THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ISAAC FOOT
 
 AN EVENING IN MY LIBRARY
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 SONGS TO DESIDERIA 
 
 MEMORIES 
 
 With Twelve Illustrations 
 
 VIVISECTION : 
 
 A HEARTLESS SCIENCE
 
 AN EVENING IN MY 
 LIBRARY AMONG 
 THE ENGLISH POETS 
 
 BY THE HON. STEPHEN COLERIDGE 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
 NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY MCMXVI
 
 -f 
 
 WILLIAM BRENOON AND 60N, LTU., FRINTEHS, fLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
 
 TO 
 
 THE MEMBERS OF THE MESS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SOUTH WALES CIRCUIT 
 
 WITH WHOM I HAVE ASSOCIATED 
 
 IM GENIAL CONFRATERNITY 
 
 FOR A QUARTER OF A CENTURY
 
 Y 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 " '^' "^OU know who critics are ? " wrote 
 Disraeli — " the men who have failed in 
 Hterature and art " ; and Lord Knutsford, 
 exercising with genial pleasure the privileges of a 
 life-long friendship, has alluded to me in public 
 as " a man who tries to write poetry," manifestly 
 leaving the deduction to be made that my 
 activities in this field of effort have failed. 
 
 I seem therefore to possess the necessary 
 qualifications for speaking with weight as a critic, 
 and I cannot escape a sense of chagrin that, 
 through his rigidly denying himself any traffic 
 with the Muses, I am precluded from displaying 
 an affectionate reciprocity to my old friend by 
 deaHng faithfully with his poems in this book. 
 
 But besides possessing the authority to speak 
 as a critic so fehcitously indicated by Lord 
 Knutsford, I can assert supplcmentarily that I 
 have lived all my life in libraries, first in my 
 father's, which was magnificent, and afterwards 
 in my own, which is precious. 
 
 vii
 
 viii An Evening in My Library 
 
 Into the latter, then, I invite the reader to 
 accompany me, where, conversation on this 
 occasion being impossible, he must listen to vv^hat 
 I have to say as we pass from shelf to shelf like 
 bees in a garden. But taste being illusive, if we 
 differ as to which flowers yield honey and which 
 vinegar, he will have to go away and write 
 another book refuting my predilections and 
 aversions, and I being professedly and indeed by 
 consent a man of peace may be trusted to rejoin. 
 
 S. C. 
 
 The Ford, 
 
 Chobham. 
 
 The law of England permits a critic to quote 
 from an author's work enough of the text 
 adequately to illustrate the comments he may 
 make upon it. Nevertheless, I have communi- 
 cated with the owners of the several copyrights 
 wherever I have cited an entire poem or made 
 quotations of more than four or five lines, and 
 among those so addressed I have pleasure in 
 recording that the following persons and firms of 
 publishers have been kind enough to offer no 
 objection to and accept no fee for such quota- 
 tions as occur in this book from poems the 
 copyrights of which have not yet expired : —
 
 Among the English Poets ix 
 
 Mr. Bliss Carman. Miss Harriett Jay for 
 Robert Buchanan. Mr. H. B. Irving for Wills's 
 " Charles I." Mr. William Watson. Mr. Austin 
 Dobson. Messrs. Longmans for Andrew Lang. 
 Messrs. Burns and Gates for Francis Thompson. 
 Dr. Greville Macdonald for George Macdonald. 
 Messrs. George Bell and Sons for Coventry 
 Patmore. John Masefield. Messrs. J. M. Dent 
 and Sons for Walt Whitman. Mr. KipHng 
 and his publisher, Messrs. Methuen and Co. 
 Messrs. George Routledge for Sir Edwin 
 Arnold. Mr. Yeats. Mr. Alfred Noyes. 
 Messrs. Heinemann for Lawrence Hope. Miss 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox and her pubHshers, Messrs. 
 Gay and Hancock, Ltd. Messrs. Sidgwick and 
 Jackson for Rupert Brooke and for EHnor 
 Jenkins. Sir Henry Newbolt. Messrs. Charles 
 Scribner's Sons for Anne Reeve Aldrich. Mr. 
 Robert Ross for Oscar Wilde, and Mr. John 
 Lane for John Davidson and Stephen Phillips.
 
