 
 THE MUSIC or EARTH 
 
 / had a dream of golden harps of earth : 
 
 And when they shook the web of human life. 
 
 The warp of sorrow and the weft of mirth, 
 
 Divinely trembling in a blissful strife, 
 
 Seemed answering in a dream that master-song 
 
 IVhich built the world and lit the holy skies. 
 
 Oh, then my listening soul waxed great and strong 
 
 Till my flesh trembled at her high replies ! 
 
 But when the web seemed answering lower strings 
 
 IVhich hymn the temple at the god's expense,
 
 AMPHORA 123 
 
 j4nd bid the soul flv low on fleshly zvmgs 
 
 To gather dews — rich honej>-dews of sense, 
 
 " Gounod," I said, " / love that siren-breath. 
 
 Though zvith it chimes the throbbing heart of Death. ^'' 
 
 THE MUSIC OF HEAVEN 
 
 / had a dream of a^ure harps of heaven 
 Beating through starry worlds a pulse of joy, 
 Quickening the light with Lovers electric leaven, 
 Quelling Deaths hand, uplifted to destroy, 
 Building the rainbow there with tears of man 
 High over hell, bright over Night's abysses. 
 The arc of sorrow in a smiling span 
 Of tears of many a lover's dying kisses, 
 And tears of many a Gretchen's towering sorrow, 
 y4nd many a soul fainting for dearth of kin, 
 And many a soul that hath but night for morrow. 
 And many a soul that hath no day but sin ; 
 " Schumann," I said, " thine is a wondrous story 
 Of tears so bright they dim the seraphs' glory." 
 
 THEODORE WATTS-DUNTON. 
 
 CULTURE is the feeling of the induced current — 
 the thrill of the lives of the dead — the charg- 
 ing the nerves of the body and powers of the spirit 
 with the genius that has walked the earth before us. 
 In the borrowed glories of the great for one swift and 
 passing page we walk before heaven with them, breathe 
 the long breath of the centuries with them, know the 
 joy of the gods and live. 
 
 GERALD STANLEY LEE.
 
 124 AMPHORA 
 
 HOW TO OPEN A NEW BOOK 
 
 HOLD the book with its back on a smooth or 
 covered table ; let the front board down, then 
 the other, holding the leaves in one hand while you 
 open a few leaves at the back, then a few at the front, 
 and so go on, alternately opening back and front, 
 gently pressing open the sections till you reach the 
 center of the volume. Do this two or three times and 
 you will obtain the best results. Open the volume 
 violently or carelessly in any one place and you will 
 likely break the back and cause a start in the leaves. 
 Never force the back ; if it does not yield to gentle 
 opening, rely upon it the back is too tightly or strongly 
 lined. A connoisseur many years ago, an excellent 
 customer of mine, who thought he knew perfectly how- 
 to handle books, came into my office when I had an 
 expensive binding just brought from the bindery ready 
 to be sent home ; he, before my eyes, took hold of the 
 volume, and tightly holding the leaves in each hand, 
 instead of allowing them free play, violently opened it 
 in the center and exclaimed, "How beautifully your 
 bindings open ! " I almost fainted. He had broken 
 the back of the volume and it had to be rebound. 
 
 WILLIAM MATTHEWS. 
 
 Man walks the earth, 
 The quintessence of dust : 
 Books, from the ashes of his mirth 
 
 Madness and sorrow, seem 
 To draw the elixir of some rarer gust ; 
 Or, like the Stone of Alchemy, transmute 
 
 Life's cheating dross to golden truth of dream. 
 JOHN TODHUNTER.
 
 AMPHORA 12S 
 
 DUST O' BOOKS 
 
 SLANTWISE one loHg starbeam fiiids 
 y4ccess through the jealous blinds, 
 Lingertngljy, lance at rest 
 On the Poet loved the best, 
 Feeling softly down the shelves 
 Habere trry books reveal themselves ; 
 And, beneath its trembling glow, 
 Faint, fine blooms, like plum-mist show- 
 Dust o' Books, I love you so ! 
 
 Wrecks of olden minstrelsy 
 
 IVben the lilting tide is lee, 
 
 Ride at flood into our cove 
 
 To protest unaltered love ; 
 
 Or, diffused into the night. 
 
 Some sweet Spirit of the Past, 
 
 Poising in an airy flight. 
 
 Doth behold a botne at last 
 
 Here with hooks he fathered when 
 
 He was tangible to men 
 
 — Mew his soul up in some sphere 
 
 iVhen he nnght be basking here ! — 
 
 Now the Lady Moon looks in. 
 
 Searching with her finger thin 
 
 To detect the gentle fluff 
 
 From some rose of long ago, 
 
 IVhich, once found, doth seem enough 
 
 To provoke her tender est glow — 
 
 Dust o' Books, she loves you so ! 
 
 Dust ? Nay, their own ashes rest 
 On the works their love caressed :
 
 126 AMPHORA 
 
 Out of linen and levant 
 Thoughts of masters emanant, 
 From the outer wash of air 
 Their sweet ashes settled there ! 
 This is creed to all of us 
 And dust of earth, unluminous, 
 Hath no gold like this we know 
 Of an otherworldly glow — 
 Dust o' Books, we love you so ! 
 
 ARTHUR UPSON. 
 
 IT is a joy to go through booksellers' catalogues, 
 ticking here and there a possible purchase. For- 
 merly, when I could seldom spare money, I kept cata- 
 logues as much as possible out of sight ; now I savour 
 them page by page, and make a pleasant virtue of the 
 discretion I must needs impose upon myself. But 
 greater still is the happiness of unpacking volumes 
 which one has bought without seeing them. I am no 
 hunter of rareties ; I care nothing for first editions 
 and for tall copies ; what I buy is literature, food for 
 the soul of man. The first glimpse of bindings when 
 the inmost protective wrapper has been folded back ! 
 The first scent of books! The first gleam of a gilded 
 title ! Here is a work the name of which has been 
 known to me for half a lifetime, but which I never yet 
 saw ; I take it reverently in my hand, gently I open it ; 
 my eyes are dim with excitement as I glance over 
 chapter-headings, and anticipate the treat which awaits 
 me. Who, more than I, has taken to heart that sen- 
 tence of the Imitatio — "In omnibus requiem quaesivi, 
 et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro " ? 
 
 GEORGE GISSING.
 
 AMPHORA 127 
 
 THE Ideal Book or Book Beautiful is a composite 
 thing made up o£ many parts and may be made 
 beautiful by the beauty of each of its parts — its liter- 
 ary content, its material or materials, its writing or 
 printing, its illumination or illustration, its binding and 
 decoration — of each of its parts in subordination to 
 the whole which collectively they constitute : or it may 
 be made beautiful by the supreme beauty of one or 
 more of its parts, all the other parts subordinating 
 or even effacing themselves for the sake of this one or 
 more, and each in turn being capable of playing this 
 supreme part and each in its own peculiar and char- 
 acteristic way. On the other hand each contributory 
 craft may usurp the functions of the rest and of the 
 whole and growing beautiful beyond all bounds ruin 
 for its own the common cause. 
 
 T. J. COBDEN-SANDERSON. 
 
 7HE KING 
 
 THE tit'oht doth cut -with shadowy hiife 
 In half the kingdom of the sun ; 
 The red dawn meets with her in strife ; — 
 Vassal of mine I hold each one. 
 The sailors chant beside the mast. 
 The tempests lash the riven foam, 
 But /, the King, am striding fast 
 Before the prow, to guide it home. 
 I am the lover wed to tears, 
 I am the cynic cold and sage, 
 I am the ghost of noble years, 
 I am the prophet lapped in rage. 
 I am the fane no longer trod 
 That moulders on the wild hill-brow ; 
 / am the fresh and radiant god
 
 AMPHORA 
 
 To whom thejyoung religions bow. 
 
 Perfection ■wod'd in many a guise 
 
 Is in my charge, a stabled beast ; 
 
 The myriad moons look from my eyes ; 
 
 The worlds unnamed sit at my feast. 
 
 My glance is in the splendid noon, 
 
 The golden orchid blown of heat ; 
 
 My brow is as the South lagoon, 
 
 And all the stars are at my feet. 
 
 The lost waves moan : I made their song. 
 
 The lost lands dream : I wove their trance. 
 
 The earth is old, and death is strong ; 
 
 Stronger am I, the true Romance. 
 
 R. T. CHANDLER. 
 
 OUR stately Milton said in a passage which is one 
 of the watchwords of the English race, "as 
 good almost kill a man as kill a good Book." But has 
 he not also said that he would "have a vigilant eye 
 how Bookes demeane themselves, as well as men ; and 
 do sharpest justice on them as malefactors"? . . . 
 Yes ! they do kill the good book who deliver up their 
 few and precious hours of reading to the trivial book; 
 they make it dead for them ; they do what Hes in them 
 to destroy '• the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, 
 imbalm'd and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond 
 life ; " they " spill that season'd life of man preserv'd and 
 stor'd up in Bookes." For in the wilderness of books 
 most men, certainly all busy men, musl strictly choose. 
 If they saturate their minds with the idler books, the 
 " good book " which Milton calls " an immortality 
 rather than a life," is dead to them : it is a book sealed 
 up and buried. 
 
 FREDERICK HARRISON.
 
 AMPHORA 129 
 
 THE VOICE OF THE LAWS 
 
 THIS from that soul incorrupt, whom Athens had 
 doomed to the death, 
 IVhen Crito brought promise of freedom : " Vainly thou 
 
 spendest thy breath ! 
 Dost remember the wild coiybantes ? — feel they the knife 
 
 or the rod ? 
 Heed they the fierce summer sun, the frost, or winterly 
 
 flaws ? — 
 If any entreat them they answer, ' we hear but the flutes 
 
 of the God ! ' 
 
 " So even am I, O my Crito ! thou pleadest a losing cause ! 
 Thy words are but sound without import — / hear but 
 
 the voice of the laws ; 
 Aud, know thou ! the voice of the laws is to me as the 
 flutes of the God." 
 
 Thus spake that soul incorrupt. And wherever, since 
 
 hemlock was quaffed, 
 A man has stood forth without fear, has chosen the dark 
 
 deep draught, 
 Has taken the lone one way, nor the path of dishonour has 
 
 trod — 
 Behold ! he, too, hears but the voice of the laws, — the 
 
 flutes of the God ! 
 
 EDITH M. THOMAS. 
 
 WELL, I really hope that we have at last settled 
 the matter; that fine literature is simply the 
 expression of the eternal things that are in man, that 
 it is beauty clothed in words, that it is always ecstasy, 
 that it always draws itself away, and goes apart into 
 lonely places, far from the common course of life.
 
 I30 AMPHORA 
 
 Realise this, and you will never be misled into pro- 
 nouncing mere reading-matter, however interesting, to 
 be fine literature ; and now that we clearly understand 
 the difference between the two, I propose that we 
 drop the " fine" and speak simply of literature. 
 
 But I assure you that, even after having established 
 the grand distinction, it is by no means plain sailing. 
 Everything terrestrial is so composite (except, perhaps, 
 pure music) that one is confronted by an almost end- 
 less task of distinguishing matter from form, and body 
 from spirit. Literature, we say, is ecstasy, but a book 
 must be written about something and about some- 
 body ; it must be expressed in words, it must have 
 arrangement and artifice, it must have accident as well 
 as essence. Consider " Don Quixote " as an example ; 
 it is, I suppose, the finest prose romance in existence. 
 Essentially, it expresses the eternal quest of the 
 unknown, that longing, peculiar to man, which makes 
 him reach out towards infinity; and he lifts up his 
 eyes, and he strains his eyes, looking across the ocean, 
 for certain fabled, happy islands, for Avalon that is 
 beyond the setting of the sun. And he comes into life 
 from the unknown world, from glorious places, and all 
 his days he journeys through the world, spying about 
 him, going on and ever on, expecting beyond every hill 
 to find the holy city, seeing signs, and omens, and tokens 
 by the way, reminded every hour of his everlasting cit- 
 izenship. " From the great deep to the great deep he 
 goes": it is true of King Arthur and of each one of 
 us; and this, I take it, is the essence of " Don Quix- 
 ote," and of all his forerunners and successors. Then, 
 in the second place, you get the eternal moral of the 
 book, and you will understand that I am not using 
 " moral " in the vulgar sense. The eternal moral, then,
 
 AMPHORA 131 
 
 of " Don Quixote " is the strife between temporal and 
 eternal, between the soul and the body, between things 
 spiritual and things corporal, between ecstasy and the 
 common life. You read the book and you see that 
 there is a perpetual jar, you are continually confronted 
 by the great antimony of life. 
 
 ARTHUR MACHEN. 
 
 THE SECRET INN 
 (" The Kingdom is within Yoti") 
 
 ENOUGH of dreams! No longer mock 
 The burdened hearts of men ! 
 Not on the cloud, but on the rock, 
 
 Build thou th_y faith again : 
 O, range no more the realms of air, 
 
 Stoop to the glen-bound streams. 
 Thy hope was all too like despair : 
 Enough, enough of dreams. 
 
 Here, on this earth, the lists are set : 
 
 Here must thou lose or find 
 The Word that when thine eyes are wet 
 
 Shall speak to thine own kind. 
 O, call not to thj> heights a love 
 
 That sees its end so near I 
 If there be ways beyond, above 
 
 Descend, and find them, here. 
 
 Descend, descend, Urania, speak 
 
 To men in their own tongue ! 
 Leave not the breaking heart to break 
 
 Because thine own is strong.
 
 132 AMPHORA 
 
 This is the law, tti dream and deed, 
 
 That heaven must walk on earth ! 
 O, shine upon the humble creed 
 
 Thai holds the heavenly birth. 
 i 
 
 An earth-born creed ? IV e may not praise 
 
 The Eternal's lowly house ; 
 Yet, thro' the rude beams may we ga^e 
 
 And the interwoven boughs. 
 If on the little Child thou shine, 
 
 IVhom, though we dream no more, 
 Here, in the heart's hushed Palestine, 
 
 The magi still adore. 
 
 A lowly creed, a wayside inn 
 
 For wayfarers ! O come. 
 Now that the long dark hours begin. 
 
 Lead thou the nations home ! 
 Shine on the little roof, fair star. 
 
 The thatch in silver steep. 
 That kings may come to it from afar, 
 
 And the shepherds from their sheep. 
 
 ALFRED NOYES. 
 
 THOSE who read and enjoy the same books are of 
 kindred minds, and indeed books are a bond 
 of communion. This is one of the consolations and 
 comforts of Literature that it brings friends to us. 
 Farther than this, I have hosts of friends in this 
 world whom I shall never see or know ; but we have 
 in common a love for the same books.
 
 AMPHORA 133 
 
 GREAT art is never out of date, nor obsolete : like 
 the moral law of Sophocles, "God is great in it, 
 and grows not old " : like the moral law of Kant, it is 
 of equal awe and splendour with the stars. A line of 
 Virgil, written by the Bay of Naples, in some m^st 
 private hour of meditation, all those long years ago ! 
 comes home to us, as though it were our very thought : 
 upon each repetition, experience has made it more 
 true and touching. Or some verse of Arnold, written 
 at Oxford or in London, some few years past : it comes 
 home to us, as though a thousand years had pondered 
 it, and found it true. In beauty and in strength, in 
 beauty of music and in strength of thought, the great 
 artists are all contemporaries: "Vandyke is of the 
 company," now and always : an eternal beauty and 
 strength are upon the great works of art, as though 
 they were from everlasting. 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON. 
 
 ROBERr LOUIS SrEVENSON 
 
 IN his old gusPy garden of the North, 
 He heard lark-time the uplifting Voices call , 
 Smitten through with Voices was the evenfall — 
 /4t last they drove him forth. 
 
 Now there were two rang silver Iv and long ; 
 And of Romance, that spirit of the sun, 
 And of Romance, spirit of youth, was one ; 
 And one was that of Song. 
 
 Gold-belted sailors, bristling buccaneers, 
 The flashing soldier, and the high, slim dame. 
 These were the Shapes that all around him came, - 
 That we let zo with tears.
 
 134 AMPHORA 
 
 His was the unstinted English of the Scot, 
 Clear, nimble, with the scriptural tang of Knox 
 Thrust through it like the far, strict scent of box, 
 To keep it iiiiforgot. 
 
 No frugal Realist, but quick to laugh, 
 
 To see appealing things in all he knew. 
 
 He plucked the sun-sweet corn his fathers grew, 
 
 A)id would have naught of chaff. 
 
 David and Keats, and all good singing men, 
 Take to your hearts this Covenanter^ s son. 
 Gone in mid-j>ears, leaving our years undone. 
 Where you do sing again ! 
 
 LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE. 
 
 THERE is a curious type of us given in one of the 
 lovely, neglected works of the last of our great 
 painters. It is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale church- 
 yard, and of its brook, and valley, and hills, and folded 
 morning sky beyond. And unmindful alike of these, 
 and of the dead who have left these for other valleys 
 and for other skies, a group of schoolboys have piled 
 their little books upon a grave, to strike them off with 
 stones. So, also, we play with the words of the dead 
 that would teach us, and strike them far from us with 
 our bitter, reckless will ; little thinking that those leaves 
 which the wind scatters had been piled, not only upon 
 a gravestone, but upon the seal of an enchanted vault 
 — nay, the gate of a great city of sleeping kings, who 
 would awake for us, and walk with us, if we knew but 
 how to call them by their names. 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN.
 
 AMPHORA 13s 
 
 "A RETURN THROUGH THE HEART TO 
 THE LOST GARDENS OF THE HEART" 
 
 Ecstacy ; the infallible instrument by which fine literature may 
 be discerned from reading-matter. 
 
 AKTHUK MACHEN. 
 
 BELIEVING Literature and Ecstasy convertible terms, 
 I shall give a passage of singular beauty from 
 Hieroglyphics by Arthur Machen, (1902). 
 
 . . . " But, oh ! if we, being wondrous, journey 
 through a wonderful world, if all our joys are from 
 above, from the other world where the Shadowy Com- 
 panion walks, then no mere making of the likeness of 
 the external shape will be our art, no veracious docu- 
 ment will be our truth ; but to us, initiated, the 
 Symbol will be offered, and we shall take the Sign and 
 adore, beneath the outward and perhaps unlovely 
 accidents, the very presence and eternal indwelling 
 of God." 
 
 " Paint, chisel, then, or write" — the law of survival 
 decides what shall last, and what from its own weak- 
 ness will be forgotten. Conceivably it is easy to point 
 out defects ; would it not prove wiser to accord this 
 arts and crafts movement its just due, which is a very 
 decided broadening in the esthetic lives of the young 
 men and women of to-day? For, viewed in any fair- 
 minded way, " this principle of joy in one's labour, of 
 comradeship in one's work," is a very real possession, 
 as old, and as true, and as everlasting as the love of 
 Things Beautiful out of which it was begotten.
 
 136 AMPHORA 
 
 As these words are written the pageant of the 
 punctual year unrolls throughout the land, — Spring's 
 flowing tide of tender green and tints of orchard bloom, 
 lost in a larger life, have ceased on sun -kissed hill and 
 plain. Slowly the high midsummer pomps will make 
 way for Autumn's garnered sheaf, the dead red leaf 
 and trailing vine. Last of all, deep drifts in lonely 
 country roads, the solemn snow-clad forest and surf- 
 tormented wintry shore. And through all this the 
 thought, old as the processional of the year, comes 
 back with insistent thrill : even as these — signs not of 
 extinction but of beneficent change — is that World 
 of Books which carries across the centuries the buried 
 Summers of Literature and the souls of all dead sing- 
 ers : " imbalm'd and treasur'd up on purpose to a Life 
 beyond Life," — immortal thoughts "that pierce the 
 night like stars." 
 
 I give you the end of a golden string, 
 
 Only wind it into a bal), 
 It will lead you in at Heaven's gate 
 
 Built in Jerusalem's wall. 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Often I have been asked: "Had you any motive 
 other than that of craftsmanship in your shaping of 
 material .-' " In answer, I like to assert my belief that 
 my choice has been, and is, guided by a unifying prin- 
 ciple which is responsible for whatever I may select or 
 discard. Confessedly, my work has opened the gates 
 of a luminous world to me. And for this very reason 
 I would transmit what light I may to others, even as 
 in races of old relays of runners passed on the burning 
 torch.
 
 AMPHORA 137 
 
 I am convinced that in literature alone is to be 
 found and cherished the personal might which brings 
 together vanished past and living present. Hence, 
 v^hat I have learned of storm and sun, may I not in 
 my books make over to the men and women who 
 reach out through intellectual sympathy and touch 
 hands with me? The soul of literature is not a dead 
 soul. Its poets and prophets are forever vocable, 
 creating a divine unrest which must unite us all as 
 Brethren of the Book. 
 
 This then is my conclusion in bookmaking as in all 
 other arts : whatsoever we would accomplish with any 
 measurable degree of success must be by our rnvn 
 hearts inspired. By our own hearts, and the resultant 
 knowledge of what other hearts hold precious, — "if 
 aught is precious in the life of man." For we possess 
 but " this short day of frost and sun," wherein to reach 
 out with passionate eagerness toward an Ideal it may 
 well be impossible to attain, and so pass on — if not 
 wholly victors yet undefeated and unafraid. 
 
 " Fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
 
 Sleep to wake." 
 
 * * * 
 
 AH, Sunflower, weary of time, 
 IVho countest the steps of the sun ; 
 Seeking after that sweet golden clime 
 Where the traveller's journey is done ; 
 
 IVhere the Youth pined away with desire, 
 And the pale virgin shrouded in snow, 
 
 Arise from their graves, and aspire 
 IVhere niy Sunflower wishes to go ! 
 
 WILLIAM BLAKE.
 
 138 AMPHORA 
 
 ON THE OLD ROAD 
 
 ONCE in an old forgotten day 
 This hy-track was a trodden waj', 
 But now, so few the steps that pass, 
 The ruts are carpeted with grass. 
 
 The careless brambles trail across, 
 The gravel has its garb of moss, 
 And oft the dawn and dusk go by 
 Unnoted of a human eye. 
 
 But when the languid day is past 
 The slumberous road awakes at last. 
 And many feet resume their way 
 That long have mouldered into clay. 
 
 There is no sound of stealthy tread 
 Along this pathway of the dead — 
 No rustle of the feet that pass 
 Deadened by something else than grass. 
 
 Grey men who toiled and wrought of yore, 
 Lone weary women burdened sore, 
 And little childreii prattling low — 
 / catch their chatter as they go ; 
 
 And here the lover and his maid. 
 Long since in dismal kirkyard laid; 
 And mother with her suckling pressed 
 Against the comfort of her breast. 
 
 They all had passed, their traffic done, 
 Long centuries ere I saw the sun. 
 I stand and watch them wonderingly. 
 Half thinking that they beckon me.
 