 AN EVENING IN MY LIBRARY
 
 AN EVENING IN MY 
 LIBRARY AMONG 
 THE ENGLISH POETS 
 
 POETRY is the highest expression that 
 man has found for the deepest emotions 
 of his heart, and I imagine that in the 
 language of our Empire has been poured forth 
 the most glorious poetry that the world has 
 known. 
 
 Many and worthy are the anthologies that have 
 been collected by men of letters with far better 
 claim to speak as authorities in taste than I can 
 ever possess, but even so complete a volume as 
 Sir Arthur Quillcr-Couch has given us in his 
 " Oxford Book of English Verse " may fail to 
 comprise some of England's most splendid poems, 
 because, as Dr. Johnson has observed, " what is 
 known is not always present," and " sudden fits 
 of inadvertency will surprise vigilance." 1 have 
 endeavoured to bring forward for the delight
 
 4 A?j Evetiing in My Library 
 
 of the general public some beautiful poems which 
 for one reason or another have hitherto failed to 
 find their way into many of the charming collec- 
 tions that exist. I invite the reader to spend an 
 evening in my library, drawing down a volume 
 here and a volume there, following no definite 
 order either of date or subject, guided only by 
 a desire to estimate without prejudice the quality 
 of the verse. 
 
 When I last visited the United States I en- 
 deavoured to make myself more familiar than I 
 had been before with the poets of that country, 
 and in my reading of them I came upon a little 
 poem that deserves to be famous wherever the 
 English tongue is spoken. It was written by a 
 young American over the grave of a beautiful 
 girl that he had loved and lost and whom he soon 
 followed. The name of this young poet was 
 Charles Henry Luders, and the four stanzas 
 being, as it seems to me, among the most 
 lovely things in the world, they shall serve to 
 open this book : 
 
 Wind of the North, wind of the norland snows, 
 Wind of the winnowed skies, and sharp clear stars, 
 Blow cold and keen across the naked hills, 
 And crisp the lowland pools with crystal films 
 And blur the casement squares with glittering ice, 
 But go not near my love.
 
 Among the 'English Poets c 
 
 Wind of the West, wind of the few far clouds, 
 Wind of the gold and crimson Sunset lands. 
 Blow fresh and pure across the peaks and plains. 
 And broaden the blue spaces of the Heavens, 
 And sway the grasses and the mountain pines, 
 But let my dear one rest. 
 
 Wind of the East, wind of the Sunrise seas, 
 Wind of the clinging mists and gray, harsh rains. 
 Blow moist and chill across the wastes of brine, 
 And shut the sun out and the moon and stars. 
 And lash the boughs against the dripping eaves. 
 Yet keep thou from my love. 
 
 But thou, sweet Wind ! Wind of the fragrant South, 
 
 Wind from the bowers of jasmine and of rose, 
 
 Over magnolia blooms and lilied lakes 
 
 And flowering forests come with dewy wings 
 
 And stir the petals at her feet, and kiss 
 
 The low mound where she lies. 
 
 Luders wrote but little during his short hfe, 
 but if a man has produced but one perfect poem, 
 is he not entitled to sit among the choir of the 
 immortals .'' 
 
 There be poets who have submerged great 
 work in a deluge of dullness. Dean Milman, 
 when he was a youth of twenty-one, wrote a 
 prize poem on the Apollo Bclvidcrc which has
 
 6 An Evening in My Library 
 
 suffered an undeserved eclipse beneath " The 
 Martyr of Antioch," " The FaU of Jerusalem," 
 and other immense works. I have not been so 
 fortunate as to find this fine poem in any anthology 
 I possess, and yet it surely deserves rescue from 
 oblivion. Those who have not been to the 
 Vatican where the great statue by Agasias stands 
 are nevertheless familiar with it in innumerable 
 casts. Agasias of Ephesus was also the creator 
 of " The Dying Gladiator," by fussy critics now 
 called "The Wounded Gaul," which like the 
 Apollo is known all over the world, and although 
 it is, I believe, now the fashion to depreciate 
 the merit of the Apollo, I expect its fame will 
 nevertheless survive. The sculptor has seized 
 the moment when the god has just shot from his 
 bow the arrow that destroyed the python sent 
 by the jealous Juno to persecute his mother 
 Latona, and certainly the dexterity of the artist 
 was sufficient to inspire the poet. 
 
 Heard ye the arrow hurtle in the sky ? 
 
 Heard ye the dragon monster's deathful cry ? 
 