 AMPHORA 139 
 
 AT last Maggie's eyes glanced down on the books 
 that lay on the window-shelf, and she half for- 
 sook her reverie to turn over listlessly the leaves of 
 the " Portrait Gallery," but she soon pushed this aside 
 to examine the little row of books tied together with 
 string. " Beauties of the Spectator," " Rasselas," 
 "Economy of Human Lif e," " Gregory's Letters" — 
 she knew the sort of matter that was inside all these: 
 the "Christian Year" — that seemed to be a hymn- 
 book, and she laid it down again ; but Thomas a 
 Kempis? — the name had come across her in her 
 reading, and she felt the satisfaction, which every one 
 knows, of getting some ideas to attach to a name that 
 strays solitary in the memory. She took up the little, 
 old, clumsy book with some curiosity : it had the 
 corners turned down in many places, and some hand, 
 now for ever quiet, had made at certain passages 
 strong pen-and-ink marks, long since browned by time. 
 Maggie turned from leaf to leaf, and read where the 
 quiet hand pointed. . . " Know that the love of thy- 
 self doth hurt thee more than anything in the world. 
 ... If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here 
 or there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou shalt 
 never be quiet nor free from care : for in everything 
 somewhat will be wanting, and in every place there 
 will be some that will cross thee. . . . Both above and 
 below, which way soever thou dost turn thee, every- 
 where thou shalt find the Cross: and everywhere of 
 necessity thou must have patience, if thou wilt have 
 inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown. ..." 
 A strange thrill of awe passed through Maggie while 
 she read, as if she had been awakened in the night by 
 a strain of solemn music, telling of beings whose souls 
 had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went
 
 I40 AMPHORA 
 
 on from one brown mark to another, where the quiet 
 hand seem to point, hardly conscious that she was 
 reading — seeming rather to listen while a low voice 
 said — ... "I have often said unto thee, and now 
 again I say the same. Forsake thyself, resign thyself, 
 and thou shalt enjoy much inward peace. . . . Then 
 shall all vain imaginations, evil perturbations, and 
 superfluous cares fly away; then shall immoderate 
 fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die." 
 
 . . . She read on and on in the old book, devouring 
 eagerly the dialogues with the invisible Teacher, the 
 pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength ; returning 
 to it after she had been called away, and reading till 
 the sun went down behind the willows. . . . She knew 
 nothing of doctrines and systems — of mysticism or 
 quietism ; but this voice out of the far-off middle ages 
 was the direct communication of a human soul's belief 
 and experience, and came to Maggie as an unquestioned 
 message. 
 
 I suppose that is the reason why the small old- 
 fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpence 
 at a book -stall, works miracles to this day, turning 
 bitter waters into sweetness : while expensive sermons 
 and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they 
 were before. It was written down by a hand that 
 waited for the heart's prompting ; it is the chronicle 
 of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust and 
 triumph — not written on velvet cushions to teach 
 endurance to those who are treading with bleeding 
 feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a 
 lasting record of human needs and human consola- 
 tions : the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt and 
 suffered and renounced — in the cloister, perhaps with 
 serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting
 
 AMPHORA 141 
 
 and long fasts and with a fashion of speech different 
 from ours — but under the same silent far-off heavens, 
 and with the same passionate desires, the same striv- 
 ings, the same failures, the same weariness. 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 UNRS SUGGESTED BY ONE OF CHOPIN'S NOCTURNES 
 
 LOVE, when the waning atitiiniit of thp life 
 Shall find thee old and withered as the leaf, 
 IVhen chill October with his windy knife 
 Harvests the faded splendour of the trees, 
 Think that thou too wast lovely once as these ; 
 Till churlish Time came creeping like a thief 
 And stole the lustre from thy raven hair. 
 And brushed the roses from thy rounded cheek. 
 Think that as others even now are fair. 
 Thou too wast beautiful and well beloved ; 
 That in thy veins no sluggish current moved 
 Of hardy strength and goodly maidenhood. 
 Think on the glory of thy lifers brave morn, 
 The free spent days of passion and delight ; 
 Hard with the splendour of the flaming daivn, 
 Sweet with the starlit gloom of restful night. 
 Think thou on this, and age shall never irk ; 
 But even as one that, seeking no man's praise, 
 Sitting alone, reviews his handiwork — 
 Thou, too, shall feel the glow of things achieved, 
 In dreaming on the well-remembered days, 
 Knowing that thou of nothing art bereaved 
 By speeding time and untoward decay. 
 Think upon this, and all thy years shall seem 
 A crowning glory, and decay a dream. 
 
 * *
 
 142 AMPHORA 
 
 SHADOIVS 
 
 WHEN all love's words of passion, spent in vain, 
 Have faltered on thjy lips bent low to kiss, 
 And on the window sobs the fitful rain, 
 
 IVhen in strange shadows of the last abyss 
 Desires and dreams put off their bravery 
 And other worlds are dimmed for love of this, 
 
 IVhen, having done with joy and hope and thee 
 And faces bright with gentle friendliness, 
 I venture that profound, uncharted sea 
 
 IVhose murmurs, swelling near and comfortless, 
 Echo and drift round these frail summer flowers, 
 JVhose ships are tossed in an eternal stress, 
 
 What will avail the shining hills and towers 
 Of some vague land across that sullen main 
 
 If through the splendour of its loveless hours 
 I long for earth's dear vanities again ? 
 
 How the mood for a book sometimes rushes upon 
 one, either one knows not why, or in conse- 
 quence, perhaps, of some most trifling suggestion. 
 Yesterday I was walking at dusk. I came to an old 
 farmhouse; at the garden gate a vehicle stood wait- 
 ing, and I saw it was our doctor's gig. Having passed, 
 I turned to look back. There was a faint afterglow in 
 the sky beyond the chimneys ; a light twinkled at one 
 of the upper windows. I said to myself, Tristram 
 Sliaiidy, and hurried home to plunge into a book which 
 I have not opened for I dare say twenty years.
 
 AMPHORA 143 
 
 Not long ago, I awoke one morning and suddenly 
 thought of the Correspondence between Goethe and 
 Schiller; and so impatient did I become to open the 
 book that I got up an hour earlier than usual. A book 
 worth rising for; much better worth than old Burton, 
 who pulled Johnson out of bed. A book which helps 
 one to forget the idle or venomous chatter going on 
 everywhere about us, and bids us cherish hope for a 
 world " which has such people in 't." 
 
 These volumes I had at hand; I could reach 
 them down from my shelves at the moment when I 
 hungered for them. But it often happens that the 
 book which comes into my mind could only be pro- 
 cured with trouble and delay ; I breathe regretfully 
 and put aside the thought. Ah ! the books that one 
 will never read again. They gave delight, perchance 
 something more ; they left a perfume in the memory ; 
 but life has passed them by for ever. I have but to 
 muse, and one after another they rise before me. 
 Books gentle and quieting; books noble and inspir- 
 ing ; books that well merit to be pored over, not once 
 but many a time. Yet never again shall I hold them 
 in my hand ; the years fly too quickly, and are too few. 
 Perhaps when I lie waiting for the end, some of those 
 lost books will come into my wandering thoughts, and 
 I shall remember them as friends to whom I owed a 
 kindness — friends passed upon the way. What regret 
 
 in that last farewell ! 
 
 GEORGE GISSING. 
 
 ONLY a freakish wisp of hair ? — 
 Nay, but its wildest, its most frolic whorl 
 Stands for a slim, enamoured, sweet-Jleshed girl!
 
 144 AMPHORA 
 
 Poor souls — they have but time and place 
 
 To plaj> their transient little plav 
 
 And sing their singular little song, 
 
 Ere they are rushed away 
 
 Into the antient, undisclosing Night ; 
 
 And none is left to tell of the clear eyes 
 
 That filled them with God's grace, 
 
 And turned the iron skies to skies of gold ! 
 
 None ; but the sweetest She herself grows old — 
 
 Grows old, and dies ; 
 
 And, but for such a lovely snatch of hair 
 
 As this, none — none could guess, or know 
 
 That She was kind and fair, 
 
 And he had nights and days beyond compare — 
 
 Hozv many dusty and silent years ago ! 
 
 W. E. HENLEY. 
 
 IT is through Art, and through Art only, that we can 
 realize our perfection ; through Art, and through 
 Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid 
 perils of actual existence. This results not merely 
 from the fact that nothing that one can imagine is 
 worth doing, and that one can imagine everything, but 
 from the subtle law that emotional forces, like the 
 forces of the physical sphere, are limited in extent and 
 energy. One can feel so much, and no more. And 
 how can it matter with what pleasure life tries to 
 tempt one, or with what pain it seeks to maim and 
 mar one's soul, if in the spectacle of the lives of those 
 who have never existed one has found the true secret 
 of joy, and wept away one's tears over their deaths 
 who, like Cordelia and the daughter of Brabantio, can 
 never die ? 
 
 OSCAR WILDE.
 
 AMPHORA 145 
 
 THERE have been cases of people who were artifi- 
 cers, and even preachers, at heart, who were 
 forced to succumb to the concealed, subconscious 
 artist, when pen touched paper. For example : first 
 logically analyze " Lycidas " ; you will be disgusted 
 just as Dr. Johnson, who had no analysis but the 
 logical, was disgusted. Forget your logic, your com- 
 mon-sense, and read it again as poetry ; you will 
 acknowledge the presence of an amazing masterpiece. 
 An unimportant lament over an unimportant person- 
 age, constructed on an affected pseudo-pastoral plan, 
 full of acrid. Puritanical declamation and abuse, wan- 
 tonly absurd with its mixture of the nymphs and St. 
 Peter ; it is not only wretched in plan but clumsy in 
 construction, the artifice is atrocious. And it is also 
 perfect beauty I It is the very soul set to music; its 
 austere and exquisite rapture thrills one so that I 
 could almost say : he who understands the mystery 
 and the beauty of " Lycidas " understands also the 
 final and eternal secret of art and life and man. 
 
 ARTHUR MACHEN. 
 
 CANTICLES IV. 8 
 
 COME with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from 
 Lebanon, 
 Down with me from Lebanon to sail upon the sea. 
 The ship is wrought of ivorjy, the decks of gold, and there- 
 upon 
 Are sailors singing bridal songs and waiting to cast free. 
 
 Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from 
 Lebanon, 
 The rowers there are ready and will welcome thee with 
 shouts.
 
 146 AMPHORA 
 
 The sails are silken sails and scarlet, cut and sewn in 
 Babylon, 
 The scarlet of the painted lips of women thereabouts. 
 
 And there for thee is spikenard, calamus and cinnamon. 
 Pomegranates and frankincense and flagons full of 
 wine. 
 And cabins carved in cedar wood that came from scented 
 Lebanon, 
 And all the ship and singing crew and rozvers there are 
 thine. 
 
 Come with me from Lebanon, my spouse, with me from 
 Lebanon, 
 They ^re hauling up the anchor and but tarrying there 
 for thee ; 
 The boatswain^ s whistling for a wind, a wind to blow from 
 Lebanon, 
 A wind from scented Lebanon to blow them out to sea. 
 
 I. c. 
 
 WITHOUT doubt, some of the richest and most 
 powerful and populous communities of the 
 antique world, and some of the grandest personalities 
 and events, have, to after and present times, left them- 
 selves entirely unbequeathed. Doubtless, greater than 
 any that have come down to us, were among those 
 lands, heroisms, persons, that have not come down to 
 us at all, even by name, date, or location. Others have 
 arrived safely, as from voyages over wide, centuries- 
 stretching seas. The little ships, the miracles that 
 have buoyed them, and by incredible chances safely 
 conveyed them, (or the best of them, their meaning 
 and essence,) over long wastes, darkness, lethargy.
 
 AMPHORA 147 
 
 ignorance, have been a few inscriptions — a few 
 immortal compositions, small in size, yet compassing 
 what measureless values of reminiscence, contempo- 
 rary portraitures, manners, idioms and beliefs, with 
 deepest inference, hint and thought, to tie and touch 
 forever the old, new body, and the old, new soul. 
 These ! and still these ! bearing the freight so dear — 
 dearer than pride — dearer than love. All the best 
 experience of humanity, folded, saved, freighted to us 
 here. Some of these tiny ships we call Old and 
 New Testament, Homer, yEschylus, Plato, Juvenal, 
 Precious minims ! I think, if we were forced to 
 choose, rather than have you, and the likes of you, 
 and what belongs to, and has grown of you, blotted 
 out and gone, we could better afford, appalling as that 
 would be, to lose all actual ships, this day fastened by 
 wharf, or floating on wave, and see them, with all 
 their cargoes, scuttled and sent to the bottom. 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 ON tVenlock Edge the wood^s in trouble ; 
 His forest fleece the IVrekin heaves ; 
 The gale, it plies the saplings double. 
 And thick on Severn snow the leaves. 
 
 ' T would blow like this through holt and hanger 
 
 IVhen Uricon the city stood : 
 ' T is the old wind in the old anger, 
 
 But then it threshed another wood. 
 
 Then, 't was before my time, the Roman 
 /it yonder heaving hill would stare : 
 
 The blood that warms an English yeoman, 
 The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.
 
 148 AMPHORA 
 
 There, like the wind through woods in riot, 
 Through him the gale of life blew high ; 
 
 The tree of man was never quiet : 
 Then '/ was the Roman, now 't is I. 
 
 The gale, it plies the saplings double, 
 It blows so hard, 7 will soon be gone : 
 
 To-day the Roman and his trouble 
 Are ashes under Uricon. 
 
 A. E. HOUSMAN. 
 
 THE born booklover, I had almost said the born 
 lover of literature, knows the fascination of a 
 really fine edition ; fine in its outer presentation, as 
 well as in its scholarship. There are two kinds of 
 books, preeminently, which seem to have, as it were, 
 a natural claim on this grace: books of poetry, and 
 books of devotion. The Hesperides of Herrick, the 
 minor poems of Milton, the Confessions of St. Augus- 
 tine, the Imitatio, the Book of Psalms, the Book of 
 Job : these are some specimens of literature, which the 
 sense of propriety in us longs to see sent forth into 
 the world, beautifully. Do not tell me, that the form 
 of the characters, the spacing of the lines, the propor- 
 tion of the margins, the surface of the paper, are of no 
 concern, if I am once intent upon the thought and 
 spirit of the things said. They induce in me a better 
 temper for appreciating what is said : for they satisfy 
 and attune more senses than one at the same moment. 
 I confess, and have no desire to escape from, the magic 
 influence of choice surroundings; an influence so deli- 
 cate, subtile, potent, inexpressible, defying analysis. 
 
 HERBERT P. HORNE.
 
 AMPHORA 149 
 
 HOMER 
 
 I THINK that of all recent books the two that have 
 pleased me best and longest are those delightful 
 renderings into English prose of the Greek of Homer 
 and Theocritus, which we owe, the one to Messrs. 
 Henry Butcher and Andrew Lang and the other to 
 Mr. Lang's unaided genius. To read this Odyssey 
 of theirs is to have a breath of the clear, serene airs 
 that blew through the antique Hellas ; to catch a 
 gUmpse of the large, new morning light that bathes 
 the seas and highlands of the young heroic world. In 
 a space of shining and fragrant clarity you have a 
 vision of marble columns and stately cities, of men 
 august in single-heartedness and strength and women 
 comely and simple and superb as goddesses; and with 
 a music of leaves and winds and waters, of plunging 
 ships and clanging armours, of girls at song and kindly 
 gods discoursing, the sunny-eyed heroic age is revealed 
 in all its nobleness, in all its majesty, its candour, and 
 its charm. The air is yet plangent with echoes of the 
 leaguer of Troy, and Odysseus the ready -at-need goes 
 forth upon his wanderings : into the cave of Poly- 
 pheme, into the land of giants, into the very regions of 
 the dead : to hear among the olive trees the voice of 
 Circe, the sweet witch, singing her magic song as she 
 fares to and fro before her golden loom ; to rest and 
 pine in the islet of Calypso, the kind sea-goddess ; to 
 meet with Nausicaa, loveliest of mortal maids ; to 
 reach his Ithaca, and do battle with the Wooers, and 
 age in peace and honour by the side of the wise Penel- 
 ope. The day is yet afar when, as he sailed out to the 
 sunset and the mysterious west, 
 
 Sol con un legno, e con quella compagiia 
 Picciola, dalla qual non fue deserto,
 
 I50 AMPHORA 
 
 the great wind rushed upon him from the new-discov- 
 ered land, and so ended his journeyings forever; and 
 all with him is energy and tact and valour and re- 
 source, as becomes the captain of an indomitable human 
 soul. 
 
 W. E. HENLEY. 
 
 rHE OLD LOVE 
 
 THE new love claims my thoughts all day, 
 But when the day takes flight, 
 And the day's cares are laid away, 
 My dreams are yours all night. 
 
 In dreamsyou are not dead at all. 
 
 In dreams we walk again 
 Under the shining mountain wall 
 
 In golden sun and rain. 
 
 In dreams the old days come once more. 
 
 And not these sad new days 
 IVhen there 's a strange foot on your floor, 
 
 A stranger in your ways. 
 
 In dreamsyou are not old and sad. 
 
 But gay and in your prime, 
 As in the happy days we had, 
 
 In the old loving-time. 
 
 IVhen sleep at last has closed my eyes — 
 
 How the old love endures ! 
 I have forgotten the new ties. 
 
 And I am only yours.
 
 AMPHORA 151 
 
 FOR US, along the great highways of time, those 
 monuments stand — those forms of majesty and 
 beauty. For us those beacons burn through all the 
 nights. Unknown Egyptians, graving hieroglyphs; 
 Hindus, with hymn and apothegm and endless epic; 
 Hebrew prophet, with spirituality, as in flashes of 
 lightning, conscience, like red-hot iron, plaintive songs 
 and screams of vengeance for tyrannies and enslave- 
 ment ; Christ, with bent head, brooding love and peace, 
 like a dove ; Greek, creating eternal shapes of physi- 
 cal and esthetic proportion ; Roman, lord of satire, the 
 sword, and the codex ; — of the figures, some far-off 
 and veiled, others nearer and visible ; Dante, stalking 
 with lean form, nothing but fibre, not a grain of super- 
 fluous flesh ; Angelo, and the great painters, archi- 
 tects, musicians ; rich Shakespeare, luxuriant as the 
 sun, artist and singer of Feudalism in its sunset, with 
 all the gorgeous colours, owner thereof, and using 
 them at will; — and so to such as German Kant and 
 Hegel, where they, though near us, leaping over the 
 ages, sit again, impassive, imperturbable, like the Egyp- 
 tian gods. Of these, and the like of these, is it too 
 much, indeed, to return to our favourite figure, and 
 view them as orbs and systems of orbs, moving in free 
 paths in the spaces of that other heaven, the kosmic 
 intellect, the soul .'' 
 
 WALT WHITMAN. 
 
 I SHOULD like very much to bespeak the interest of 
 you all in the great permanent things in English 
 literature of the present time, — chief of those poetry, 
 then essays, little fugitive volumes, apparently, which 
 have in them the germ of the great thing, of art, of 
 beauty, and of high purpose. 
 
 WALLACE RICE.
 
 152 AMPHORA 
 
 PARADISI GLORIA 
 
 O frate tnio ! ciascuna e cittadina 
 D'una vera citta — .... 
 
 DANTE. 
 
 THERE is a a'tj>, builded bj> no hand, 
 And unapproachable by sea or shore ; 
 And unassailable by any band 
 
 Of storming soldiery for evermore. 
 
 Nor shall we longer spend our gift of time 
 In time's poor pleasures, — domg petty things 
 
 Of work or warfare, merchandise or rhyme ; 
 But we shall sit beside the silver springs 
 
 That flow from God's own footstool, and behold 
 The saints and martyrs, and those blessed few 
 
 IVbo loved us once and were beloved of old 
 To dwell with them and walk with them anew, 
 
 In alternations of sublime repose, — 
 Musical motion, — the perpetual play 
 
 Of every faculty that Heaven bestows 
 
 Through the bright, busy, and eternal day. 
 
 THOMAS WILLIAM PARSONS. 
 
 LIFE is sweet, brother. Do you think so ? There's 
 night and day, brother, both sweet things. 
 There 's sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things. 
 There's likewise a wind on the heath. Who w"ould 
 wish to die ? In sickness, Jasper ? There 's the sun 
 and the stars, brother. And in blindness.'' There's 
 the wind on the heath. 
 
 GEORGE BORROW,
 
 AMPHORA. 153 
 
 ART, music, beautiful nature, poetry, and that queer 
 chaos within our souls of fragmentary and min- 
 gled impressions whence all things beautiful arise, into 
 which all things beautiful resolve — all this has in 
 reality but one fault : that it is unequally distributed. 
 The pity of it is that we, a small class, monopolize all 
 of such consoling things, we who need the least con- 
 soling in life ; that we, having much of everything, 
 should have the whole also of this. The cause of 
 dissatisfaction in many minds, and of a degree even of 
 hostility towards the beautiful uselessnesses of the 
 world, is moreover that these same beautiful useless- 
 nesses which ought in justice to be possessed by all, 
 so often serve to withdraw the attention of those 
 who do possess them (and possess them, as I said, in 
 virtual monopoly), from the necessities of the very 
 creatures who possess in this world nothing save the 
 miserable slightness of their own wants and who 
 among other birthrights of mankind, are disinherited 
 
 also of beauty 
 
 Similarly with beautiful things. There is no doubt 
 that we, privileged people, are given too much of them 
 and give them too much of our attention ; but that is 
 not saying that in the world at large there is too much 
 of them or too much attention given thereunto. It is 
 an evil of distribution. And one result, let us hope, 
 of our thinking somewhat of matters less pleasant, 
 may be, in the long run, in the long-expected future, 
 which yet sometimes comes with a rush, that the less 
 selfish work of the world will be no longer the mere 
 removal of evil, but also the distribution of good ; 
 and among various sorts of good, one of the best is 
 beauty. 
 
 VERNON LEE.
 
 154 AMPHORA 
 
 rsyiRS 
 
 WHEN / consider Life and it s few years — 
 A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun ; 
 A call to battle, and the battle done 
 Ere the last echo dies within our ears ; 
 A rose choked in the grass ; an hour of fears ; 
 The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat ; 
 The burst of music down an unlistening street — 
 / wonder at the idleness of tears. 
 Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight. 
 Chieftains, and bards, aud keepers of the sheep, 
 By every cup of sorrow that you had. 
 Loose me from tears, and make me see aright 
 How each hath back what once he stayed to weep ; 
 Homer his sight, David his little lad ! 
 
 LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE. 
 
 THEOCRITUS 
 
 WITH certain differences it is the same with our 
 Theocritus. From him, too, the mind is borne 
 back to a " happier age of gold," when the world was 
 younger than now, and men were not so weary nor so 
 jaded nor so highly civilised as they choose to think 
 themselves. Shepherds still piped, and maidens still 
 listened to their piping. The old gods had not been 
 discrowned and banished ; and to fishers drawing their 
 nets the coasts yet kept a something of the trace of 
 amorous Polypheme, the rocks were peopled with 
 memories of his plaint to Galatea. Inland, among 
 the dim and thymy woods, bee-haunted and populous
 
 AMPHORA 155 
 
 with dreams of dryad and oread, there were rumours 
 of Pan; and dwellers under thatch — the goatherd 
 mending his sandals, the hind carving his new staff, 
 the girls who busked them for the vintaging — were 
 conscious, as the wind went by among the beeches and 
 the pines, and brought with it the sounds of a lonely 
 and mysterious night, that hard by them in the starry 
 darkness the divine Huntress was abroad, and about 
 the base of ^tna she and her forest maids drove the 
 chase with horn and hound. In the cities ladies sang 
 the psalm of Adonis brought back from " the stream 
 eternal of Acheron." Under the mystic moon love- 
 lorn damsels did their magic rites, and knit up spells 
 of power to bring home the men they loved. Among 
 the vines and under the grey olives songs were singing 
 of Daphnis all day long. There were junketings and 
 dancings and harvest -homes for ever toward; the 
 youths went by to the gymnasium, and the girls stood 
 near to watch them as they went ; the cicalas sang, 
 the air was fragrant with apples and musical with the 
 sound of flutes and running water; while the blue 
 Sicilian sky laughed over all, and the soft Sicilian sea 
 encircled the land and its lovers with a ring of sapphire 
 and silver. To translate Theocritus, wrote Sainte- 
 Beuve, is as if one sought to carry away in one's hand 
 a patch of snow that has lain forgotten through the 
 summer in a cranny of the rocks of .^tna: — "On a 
 fait trois pas a peine, que cette neige deja est fondue. 
 On est heureux s'il en reste assez du moins pour donner 
 le vif sentiment de la fraicheur." But Mr. Lang has so 
 rendered into English the graces of the loveliest of 
 Dorian singers that he has earned the thanks of every 
 lover of true literature. Every one should read his 
 book, for it will bring him face to face with a very
 
 156 AMPHORA 
 
 prince among poets and with a very summer among 
 centuries. That Theocritus was a rare and beautiful 
 master there is even in this English transcript an 
 abundance of evidence. Melancholy apart, he was the 
 Watteau of the old Greek world — an exquisite artist, 
 a rare poet, a true and kindly soul ; and it is very good 
 to be with him. We have changed it all of course, 
 and are as fortunate as we can expect. But it is good 
 to be with Theocritus, for he lets you live awhile in 
 the happy age and under the happy heaven that were 
 his. He gives you leave and opportunity to listen to 
 the tuneful strife of Lacon and Comatas ; to witness 
 the duel in song between Corydon and Battus ; to talk 
 of Galatea pelting with apples the barking dog of her 
 love-lorn Polypheme ; under the whispering elms, to 
 lie drinking with Eucritus and Lycidas by the altar of 
 Demeter, " while she stands smiling by, with sheaves 
 and poppies in her hand." 
 