 In settled majesty of calm disdain, 
 
 Proud of his might, yet scornful of the slain, 
 
 The heavenly archer stands — no human birth, 
 
 No perishable denizen of earth ; 
 
 Youth blooms immortal in his beardless face, 
 
 A god in strength, with more than godlike grace ;
 
 Among the English Poets 
 
 All, all divine — no struggling muscle glows, 
 Through heaving vein no mantling life blood flows, 
 But animate with deity alone 
 In deathless glory lives the breathing stone. 
 
 Bright kindling with a conqueror's stern delight 
 His keen eye tracks the arrow's fateful flight ; 
 Burns his indignant cheek with vengeful fire 
 And his lip quivers with insulting ire ; 
 Firm fixed his tread, yet light, as when on high 
 He walks the impalpable and pathless sky ; 
 The rich luxuriance of his hair confined 
 In graceful ringlets, wantons on the wind. 
 That lifts in sport his mantle's drooping fold 
 Proud to display that form of faultless mould. 
 Mighty Ephesian ! With an eagle's flight 
 Thy proud soul mounted through the fields of light, 
 View'd the bright conclave of Heaven's blest abode. 
 And the cold marble leapt to life a god ; 
 Contagious awe through breathless myriads ran 
 And nations bowed before the work of man. 
 For mild he seemed as in Elysian bowers, 
 Wasting in careless ease the joyous hours ; 
 Haughty as bards have sung, with princely sway 
 Curbing the fierce flamc-brcathing steeds of day ; 
 Beauteous as vision seen in dreamy sleep 
 By holy maid on Delphi's haunted steep 
 'Mid the dim tv/ilight of the laurel grove. 
 Too fair to worship, too divine to love !
 
 8 An Evening in My Library 
 
 In the days of Milman (1791-1868) every man 
 of letters, and indeed every educated gentleman 
 and man of fashion, was intimately familiar v^ith 
 the classics and v\^ith the mythology of Greece 
 and Rome ; and the almost total disappearance 
 of this knowledge, as the essential foundation of 
 English education which marks the present day, 
 has inflicted a certain loss of distinction upon 
 modern writing. Could Byron have given us 
 " Childe Harold " if he had not been saturated 
 with the classics ? The methods of the twentieth 
 century which have permitted utilitarianisms to 
 invade education, and have intruded into our 
 public schools something called " the modern 
 side," have naturally educed a human product 
 which has substituted material prosperity for 
 intellectual distinction as the main object of life. 
 
 This change was felt as far back as the days of 
 Wordsworth, and drew from him one of his 
 finest sonnets : 
 
 The world is too much with us ; late and soon 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers ; 
 Little we sec in nature that is ours ; 
 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon ! 
 This sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; 
 The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
 And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers ; 
 For this, for everything, we are out of tune ;
 
 Among the English Poets g 
 
 It moves us not— Great God ! I'd rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ; 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea. 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 
 
 Nothing in modern literature so confirms the 
 contention that a study of the great classics of 
 Greece and Rome will confer a distinction on a 
 poet's work as the beautiful paraphrase of Sappho 
 by Bliss Carman. Here is a Canadian who has 
 written several volumes of poems none of which 
 are comparable with his sHm book of imitations 
 of the fragments of Sappho that have survived. 
 As soon as he steps out of our modern environ- 
 ment into the serene atmosphere of Greece his 
 work rises to a self-contained nobihty not to be 
 found in his other poems. 
 
 Softly the first step of twilight 
 Falls on the darkening dial. 
 One by one kindle the lights 
 In Mitylene. 
 
 Noises arc hushed in the courtyard, 
 The busy day is departing, 
 Children arc called from their games, 
 Herds from their grazing.
 
 I o An Evening in My Library 
 
 And from the deep-shadowed angles 
 Comes the soft murmur of lovers, 
 Then through the quiet of dusk 
 
 Bright sudden laughter. 
 
 From the hushed street, through the portal 
 Where soon my lover will enter, 
 Comes the pure strain of a flute 
 Tender with passion. 
 
 Again : 
 
 With your head thrown backward 
 In my arm's safe hollow, 
 And your face all rosy 
 With the mounting fervour ; 
 
 While the great eyes greaten 
 With the wise new wonder. 
 Swimming in a love-mist 
 Like the haze of autumn ; 
 
 From that throat, the throbbing 
 Nightingale's for pleading, 
 Wayward, soft, and welling 
 Inarticulate love-notes. 
 
 Come the words that bubble 
 Up through broken laughter. 
 Sweeter than spring water, 
 " Gods, I am so happy ! " 
 
 1
 
 Among the English Poets 1 1 
 
 Again : 
 
 O ! but my delicate lover 
 
 Is she not fair as the moonlight ? 
 
 Is she not supple and strong 
 
 For hurried passion ? 
 
 Has not the God of the green world 
 In his large, tolerant wisdom, 
 Filled with the ardours of earth 
 
 Her twenty summers ? 
 
 Well did he make her for loving ; 
 Well did he mould her for beauty ; 
 Gave her the wish that is brave 
 With understanding. 
 
 " O ! Pan, avert from this maiden 
 Sorrow, misfortune, bereavement. 
 Harm and unhappy regret," 
 
 Prays one fond mortal. 
 
 These surely are all exquisite, but the highest 
 note is reached in the following lyric, which even 
 the shade of Sappho herself must applaud : 
 
 I loved thcc, Atthis, in the long ago. 
 
 When the great oleanders were in flower 
 
 In the broad herded meadows full of sun. 
 
 And wc would often at the fall of dusk 
 
 Wander together by the silver stream 
 
 When the soft grass heads were all wet with dew.
 
 12 An Eveni?ig in My Library 
 
 And purple-misted in the fading light. 
 And joy I knew and sorrow at thy voice, 
 And the superb magnificence of love — 
 The loneliness that saddens solitude, 
 And the sweet speech that makes it durable — 
 The bitter longing, and the keen desire, 
 The sweet companionship through quiet days 
 In the slow ample beauty of the world, 
 And the unutterable glad release 
 Within the temple of the holy night. 
 O ! Atthis, how I loved thee long ago 
 In that fair perished summer by the sea ! 
 
 It can be no accident that Bliss Carman 
 throughout this vohime has written no single 
 number in the Sapphic metre, but so perfect is 
 his taste that he must have some reason for the 
 omission that satisfied it. 
 
 We have seen in Dean Milman's poem a vision 
 of Apollo in his power and glory, and in a poem 
 by Robert Buchanan, entitled " The Last Song 
 of Apollo," we have another moving portrayal 
 of the god fading before the overwhelming 
 advance of a more august and surpassing figure. 
 Here are two stanzas from it : 
 
 O Lyre ! O Lyre ! 
 Strung with celestial fire, 
 A living soul of sound that answereth 
 
 Those fingers that have troubled it so long
 
 Among the English Poets i 3 
 
 With passion, and with beauty, and with breath 
 Of melancholy song. 
 Answer, answer, answer me, 
 With thy mournful melody ! 
 For the earth is old and strange 
 Mysteries are working change, 
 And the dead who slumbered deep 
 Startle, sobbing in their sleep, 
 And the ancient gods divine, 
 Wan and weary o'er their wine. 
 Wail in their ghastly banquet-halls with large eyes fixed on mine ! 
 
 Ah woe ! Ah woe ! 
 One climbeth from below, 
 A mortal shape with pallid smile doth rise. 
 
 Bearing a heavy cross and crowned with thorn. 
 His brow is moist with blood, his strange, sweet eyes 
 Look piteous and forlorn ; 
 
 Hark ! oh hark ! His cold footfall 
 
 Breaks upon the banquet-hall ! 
 
 God and goddess start to hear 
 
 Earth, air, ocean moan in fear. 
 
 Shadows of the Cross and Him 
 
 Make the banquet table dim, 
 
 Silent sit the gods divine 
 
 Old and haggard over wine. 
 And slowly to my song they fade with large eyes fixed on mine ! 
 
 Robert Buchanan was a person who Hved a 
 somewhat Bohemian Hfe ; he felt strongly and
 
 14 ^fJ Evening in My Library 
 
 struck about him sometimes with a broadsword, 
 but only at what he thought was base. Under a 
 not very winning exterior there beat a manly and 
 tender heart, and much of his writing shows a 
 wide and beautiful charity ; also he possessed 
 the art of commingling a rare and delicate 
 humour with a profound sadness, and to touch 
 these two strings with mastery is a precious 
 gift: 
 
 THE STARLING 
 
 The little lame tailor 
 
 Sat stitching and snarling — 
 Who in the world was the tailor's darling ? 
 