 It is relief unspeakable to turn from the dust and 
 din and chatter of modern life, with its growing trade 
 in heroes and its poverty of men, its innumerable 
 regrets and ambitions and desires, to this immense 
 tranquillity, this candid and shining calm. 
 
 W. E. HENLEY. 
 
 EPICEDWM 
 
 LIKE to the leaf that falls, 
 Like to the rose that fades, 
 Thou art — and still art not ! 
 We "whom this thought enthralls. 
 We whom this mj'sterj^ shades, 
 Are bared before our lot !
 
 AMPHORA 157 
 
 Like to the light gone out. 
 Like to the sun gone down, 
 Thou art — andj/et we /eel 
 That something more than doubt, 
 A)td tnore than Nature^ s frown, 
 The Great Good must reveal. 
 
 ' T ts not with thankless heart, 
 Norjfet with covert hand, 
 
 IVe reach from deeps to thee : 
 IVe take our grief apart. 
 And with it bravely stand 
 Beside the voiceless sea ! 
 
 O gentle memory mine — 
 I fill the world with thee. 
 And with thy blessing sleep ! 
 But for thy love divine 
 To warm the day for me, 
 IVhy should I wake or weep ? 
 
 HORACE TRAUBEL. 
 
 MATTER is indeed infinitely and incredibly refined. 
 To any one who has ever looked on the face 
 of a dead child or parent the mere fact that matter 
 could have taken for a time that precious form, ought 
 to make matter sacred ever after. It makes no differ- 
 ence what the principle of life may be, material or 
 immaterial, matter at any rate cooperates, lends itself 
 to all life's purposes. That beloved incarnation was 
 among matter's possibilities. 
 
 WILLIAM JAMES,
 
 15S AMPHORA 
 
 MY dream is of a Library in a Garden ! In the 
 very centre of the garden away from house or 
 cottage, but united to it by a pleached alley or pergola 
 of vines or roses, an octagonal book-tower like Mon- 
 taigne's rises upon arches forming an arbour of scented 
 shade. Between the book -shelves, windows at every 
 angle, as in Pliny's Villa library, opening upon a broad 
 gallery supported by pillars of "faire carpenter's work," 
 around which cluster flowering creepers, follow the 
 course of the sun in its play upon the landscape. 
 " Last stage of all," a glass dome gives gaze upon the 
 stars by night, and the clouds by day: "les nuages 
 . . . les nuages qui passent ... la bas ... les mer- 
 veilleux nuages!" And in this (Si^SXto/crjuocr — this 
 Garden of Books — Siii et Afnicorum,'^^o\i\<i. pass the 
 coloured days and the white nights, "not in quite 
 blank forgetfulness, but in continuous dreaming, only 
 half-veiled by sleep." 
 
 A. FORBES SIEVEKING. 
 
 ROMANCE 
 
 AS / came down the Highgate Hill, 
 The Highgate Hill, the Highgate Hill, 
 As I came down the Highgate Hill 
 
 I met the sun's bravado, 
 And saw below me, fold on /old, 
 Grejy to pearl, and pearl to gold, 
 This London like a land of old. 
 The land of Eldorado. 
 
 Oh Drake he was a sailor bold. 
 And Frobisher, Sir IValter, too. 
 But ne'er they saia so rich a realm 
 As this that laj> before us.
 
 AMPHORA 159 
 
 Methinks they strode beside me still, 
 Blood of mv blood, down Highgate Hill, 
 Methinks they felt the self -same thrill 
 And sang the self -same chorus. 
 
 And Keats he joined us half -way down 
 Keats the chemist, Keats the clerk, 
 Oh Keats he joined us half-way down, 
 
 And laughed our lusty laughter. 
 And hailed with us the far lagoons. 
 The mystic groves, the hid doubloons. 
 And all the passionate, splendid noons. 
 
 And the feasts that fall thereafter. 
 
 As arm in arm down Highgate Hill, 
 Down Highgate Hill, down Highgate Hill, 
 As arm in arm down Highgate Hill, 
 
 We met the smCs bravado. 
 And saw below us, fold on fold. 
 Grey to pearl, and pearl to gold. 
 Our London, like a land of old. 
 
 The land of Eldorado. 
 
 H. H. BASHFORD. 
 
 FOR we writers . . . stand at a significant point in 
 time. The dawn of a new age of thought is 
 flushing the sky ; the old order fades ; the old faith, 
 creatress of much glorious work, now dies the natural 
 death of all faiths that have strengthened the feet and 
 lifted the hearts of men through their appointed cen- 
 turies. Reason is crowned, and the trumpets of her 
 ministers. Science and Justice, proclaim her. In these 
 high moments of change, let the lampbearers cling close 
 to their sacred torches ; cherish the flame against storm
 
 i6o AMPHORA 
 
 and tempest, and keep clear their ancient altar-fires, 
 even tliough they cannot keep them bright. Then the 
 great unborn — those who shall follow to expand their 
 genius in conditions of culture, tolerance, and knowl- 
 edge we know not — may say, even of this, our time, 
 that despite perishing principals and decaying conven- 
 tions, despite false teaching, false triumphs and false 
 taste, there were yet those who strove for the imme- 
 morial grandeur of their calling ; who pandered to no 
 temptation from without or from within ; who followed 
 none of the great world-voices, were dazzled by none 
 of the great world-lights, used their gift as a stepping- 
 stone to no meaner life ; but clear-eyed and patient, 
 neither elated nor cast down, still lifted the lamp as 
 high as their powers allowed, still pursued art singly 
 for her own immortal sake. 
 
 EDEN PHILLPOTTS. 
 
 IN PASSING 
 
 1 w AS jy our stepping-stone 
 From the old love to the new — 
 /, who loved j/OH atone ; 
 IVas it I who changed, orjyou ? 
 Now jyou stand on land with jy our own true lover. 
 Poor stone, nty heart, let floods flow over ! 
 
 I was a desert well ; 
 
 Passing, jyou slaked four thirst ; 
 
 IVas the water brackish, tell ? 
 
 Yet jyou found it sweet at first : 
 
 Nowfou lave and bathe in the bounteous river, 
 
 Maj/ sand-storms choke the well for ever. 
 
 GEORGINA B. PAGET.
 
 AMPHORA i6i 
 
 MAN'S DAYS 
 
 A SUDDEN ■wakin\ a sudden weepin' ; 
 A li'l suckin\ a li'l sleepin' ; 
 A cheer s full joys an" a cbeeVs short sorrows, 
 WV a power o' failh in gert to-morrows. 
 
 Young blood red hot an' the love of a maid; 
 
 Wan glorious hour as 'II never fade ; 
 
 Some shadows, some sunshine, some triumphs, some tears ; 
 
 An' a gather in' weight o' the flyin' years. 
 
 Then auld man's talk o' the days behind 'e ; 
 Your darter's youngest darter to mind 'e ; 
 A li'l dreamin', a li'l dyin', 
 A li'l lew corner o' airth to lie in. 
 
 EDEN PHILLPOTTS. 
 
 SHOULD books as they come from the press have a 
 cloth cover or a paper one ? This is a question 
 which, if fairly asked, would, no doubt, result in an 
 answer favouring a change from the prevalent fashion 
 of binding in cloth, covers and stiff boards. Looked 
 at from an artistic point, cloth covers are unsatisfac- 
 tory. Bookbinder's cloth seldom has any of that 
 beauty of grain or texture admired so much in leather, 
 silk, and wool ; and when attempts are made to rib or 
 grain it in order to make the surfaces catch the light 
 and let the shadows fall, the result is a mean and un- 
 successful imitation. Besides, as a piece of decorative 
 furniture, a cloth -bound book is seldom chosen with 
 success ; often too strong in colour for anything to 
 come near it, there is always a cold shine that prevents
 
 i62 AMPHORA 
 
 the eye from resting on it with satisfaction. It is diffi- 
 cult, too, to understand why those who want to have 
 their best books bound in leather of their own liking 
 have to pay for cloth binding which has to be destroyed. 
 Surely if a book is worth keeping it ought to be bound 
 in leather ; and if it is only one of fashion's fancy, and 
 passing interest, paper covers are expensive enough 
 for it. And what designs and illustrations could be 
 printed on these paper covers ! Some would, of course, 
 be as impudently advertising as an importunate poster, 
 but others, and most of them, would be so charmingly 
 beautiful, so subtly artistic and refined, that we could 
 afford to despise the existence of the few vulgar prints. 
 And when these covers became dirty and torn with 
 successive hand-graspings of the interested reader, the 
 book loved and thought w'orthy to be treasured would 
 be bound in leather of a colour and grain chosen by 
 the owner, and if possible an original and beautiful 
 design tooled in gold upon it. Thus would the almost 
 forgotten but ever beautiful Art of Bookbinding be 
 encouraged. 
 
 A DREAM 
 
 MY dead love came to me, and said, 
 " God gives me one hour's rest. 
 To spend tnth thee on earth again : 
 How shall we spend it best ? " 
 
 " IVhy, as of old," I said ; and so 
 
 We quarreir d, as of old : 
 But, when I tiirn'd to make mj> peace, 
 
 That one short hour was told. 
 
 STEPHEN PHILLIPS.
 
 AMPHORA 163 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 O LITTLE waking hour of life out of sleep ! 
 IVhen I consider the many million jyears 
 I was not yet, and the many millionyears 
 I shall_not be, it is easy to think of the sleep 
 I shall sleep for the second time without hopes or fears. 
 Surely my sleep for the million years was deep ? 
 I remember no dreams from the millionyears,and it seems 
 I may sleep for as many million years without dreams. 
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS. 
 
 THERE is another small room filled with 
 books which I have in my mind's eye. 
 It is the room in which Algernon Charles Swinburne 
 thought and read and wrote for more than thirty 
 years. There was no worship of numbers in that 
 chamber. There was worship of quality, not of quan- 
 tity. And it filled one with a deep and quiet peace to 
 gaze on those serene shelves. It is in the power of 
 every booklover to dam the torrent of dead books. 
 It is surprising how few books are alive enough to be 
 housemates. The true test for the booklover is love. 
 If you do not love a book, throw it away. Never 
 surrender to passions or prejudices you do not share. 
 Never yield to reputations. Never let yourself be 
 bullied by authority. 
 