 To none of mankind 
 
 Was he well inclined, 
 But he doated on Jack, the Starling, 
 
 For the bird had a tongue 
 
 And of words good store. 
 And his cage was hung 
 
 Just over the door ; 
 And he saw the people 
 
 And heard the roar — 
 Folk coming and going 
 
 Evermore, 
 And he looked at the tailor 
 
 And swore.
 
 Among the English Poets 1 5 
 
 From a country lad 
 
 The tailor bought him ; 
 His training was bad, 
 
 For tramps had taught him ; 
 On ale-house benches 
 
 His cage had been 
 While louts and wenches 
 
 Made jests obscene, 
 But he learned, no doubt, 
 
 His oaths from fellows 
 Who travel about 
 
 With kettles and bellows ; 
 And three or four 
 
 (The roundest by far 
 That ever he swore) 
 
 Were taught by a Tar — 
 And the tailor heard — 
 
 " We'll be friends," thought he, 
 *' You're a clever bird 
 
 And our tastes agree. 
 We both are old 
 
 And esteem life base, 
 The whole world cold, 
 
 Things out of place, 
 And we're lonely too 
 
 And full of care, 
 So what can we do 
 
 Rut swear f
 
 1 6 An Evening in My Library 
 
 " The devil take you, 
 How you mutter ! 
 Yet there's much to make you 
 
 Fluster and flutter ; 
 You want fresh air 
 
 And the sunlight, lad, 
 And your prison tliere 
 
 Feels dreary and sad ; 
 And here I frown 
 
 In a prison as dreary. 
 Hating the town 
 
 And feeling weary, 
 We're too confined, Jack, 
 
 And we want to fly. 
 And you blame mankind, Jack, 
 
 And so do I." 
 
 A haggard and ruffled 
 Old fellow was Jack, 
 With a grim face muffled 
 
 In ragged black — 
 And his coat was rusty 
 
 And never neat. 
 And his wings were dusty 
 
 With grime of the street. 
 And he sidelong peered 
 
 With eyes of soot. 
 And scowled and sneered. 
 
 And was lame of a foot !
 
 Among the English Poets ij 
 
 And he longed to go 
 
 From whence he came ; 
 And the tailor, you know, 
 
 Was just the same. 
 
 All kinds of weather 
 
 They felt confined, 
 And swore together 
 
 At all mankind ; 
 For their mirth was done 
 
 And they felt like brothers, 
 And the railing of one 
 
 Meant no more than the other's. 
 'Twas just a way 
 
 They had learnt, you see, 
 Each wanted to say 
 
 Only this, " Woe's me ! 
 I'm a poor old fellow 
 
 And I'm prisoned so. 
 While the sun shines mellow 
 And the corn waves yellow 
 
 And the fresh winds blow ; 
 And the folk don't care 
 
 If I live or die, 
 But I long for air 
 
 And I wish to fly." 
 Yet unable to utter it 
 
 And too wild to bear, 
 They could only mutter it 
 
 And swear.
 
 1 8 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Many a year 
 
 They dwelt in the city 
 In their prison drear, 
 
 And none felt pity — 
 Nay, few were sparing 
 
 Of censure and coldness 
 To hear them swearing 
 
 With such plain boldness. 
 But at last, by the Lord, 
 
 Their noise was stopped, 
 For down on his board 
 
 The tailor dropped, 
 And they found him dead 
 
 And done with snarling, 
 Yet over his head 
 
 Still grumbled the Starling — 
 And when an old Jew 
 
 Claimed the goods of the tailor. 
 And with head askew 
 
 Eyed the feathery railer, 
 And with a frown 
 
 At the dirt and rust 
 Took the old cage down 
 
 In a shower of dust — 
 Jack, with heart aching. 
 
 Felt life past bearing, 
 And shivering, quaking, 
 All hope forsaking, 
 
 Died swearing. 
 
 i 
 
 i
 
 Ajriojig the 'English Poets 19 
 
 THE BOOKW^ORM 
 
 With spectacles upon his nose 
 
 He shuffles up and down ; 
 Of antique fashion are his clothes, 
 
 His napless hat is brown. 
 A mighty watch, of silver wrought, 
 
 Keeps time in sun and rain 
 To the dull ticking of the thought 
 
 Within his dusty brain. 
 
 To see him at the bookstall stand 
 
 And bargain for the prize 
 With the odd sixpence in his hand 
 
 And greed in his grey eyes ! 
 Then, conquering, grasp the book, half blind, 
 
 And take the homeward track 
 For fear the man should change his mind 
 
 And want the bargain back. 
 
 The waves of life about him beat, 
 
 He scarcely lifts his gaze, 
 He hears within the crowded street 
 
 The wash of ancient days — 
 If ever his short-sighted eyes 
 
 Look forward, he can see 
 Vistas of dusty libraries 
 
 Prolonged eternally !
 
 20 An Evening in My horary 
 
 But think not as he walks along 
 
 His brain is dead and cold ; ' 
 
 His soul is thinking in the tongue 
 
 Which Plato spake of old ; 
 And while some grinning cabman sees 
 
 His quaint shape with a jeer 
 He smiles — for Aristophanes 
 
 Is joking in his ear. 
 
 Around him stretch Athenian walks 
 
 And strange shapes under trees ; 
 He pauses in a dream and talks 
 
 Great speech with Socrates. 
 Then as the fancy fails— still meshed 
 
 In thoughts that go and come, 
 Feels in his pouch, and is refreshed 
 
 At touch of some old tome. 
 
 The mighty world of human kind 
 
 Is as a shadow dim ; 
 He walks through life like one half blind 
 
 And all looks dark to him ; 
 But put his nose to leaves antique, 
 
 And hold before his sight 
 Some pressed and withered flowers of Greek 
 
 And all is life and light. 
 
 A blessing on his hairs so grey 
 
 And coat of dingy brown ! 
 May bargains bless him every day 
 
 As he goes up and down ;
 
 Among the English Poets 2 1 
 
 Long may the bookstall-keeper's face 
 
 In dull times smile again, 
 To see him round with shuffling pace 
 
 The corner of the lane ! 
 
 A good old Ragpicker is he 
 
 Who, following morn and eve 
 The quick feet of humanity, 
 
 Searches the dust they leave ; 
 He pokes the dust, he sifts with care, 
 
 He searches close and deep, 
 Proud to discover here and there 
 
 A treasure in the heap ! 
 
 Another man of ability who was a contemporary 
 of Buchanan and wasted great gifts in a somewhat 
 disordered habit of hfe, was Wills. He was a 
 painter of ability, a writer of singular charm, 
 a man of most lovable nature, of incontinent 
 generosity and improvidence ; helped often by 
 friends in vain, disappearing on occasion entirely 
 from view under the inexorable and revenging 
 waves of life, and dying at last forlornly in the 
 ward of a hospital, he nevertheless left behind 
 him a few passages of real excellence. 
 
 His " Olivia " is perhaps the best dramatization 
 of a novel yet seen on our stage, and his " Charles 
 the First," thougli not great literature, contains 
 at least one passage that deserves to survive. At
 
 2 2 An Evening in My Library 
 
 the close of an'act'the^kingjhas beenjbetrayed into 
 the hands of his enemies by the traitor Moray 
 and is called upon to deliver up his sword, but be- 
 fore doing so he is indulged with a few moments' 
 delay while he addresses his betrayer thus : 
 
 I saw a picture once 
 By a great Master ; 'twas an old man's head ; 
 Narrow and evil was its wrinkled front, 
 Eyes close and cunning, a dull vulpine smile — 
 'Twas called a Judas ! Wide that painter erred. 
 Judas had eyes like thine of candid blue. 
 His skin was smooth, his hair of youthful gold, 
 Upon his brow shone the white stamp of truth, 
 And lips like thine did give the traitor kiss ! 
 The king my father loved thine ; at his death 
 He gave me solemn charge to cherish thee, 
 And I have kept it to mine injury. 
 It is a score of years since then, my lord — 
 Hast waited all this time to pay me thus ? 
 
 It may not be without interest to mention 
 that Wills himself once told me that this fine 
 speech was originally written for another play 
 and a ditferent betrayal where a woman was 
 concerned, and that he transferred it with a few 
 necessary alterations into " Charles the First," 
 where in its changed but quite appropriate 
 surroundings it marks the highest literary eleva- 
 tion in the play. When Irving played the part
 
 Among the English Poets 23 
 
 he added at the end of this speech a hne of his 
 own, thus : 
 
 Sir, you demand my sword ; I yield it you. 
 
 which as an actor he deemed to be necessary for 
 his own purposes. To this Wills demurred, but 
 acquiesced. 
 