 Let us begin, then, with a private bonfire. After 
 we have flung into the flames all the dead books in 
 our flat or our house, a great wave of spiritual quiet- 
 ude will pass over our soul. It is not so easy to or- 
 ganize a bonfire of books in public libraries. All the 
 bibliophiles and all the pedants would quarrel over 
 the business. All the bookworms and dilettanti would
 
 i64 AMPHORA 
 
 dispute for ever. The Peacockians, for instance, would 
 never part with their esoteric pets. The Borrovians 
 would die rather than see " L'avengro " in a dust- 
 destructor. The Literati would never agree about 
 the fuel for the holocaust. They would wrangle for 
 ever. It would not be possible to settle the contro- 
 versy by means of a Referendum, for the people would 
 vote for nearly all the worst books. 
 
 JAMES DOUGLAS. 
 
 FOR fable is Love's world, bis home, his hirtb-place : 
 Delightedly dwells he 'mongfajys and talismans. 
 And spirits ; and delight edljy believes 
 Divinities, being himself divine. 
 The intelligible forms of ancient poets, 
 The fair humanities of old religion. 
 The power, the beauty, and the majesty, 
 That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, 
 Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, 
 Or chasms and watery depths ; all these have vanished. 
 They live no longer in the faith of reason ! 
 But still the heart doth need a language, still 
 Doth the old instinct bring back the old names. 
 And to yon starry -world they now are gone, 
 Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth 
 IVtth man as with their friend ; and to the lover 
 Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky 
 Shoot influence down : and even at this day 
 'T IS Jupiter who brings what e'er is great. 
 And yenus who brings every thing that 's fair ! 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 (Schiller's Piccolomini.)
 
 AMPHORA 165 
 
 fN THE MILE END ROAD 
 
 HOW like her ! But '/ is she herself, 
 Comes up the crowded street. 
 How little did I think, the morn, 
 Mjy only love to meet ! 
 
 IVbose else that motion and that mien ? 
 
 IVbose else that airj> tread ? 
 For one strange moment I forgot 
 
 Mj> only love was dead. 
 
 AMY LEVY. 
 
 THE COLLECTOR 
 
 A MAN was sitting in his library before the fire, 
 looking at nothing. He was a rich man, and 
 had all that happy people are supposed by the less 
 happy to want. Above all he had perfect taste. His 
 pictures in particular were wonderful : he never made 
 a mistake. 
 
 There came a knock at the door, and the servant 
 entered to say that a small packing-case had just ar- 
 rived, and what was to be done with it. "Bring it 
 here," said his master, " and bring a hammer and 
 screw-driver." 
 
 The box was brought in and opened : it contained a 
 picture which the connoisseur had bought the day 
 before at Christie's, after a hard struggle and at an 
 enormous figure — a small woodland scene by an ex- 
 quisite master, so tender and quiet and true that even 
 unthinking persons who saw it became for the moment 
 hushed and gentle, and sensitive persons almost trem- 
 bled, while artists waved their thumbs at it with mur- 
 murs of amazement and despair.
 
 i66 AMPHORA 
 
 The man set the picture on a chair in a good light 
 and studied it and studied it. 
 
 After a few minutes he rose and went to a cabinet, 
 from a drawer of which he took a large flat parcel. 
 Returning to his seat before the fire, he drew- from the 
 paper an oleograph, representing a sunset, framed 
 atrociously in gilt and as crude and garish as if it had 
 been coloured with orange-peel and sealing-wax. It 
 was the first picture he had ever bought, the founda- 
 tion-stone of his collection. He had saved up for it 
 when he was only ten, and for some years it had hung 
 in his bedroom and rejoiced him night and morning. 
 
 As he looked at it now' his eyes filled with tears. 
 
 E. V. LUCAS. 
 
 OVER the rim of the Moor., 
 And under the starrj> sky, 
 Two men came to my door 
 And rested them thereby. 
 
 Beneath the hough and the star. 
 In a whispering foreign tongue, 
 
 They talked of a land afar 
 And the merry days so young! 
 
 Beneath the dawn and the bough 
 
 I heard them arise and go : 
 And my heart it is aching now 
 
 For the more it will never know. 
 
 Why did they two depart 
 
 Before I could understand ? 
 IVhere lies that land, O my heart ? 
 
 — O my heart, where lies that land? 
 
 " Q."
 
 AMPHORA 167 
 
 TO C. M. P. 
 
 OLOVE, in whose hearl-nmrmured name 
 Is charm against life's endless wrong, 
 Since all the untuned world became 
 Inj/ou a song! 
 
 I bring not onl_y all I wrought 
 Into the faltering words of speech, 
 I dedicate the song I sought 
 Yet could not reach, 
 
 Nay, all that passionately fired 
 My heart with hope for ever new 
 Of unattained, but deep-desired 
 Beauty, to you. 
 
 LAURENCE BINYON. 
 
 WE cannot afford to let go the Shining Ones upon 
 the heights. It does not matter that the 
 heights are so high, that our intelligences climb up so 
 poor a portion of the way. He would be a liar full of 
 impudence who should dare to say that he felt wholly^ 
 at ease with the awful Milton or Dante, with the sol- 
 emn meditations of Browne, with the dread death- 
 march over death of dread Lucretius. There are 
 times when the high things of art seem almost incred- 
 ible ; magnificent delusions, golden dreams : their cre- 
 ators' pains must surely have been too vast for bear- 
 ing. We, with our little lamps of intelligence in our 
 hands, go tremblingly through the sacred dimness, 
 hoping to comprehend at last a little more. Our rev- 
 erence is a religion ; genius, like love and beauty, is a
 
 i68 AMPHORA 
 
 pledge of divinity and the everlasting ; a light perfected 
 lyric lures us heavenward ; and from of old come the 
 proudest and the clearest voices. The voices of the 
 day must wait for their consecrate authority and con- 
 firmed applause till Time, the just, shall please. Take 
 me with you in spirit, Ancients of Art, the crowned, 
 the sceptred, whose voices this night chaunt 2, gloria in 
 excelsis, flooding the soul with a passion of joy and 
 awe. 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON. 
 
 THE TORN LETTER 
 
 IroR'Ej'oiir letter into strips 
 No bigger than the tinv feathers 
 That ducks preen out in changing weathers 
 Upon the shifting ripple-tips. 
 
 Thereafter on my bed alone 
 I seemed to see you in a vision, 
 And hear j/ou say : "IVhy this derision 
 
 Of one drawn to you, though unknown?" 
 
 Yes, eve's quick mood had run its course, 
 The night had cooled my hasty madness ; 
 I suffered a regretful sadness 
 
 IVhich deepened into real remorse. 
 
 I thought what pensive, patient days 
 A soul must know of grain so tender ; 
 How much of good must grace the sender 
 
 Of such sweet words in such bright phrase. 
 
 Uprising then, as things unpriced 
 I sought each fragment, patched and mended;
 
 AMPHORA 169 
 
 The Diidiiigbt faded ere I had ended 
 And gathered words I had sacrificed. 
 
 But some, alas, of those I threw. 
 
 Were past my search, destroyed for ever : 
 They were your name and place ; and never 
 
 Did I regain those clues to yon. 
 
 And having missed, by rash unheed. 
 My first, last, only means to know you. 
 It dawned on me I must for go you, 
 
 And at the sense I ached indeed. 
 
 That ache for you, got long ago. 
 Comes back ; I never could outgrow it. 
 IVhat a revenge did you but know it ! 
 
 But that you will not, cannot know. 
 
 THOMAS HARDY. 
 
 IF ecstasy be present, then I say there is fine literature, 
 if it be absent, then, in spite of all the cleverness, 
 all the talents, all the workmanship and observation 
 and dexterity you may show me, then, I think, we have 
 a product (possibly a very interesting one), which is 
 not fine literature. 
 
 Of course you will allow me to contradict myself, 
 or rather, to amplify myself before we begin to discuss 
 the matter fully. I said my answer was the word, 
 ecstasy ; I still say so, but I may remark that I have 
 chosen this word as the representative of many. Sub- 
 stitute, if yo'u like, rapture, beauty, adoration, wonder, 
 awe, mystery, sense of the unknown, desire for the 
 unknown. All and each will convey what I mean ;
 
 I70 AMPHORA 
 
 for some particular case one term may be more appro- 
 priate than another, but in every case there will be 
 that withdrawal from the common life and the com- 
 mon consciousness which justifies my choice of 
 " ecstasy " as the best symbol of my meaning. I 
 claim, then, that here we have the touchstone which 
 will infallibly separate the higher from the lower in lit- 
 erature, which will range the innumerable multitude of 
 books in two great divisions, which can be applied 
 with equal justice to a Greek drama, an eighteenth 
 century novelist, and a modern poet, to an epic in 
 twelve books, and to a lyric in twelve lines. 
 
 ARTHUR MACHEN. 
 
 Not to-daj>, 
 For the first time, thy friend zv as to thee dead: 
 To thee he died, when first be parted from thee. 
 
 I shall grieve dozen this blow, of that I'm conscious : 
 
 IVbat does not man grieve down ? From the highest, 
 
 As from the vilest thing of every day 
 
 He learns to zvean himself: for the strong hours 
 
 Conquer him. Yet I feel what I have lost 
 
 In him. The bloom is vanished from my life. 
 
 For O ! he stood beside me, like niy youth, 
 
 Trans form' d for me the real to a dream, 
 
 Clothing the palpable and the familiar 
 
 IVith golden exhalations of the dawn. 
 
 Whatever fortunes wait my future toils. 
 
 The beautiful is vanished — and returns not. 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
 (Schiller's WallenUein.)
 
 AMPHORA 171 
 
 I LONGED fo bring von fJmvers in May-time, 
 But all the rose-buds were unblown; 
 I throbbed to see you through the day-time. 
 But not till night-fall dared I near you 
 Lest you should learn that one could fear you, 
 Gift I had none — 
 For you a rose, a rose alone. 
 
 But June has wrought its old fulfilling, 
 
 Mv heart is all a burning rose ; 
 
 And yet the night-fall vague and stilling 
 
 Brings me to you as hushed and often 
 
 My wonder's whirling glow to soften. 
 
 For no one knows 
 
 IVhat hides in its dim blue repose. 
 
 GORDON BOTTOMLEY. 
 
 LITERATURE has commonly been called humane, by 
 way of precept and of praise : if that fact be well 
 taken to heart, it rebukes our solitary pride in our own 
 works, and it calms our feverish concern for our own 
 times : it fills the mind with a cheering sense of secur- 
 ity and of companionship. In the humanities of lit- 
 erature, its various occupation with the whole mind of 
 man, consist its value and its power : and the famous 
 phrase in Terence, which declares the natural sympa- 
 thy of man with man, serves further to declare the 
 natural sphere of men's most natural art, the art of 
 letters. The most enduring things, in a world of 
 growth and change, are the human passions and the 
 human sentiments : it is the office of good literature, 
 the distinction of classical literature, to give form in
 
 172 AMPHORA 
 
 every age to the age's human mind. Knowledge 
 increases ; the history of one age is the intellectual 
 inheritance of the next. 
 
 LIONEL JOHNSON. 
 
 O EARTH, my mother ! not upon thj> breast 
 IVould I my heavy head in death recline, 
 IVoiild I lay down these weary limbs of mine 
 IVhen the great Voice shall call me into rest. 
 Too well have I obeyed thy gay behest, 
 Too eagerly have worshipped at thy shrine ; 
 The better part of all my life was thine, 
 I used thee as a lover not a guest. 
 I would not make with thee my dying bed, 
 Low, low beneath thy lowest let me be ; 
 Far from thy living, farther from thy dead. 
 From every fetter of remembrance free. 
 Deep in some ocean cave, and overhead 
 The ceaseless sounding of thy waves, O Sea ! 
 
 MARY E. COLERIDGE. 
 
 1 COMPARE the life of the intellectual to a long wedge 
 of gold — the thin end of it begins at birth, and 
 the depth and value of it go on indefinitely increasing 
 till at last comes Death (a personage for whom 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne had a peculiar dislike, for his 
 unmannerly habit of interruption), who stops the 
 auriferous processes. Oh the mystery of the name- 
 less ones who have died when the wedge was thin and 
 looked so poor and light ! Oh the happiness of the 
 fortunate old men whose thoughts went deeper and 
 deeper like a wall that runs out into the sea ! 
 
 PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON.
 
 AMPHORA 173 
 
 THE BOOKS I SHALL NOT READ AGAIN 
 
 There is no booke so bad, but some commodity may be gotten 
 by it. For as in the same pasture, the Oxe findeth fodder, the 
 Hound a Hare ; the Stork a Lizard, the faire niaide flowers; so 
 we cannot, except wee list our selves, saith Seneca, but depart the 
 better from any booke whatsoever. 
 
 Pbacham's CoinpUat Gentleman, 1634. 
 
 THERE is a passage in The Private Papers of 
 Henry Ryecroft, (1903) which George Gissing 
 must have written in sad sincerity out of a heart 
 steeped in the bitter waters of experience. As I read 
 it, my own youthful days and nights return to me with 
 fond persistence akin to a tender and living sorrow. 
 " Ah," he cries out, " the books that one will never 
 read again ! " And then goes on, " I have but to muse 
 and one after another they arise before me." 
 
 Yes, they do indeed arise before me as well! Most 
 poignantly of all the set of BeWs British Theatre'^ 
 bought by an indulgent father in the winter of 1866-67 
 when I crossed the Atlantic to meet him in Hamburg, 
 and began a voyage which did not end until the late 
 summer months of 1870. This particular collection 
 bore the delicately written signature of an unchronicled 
 and shadowy Ja7ie Sonntag in each of its thirty-four 
 volumes, unearthed in an old bookshop near the Elbe 
 where, on a top shelf, it had awaited the coming of the 
 small American. The set comprised one hundred and 
 forty distinct compositions, ranging from tragedy, 
 comedy and opera, to mask, (it opens with Milton's 
 Cofnus), and gave what must have been at the time — 
 
 I Bell's British Theatre. A coUecction of the most celebrated 
 Comedies and Dramas, with about 120 fine Portraits of Actors in 
 Character. Complete set, 34 vols., 18 mo. Calf. London, 1792. — 
 Bookseller's Catalogue.
 
 174 AMPHORA 
 
 the dates are 1 790 to 1 799, — a popular reprint of " the 
 most esteemed plays " ever brought together to delight 
 the heart of any man or woman who loved Old Eng- 
 lish Comedy as it was then acted upon the living stage. 
 There was, to be sure, the earlier and more justly fa- 
 mous Dodsley Collection ; but I was not aware of its 
 existence. Therefore, it is to John Bell, iHritiHli li- 
 brary. Strand, that I trace my knowledge of Con- 
 greve, Cibber, Farquhar, Vanburgh, and even Wycher- 
 ley ! I wish it were within my limits or power to go 
 into more explicit details of what this New World, 
 which was the Old World of the Eighteenth Century 
 reborn for my especial delight, has ever since meant to 
 me. Other and later, perhaps wiser and better, book- 
 loves have I met in the mid-forest of life, but it is 
 BelVs British Theatre which first unlocked to me the 
 treasure-trove of English literature. No one told me 
 — no one guided me, — yet I heard the immortal Lit- 
 yerses-song that once, and once only, is permitted the 
 listening ear of Youth when Youth broods over all. 
 
 Now, how gladly would I know the history of my 
 set of Old Plays. Who was Jane Sonntag, its original 
 owner, and what chain of fell circumstance sent these 
 volumes to the second-hand shop at Hamburg ? Pes. 
 sibly no other form of human art retains that first fine 
 careless rapture — the magic of a forgotten day — still 
 alive to work its will upon me as do these dear, dumpy 
 eighteenmos. My regard for George Farquhar dates 
 from this period; The Recruiting Officer, Sir Harry 
 Wildair, The Inconstant, The Beaux' Strategem — a 
 world of passionate dust, once living, but now gone ! 
 The name itself — Jane Sonntag! In reading the tra- 
 gedy of Gustavus Vasa I found an old-fashioned pin, 
 hand wrought, with welded head, inserted as a place-
 
 AMPHORA 175 
 
 mark when the volume was laid aside for that day's 
 reading, and if ever resumed this little relic would serve 
 as a reminder. Truly, it may belong to the period, 
 " when these old plays were new." 
 
 No 1 I shall never again read books as I once read 
 them in my early seafaring when all the world was 
 young, when the days were of tropic splendour, and 
 the long evenings were passed with my books in a 
 lonely cabin dimly lighted by a primitive oil -lamp, 
 while the ship was ploughing through the boundless 
 ocean on its weary course around Cape Horn. These 
 shadows of the past are still very real to me. But fellow- 
 travellers over the same road may be reminded by my 
 musings of familiar stations which they passed likewise 
 in their life's journey. 
 
 All genuine love of poetry, as it now appears to me, 
 is born in us, — a divine birthright, — a gift not to be 
 bought, but, given the happy moment, capable of 
 flaming into undying life of the deeper soul. What 
 I would deprecate is the sometime lack of appreciation 
 on the part of those who only see its youthful incerti- 
 tude, its childish hesitations, its mere bashfulness. 
 For the love of Beauty as first revealed must never be 
 set down to sentimentalism — must never be discred- 
 ited or made ashamed. It is the one thing which if 
 lacking nothing else can take its place. In it we hear 
 in the dewy morn of Life, amidst the old garden of 
 Paradise, what we know instinctively is none other 
 than the voice of God coming from " where the great 
 Voices sound and Visions dwell." 
 
 ' ' Is it a dream ? 
 
 Nay but the lack of it the dream, 
 
 And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream. 
 
 And all the world a dream." 
 
 * * *
 
 176 AMPHORA 
 
 O 
 
 H, snows so pure ! oh, peaks so high ! 
 I lift to you a hopeless eye. 
 
 I see your icy ramparts drawn 
 Between the sleepers and the dawn. 
 
 I see you, when the sun has set, 
 Flush with the dying daylight yet. 
 
 I see you, passionless and pure, 
 Above the lightnings stand secure ; 
 
 But may not climb, for now the hours 
 Are spring's, and earth a ma^e of flowers. 
 
 And now, mid summer's dust and heat, 
 I stay my steps for childish feet. 
 
 And now, when autumn glows, I fear 
 To lose the harvest of the year. 
 
 Now winter frowns, and life runs slow. 
 Even on the plains I tread through snow. 
 
 IVhileyou are veiled, or dimly seen. 
 Only reveal what might have been ; 
 
 And where high hope would once aspire 
 Broods a vast storm-cloud dealing fire. 
 
 Oh, snows so pure ! oh, peaks so high ! 
 I shall not reach you till I die. 
 
 LEWIS MORRIS.
 
 INDEX TO AUTHORS
 
 IVhere dates of birth and death are not given it is 
 assumed that the zvriter is living. Such omissions are 
 from inabilitj) to find anjf information in the accredited 
 reference books. 
 
 The quotations are cited either by the first line if a 
 poem or, if in prose, the opening words of the selection.
 
 INDEX TO AUTHORS 
 
 Alexander, Russell 
 
 St. Martin's bells and Bow bells 
 
 Anonymous * * (living) 
 
 The sun and moon and stars are mine 
 
 This is the height of our deserts 
 
 Writ on a ruined palace in Kashmir 
 
 For our part, we can see . 
 
 Within the Book I, reading, found . 
 
 I raise my glass Carthusian brew 
 
 Rock, rock, O weary world 
 
 If I, not ignorant of defeat and pain 
 
 Was it some sad-eyed Florentine 
 
 Once in an old forgotten day . 
 
 Love, when the waning autumn 
 
 When all love's words of passion 
 
 The new love claims my thoughts all day 
 
 Should books as they come 
 
 Archer, William (1856- ) 
 
 What is a miracle 
 
 Arnold, Matthew (1822-15 
 Even if good literature 
 The great men of culture 
 
 Bashford, Henry Howarth (1880- 
 As I came down the Highgate Hill 
 
 Benson, E. F. (1867- ) 
 
 There is a beautiful old story . 
 
 30 
 31 
 37 
 39 
 51 
 70 
 86 
 
 138 
 141 
 142 
 
 150 
 161 
 
 36 
 
 56 
 
 158
 
 i8o INDEX TO AUTHORS 
 
 BiNYON, Laurence (1869- ) 
 
 The reading of a great poem • • • 33 
 
 Love, in whose heart . . . . 167 
 
 Blake, William (1757-1827) 
 
 Ah, Sunflower, weary of time . . 137 
 
 Bland, Mrs. Hubert (Sei^ E. Nesbit) 
 
 Borrow, George (i 803-1 881) 
 
 Life is sweet, brother . . . . 152 
 
 BOTTOMLEY, GORDON 
 
 1 longed to bring you flowers . . . 171 
 
 BouRDiLLON, F. W. (1852- ) 
 
 What magic halo 99 
 
 Brooke, Rupert 
 
 Here in the dark, O heart ... 26 
 
 BucKE, Richard Maurice (1837-1902) 
 
 Dedication of Costiiic Consciousness . . 38 
 
 Burroughs, John (1837- ) 
 
 To dig into the roots .... 6 
 
 Butler, Alfred J. (1850- ) 
 
 The beauty of a statue .... 52 
 
 For in the end scholarship ... 56 
 
 C , L 
 
 Come with me from Lebanon . . . 145 
 
 C , L. A. 
 
 Take it up and drink of it . . . 82 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas (1 795-1881) 
 
 If a book come from the heart . . 8 
 
 Chandler, R. T. 
 
 The night doth cut with shadowy knife 127
 
 INDEX TO AUTHORS i8i 
 
 Cobden-Sanderson, T. J. 
 
 The Book Beautiful .... 51 
 
 The Ideal Book- 127 
 
 Colborne-Veel, Mary (New Zealand) 
 
 Dear books ! and each the living soul . 78 
 
 Coleridge, Mary E. (1861-1907) 
 
 Pour me red wine ..... 22 
 
 Is this wide world not large enough . 119 
 
 Earth, my mother . . . 172 
 
 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834) 
 
 For fable is Love's world . . . 164 
 Not to-day 170 
 
 CoRNFORD, Frances 
 
 1 laid me down upon the shore . . 67 
 
 Courtney, W. L. (1850- ) 
 The Point of View : 
 
 T. Said the Star to the Moth . . 17 
 
 II. Said the Moth to the Star . . 18 
 
 Davidson, John (1857-1909) 
 
 There is a dish to hold the sea . . 45 
 
 I felt the world a-spinning on its nave . 57 
 
 Whether he be Homer .... 69 
 
 De Bury, Richard (1281-1345) 
 
 The glory of the world . . . . 113 
 
 DoBSON, Austin (1S40- ) 
 
 When finis comes 69 
 
 Yes; when the ways oppose (T. Gautier) 94 
 
 Douglas, James 
 
 There is another small room , . . 163 
 
 Du Maurier, George (1834-1896) 
 
 A little work, a little play . . . 46
 
 i82 INDEX TO AUTHORS 
 
 Eliot, George (1819-1880) 
 
 At last Maggie's eyes 
 Ellis, Havelock (1859- ) 
 
 The present is in every age 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882) 
 
 We are as much informed 
 
 Consider what you have 
 Falkner, John Meade 
 
 What matter though my room be small 
 Field, Michael (The Misses Bradley?) 
 
 Thanatos, thy praise I sing 
 Gautier, Theophile (1811-1872) 
 
 Yes; when the ways oppose (Dobson) 
 
 Gibson, Elizabeth 
 
 The Rose of Passion, heavy with desire 
 
 Nothing is ours .... 
 
 Gibson, Wilfrid Wilson 
 
 Is there no ending of song 
 GissiNG, George (1857-1903) 
 
 Many a time I have stood before a stall 
 
 It is a joy to go through . . . catalogues 
 
 How the mood for a book 
 GossE, Edmund (1840- ) 
 
 Artist in verse ..... 
 
 White violet garlands . . . 
 
 Private collections of books 
 Guild, Reuben A. (1822-1899) 
 
 But is there to be no End 
 Hamerton, Philip Gilbert (1834-1894) 
 
 I compare the life .... 
 Hardy, Thomas (1840- ) 
 
 I tore your letter into strips
 
 INDEX TO AUTHORS 183 
 
 Harrison, Frederic (1831- ) 
 
 Our stately Milton said in a passage 
 
 Hazlitt, William (1778-1830) 
 
 I feel as I read that if the stage 
 At other times I might mention 
 
 Heath, Ella 
 
 I am the reality of things that seem 
 
 Henley, William Ernest (1851-1903) 
 Take, dear, my little sheaf of songs 
 I took a hansom on to-day 
 Only a freakish wisp of hair 
 I think that of all recent books 
 With certain differences . 
 
 Herrick, Robert (1868- ) 
 
 For out of the panorama of sense . 
 
 HiNKSON, Katharine Tynan (1861- ) 
 Everything has an ending 
 Though we grow old and slow 
 
 Hole, W. G. 
 
 Ten thousand years ago . . . . 
 
 Hood, Thomas (1779-1845) 
 
 But still for Summer dost thou grieve 
 Look how the lark soars upward 
 
 Hopkins, Father Gerard (1844-1889) 
 
 I have desired to go 
 HoRNE, Herbert P. 
 
 The born booklover, I had almost said 
 
 HuusMAN, A. E. (1859- ) 
 
 On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble 
 
 Hunt, Leigh (i 784-1 859) 
 The shape of the jar 
 
 45 
 100 
 
 52 
 
 61 
 117 
 
 143 
 149 
 
 154 
 
 33 
 
 85 
 106 
 
 90 
 
 49 
 
 75 
 
 76 
 148 
 147
 
 i84 INDEX TO AUTHORS 
 
 Ingersoll, Robert G. (i 833-1 
 
 In that vast cemetery, called the Past 
 
 We read the Pagan sacred books . 
 James, William (1842-1911) 
 
 Matter is indeed .... refined 
 Jammes, Francis {See A. Lenalie) 
 
 Tell me, tell me, shall I ever . 
 Jefferies, Richard (1846-1S87) 
 
 Is there anything so delicious . 
 Johnson, Lionel (i 867-1902) 
 
 O rare divinity of Night . 
 
 News ! Good News! at the old year's end 
 
 Great art is never out of date . 
 
 We cannot afford to let go 
 
 Literature has commonly been called 
 Lang, Andrew (1844-1912) 
 
 Far in the Past I peer, and see 
 
 Suppose, when now the house is dumb 
 
 Notes and Names in Books 
 Lecky, W. E. H. (1838-1903) 
 
 Little snatch of ancient song . 
 Lee, Gerald Stanley (1861- ) 
 
 A true and classic book . 
 
 Culture is the feeling 
 Lee, Vernon (See Violet Paget 1856- ) 
 
 Art, music, beautiful nature, poetry . 
 Le Gallienne, Richard (1866- ) 
 
 And Books! those miraculous memories 
 
 When do I love you most 
 Lenalie, A. (translator. See Francis Jammes) 
 Levy, Amy (1861-1889) 
 
 How like her! But 't is she herself 
 
 87 
 109 
 
 157 
 
 IS 
 
 19 
 64 
 
 133 
 167 
 171 
 
 42 
 
 53 
 III 
 
 104 
 
 SO 
 123 
 
 55 
 55 
 
 165
 
 INDEX TO AUTHORS 185 
 
 Lewes, George Henry (1817-1878) 
 
 Quintus Curtius tells us that ... 73 
 Lowell, James Russell (1819-1881) 
 
 Poetry has a key which unlocks . . 7 
 Lucas, E. V. 
 
 It is a pleasant theory to nourish . . 121 
 
 A man was sitting in his library . . 165 
 Lucas, St. John 
 
 Dismal and purposeless and grey . . no 
 Lyttelton, Lucy (Lucy Masterman) 
 
 What wind is this across the roofs . . 112 
 Macdonald, F. W. (1842- ) 
 
 Few of man's works last so long . . 63 
 
 Down to the year 1501 Aldus used . • 105 
 
 Machen, Arthur (1863- ) 
 
 I should scarcely be justified ... ii 
 
 Well, I really hope that we have at last . 129 
 
 There have been cases of people . . 145 
 
 If ecstasy be present .... 169 
 
 Mackail, J. W. (1859- ) 
 
 The Roman empire perished ... 23 
 
 The highest object of the critical faculty 28 
 
 During a brief and brilliant period . . 70 
 
 Our last word on poetry .... 76 
 
 When we speak of the poetry of any age 84 
 
 For the actual Shakespeare ... 90 
 
 Some thirty years ago, Mr. Lang . . 102 
 
 MACLEOD, Fiona {See William Shaip) 
 
 Dedication of From the Hills of Dream . 36 
 
 Maeterlinck, Maurice (1862- ) 
 
 Our lives must be spent seeking our God 25 
 
 Maeterlinck and his Art . . . . 58
 
 i86 INDEX TO AUTHORS 
 
 Mallarm^, Sti^phane (1842-1898) 
 
 The flesh is sad, alas . . . . 72 
 
 Masefield, John 
 
 O Beauty, I have wandered far . . 88 
 
 Life is a wild flame 106 
 
 Masterman, Lucy {See Lucy Lyttelton) 
 
 Matthews, William (i 822-1 896) 
 
 How to Open a New Book . . . 124 
 
 McCarthy, Justin Huntly (i860- ) 
 
 On level lines of woodwork stand . . 59 
 
 McChesney, Dora G. (1871- ) 
 
 See, but the urn we hold .... 77 
 
 Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873) 
 
 Dedication to the memory of his wife . 13 
 
 Moore, T. Sturge 
 
 Li what does the plastic beauty . . 63 
 
 Morley, John (1838- ) 
 
 Books outside of the enchanted realm . 29 
 
 Morris, Sir Lewis {1833- .' ) 
 
 Oh, snows so pure . . . . . 176 
 
 MosHER, Thomas B.* * * (1852- ) 
 
 " Before Books and After Books" . . 3 
 
 " The Vision Splendid " . . . . 65 
 
 "Sacred Tilings Never Die " ... 79 
 
 " The Great Companions "... 96 
 
 " In the Bright Lexicon of Youth " . . 115 
 " The Lost Gardens of the Heart" . . 13S 
 The Books I Shall Not Read Again . 173 
 
 Nesbit, E. (Mrs. Hubert Bland, 1858- ) 
 
 " The leaves of life are falling one by one " 14 
 
 Newbolt, Henry (1862- ) 
 
 To attempt " to see things as they are " . 107
 
 INDEX TO AUTHORS 187 
 
 Newman, Cardinal (1801-1890) 
 
 Let us consideri too, how differently young 40 
 
 No YES, Alfred (1880- ) 
 
 Enough of dreams ! No longer mock , 131 
 Paget, Geurgina B. 
 
 I was your stepping-stone . . . 160 
 
 Paget, Violet (See Vernon Lee) 
 Parsons, Thomas William (1819-1892) 
 
 There is a city, builded by no hand . . 152 
 Phillips, Stephen (1868- ) 
 
 My dead love came to me, and said . 162 
 
 Phillpotts, Eden (1862- ) 
 
 For we writers . . . . . . 1 59 
 
 A sudden wakin' i6i 
 
 Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur ("Q." 1863- ) 
 
 Over the rim of the Moor . . . 166 
 
 Raleigh, Walter (1861- ) 
 
 It is not amid the bustle of the live senses 60 
 
 While persons count for much . . 77 
 
 Randell, Wilfrid L. 
 
 The man of business, chancing upon . 68 
 
 Reese, Lizette Woodworth (1856- ) 
 
 In his old gusty garden of the North . 133 
 When I consider Life and its few years . 154 
 
 Renan, Ernest (1823-1892) 
 
 Dedication of Lr/e of Jestis . . . 27 
 
 Rice, Wallace (1859- ) 
 
 I should like very much to bespeak . 151 
 
 Robinson, A. Mary F. (1857- ) 
 
 I have caught but a glimpse . . . 11 
 
 The whole day long I sit and read . . 41
 
 i88 INDEX TO AUTHORS 
 
 Ross, Robert (1869- ) 
 
 In the glens of Parnassus there are hidden 72 
 
 RuNCiE, John (South Africa) 
 
 I have drunk the Sea's good wine . . 62 
 
 RusKiN, John (1819-1900) 
 
 A book is essentially not a talked thing . 44 
 
 There is a curious type of us given in one 134 
 
 Sharp, William (1856-1906. See Macleod) 
 
 When I speak of Criticism I have in mind 89 
 
 SiEVEKiNG, A. Forbes (1857- ) 
 
 My dream is of a Library . . . . 158 
 
 Source Unknown* 
 
 Sing some old exulting song ... 2 
 
 O World! whose days like sunlit waters . 121 
 
 Those who read and enjoy the same books 132 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis {1850-1894) 
 
 But it is at night, and after dinner . . 93 
 
 Swinburne, A. C. (1837-1909) 
 
 Along these low pleached lanes, . • 34 
 
 Symons, Arthur (1865- ) 
 
 A little hand is knocking at my heart . 47 
 
 The flesh is sad, alas (Mallarme) . . 72 
 
 O little waking hour of life . . . 163 
 
 Taylor, Rachel Annand 
 
 If all the dream-like things are vain . 21 
 
 Oh ! lose the winter from thine heart . 92 
 
 Taylor, Viola 
 
 Where the Tree of Life is blooming . 7 
 
 I 'm going softly all my years . . . 16 
 
 Yea — we have thought of royal robes . 24 
 
 This is the book of Sydney Pickering . 73 
 
 When in your distant book-lined room . loi
 
 INDEX TO AUTHORS 189 
 
 Thomas, Edith M. (1854- ) 
 
 This from that soul incorrupt . . . 129 
 Thoreau, Henry D. (1817-1862) 
 
 No wonder that Alexander ... 53 
 
 Todhunter, John (1839- ) 
 
 Man walks the earth . . . . 124 
 Traubel, Horace (1858- ) 
 
 Like to the leaf that falls . . . . 156 
 
 Tynan, Katharine (.9^1? Hinkson) 
 
 Upson, Arthur (1877-1908) 
 
 Fair crystal cups are dug .... 56 
 
 In an old book at even as I read . . 120 
 
 Slantwise one long starbeam finds . . 125 
 
 Watson, Rosamund Marriott (1863-1911) 
 
 Where be they that once would sing . 114 
 
 Watts-Dunton, Theodore (1832- ) 
 The Three Fausts : 
 
 I. The Music of Hell . . . 122 
 
 II. The Music of Earth . . . 122 
 III. The Music of Heaven . . . 123 
 Whistler, J. A. McNeill (1834-1903) 
 
 False again, the fabled link ... 48 
 
 Whitman, Walt (1819-1892) 
 
 Without doubt, some of the richest . . 146 
 
 For us, along the great highways of time 151 
 
 Wilde, Oscar (1856-1900) 
 
 I can write no stately proem ... 60 
 
 If w^e grow tired of an antique time . 118 
 
 It is through Art, and through Art only . 144 
 
 Wilkinson, James J. G. (1812-1899) 
 
 Once upon a time all books ... 35
 
 192 INDEX TO AUTHORS 
 
 Williams, Iolo Aneurin 
 
 When sleep is with the lily 
 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy {1804-1847) 
 Yes, do you send me a book 
 
 Yeats, William Butler (1865- ) 
 Three types of men have made 
 
 84 
 
 83 
 
 9
 
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