 There are many fine things buried fathoms 
 deep in forgotten plays ; in the third Act of 
 Wordsworth's " Borderers " will be found these 
 few wonderful lines : 
 
 Action is transitory — a step, a blow, 
 
 The motion of a muscle — this way or that — 
 
 'Tis done, and in the after vacancy 
 
 We wonder at ourselves like men betrayed ; 
 
 Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark, 
 
 And shares the nature of infinity. 
 
 This seems to have something of the grand 
 style of Milton and the earlier classics, yet 
 attuned to the thought and manner of the 
 nineteenth century, although written in the 
 eighteenth at Raccdown, in the year 1796. 
 
 I suppose Milton's " Samson Agonistes " may 
 properly be called a play though composed more 
 in the manner of a dramatic poem. Unlike his 
 *' Comus," which was, as all the world knows, 
 performed at Ludlow Castle, I know of no record 
 of " Samson Agonistes " being performed. It
 
 2 4 An Evening in My Library 
 
 was written when the poet was totally blind, and 
 therefore must have been dictated, which perhaps 
 accounts for the breaks in the blank verse, for the 
 eye must assist the ear to a certain extent in the 
 composition of verse. It is impossible not to 
 recognize the personal note of anguish in the 
 noble complaint of Samson : 
 
 O ! loss of sight, of thee I most complain ! 
 
 BHnd among enemies, O worse than chains, 
 
 Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age ! 
 
 Light, the prime work of God, to me's extinct 
 
 And all her various objects of delight 
 
 Annull'd, which might in part my grief have eased. 
 
 Inferior to the vilest now become 
 
 Of man or worm, the vilest here excel me ; 
 
 They creep, yet see. I dark in light, exposed 
 
 To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and wrong, 
 
 Within doors or without, still as a fool 
 
 In power of others ; never in my own ; 
 
 Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than half. 
 
 O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, 
 
 Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse 
 
 Without all hope of day ! 
 
 O first created beam, and thou great Word 
 
 " Let there be light," and light was over all, 
 
 Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree ? 
 
 The sun to me is dark 
 
 And silent as the moon 
 
 When she deserts the night 
 
 Hid in her vacant interlunar cave.
 
 Among the English Poets 25 
 
 During the great reign of Irving at the Lyceum, 
 he produced a dramatic version of the " Bride of 
 Lammermoor," written by Herman Merivale. 
 I am not aw^are whether it was ever pubHshed, 
 but I was once or twice present at a rehearsal, 
 and took that opportunity to copy out a remark- 
 able passage on the sea and the tides with which 
 one of the acts opened. The scene was a dimly 
 lighted turret of a castle whose narrow deep 
 windows looked out over the moonlit sea far below, 
 and the Master of Ravenswood is discovered in 
 the deep embrasure of one of the windows 
 looking down on the waves, and speaks thus : 
 
 Roll on, roll on, ye everlasting sea, 
 Unstilled of ages and untouched of time. 
 On thy unmeaning mission ! 
 
 Art thou not weary. Ocean, of thy doom 
 
 Of long imprisonment ? Irks it thee not 
 
 To beat thine heart out on the surly coast 
 
 And twice a day the eternal siege renew 
 
 Without an answer on the voice of nature 
 
 To read thee what thou art, and whence, and why ? 
 
 Ah ! yield me up your secrets, sea and stars, 
 And tell me what I am and what ye are. 
 Are we one deathless substance born of God, 
 Or wandering vapours of the nether mist. 
 Self-formed, self-nourished, self-annihilate ?
 
 26 An Evening in My Library 
 
 The tides have inspired many beautiful passages 
 among the poets, as in Keats's last sonnet : 
 
 The moving waters at their priestlike task 
 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, 
 
 and as in Tennyson's " Crossing the Bar," which 
 seems to me the most exquisite allusion to the 
 tides in all literature. All the poets who have 
 gone down to the sea in ships have felt and 
 expressed its wonderful influence ; Arthur Hugh 
 Clough,* who sailed away in search of health 
 to the palms and temples of the South, wrote 
 these lines when far from land : 
 
 Where lies the land to which the ship would go ? 
 Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. 
 And where the land she travels from ? Away, 
 Far, far behind, is all that they can say. 
 
 On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face, 
 Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace ; 
 Or o'er the stern reclining, watch below, 
 The foaming wake far widening as we go. 
 
 On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave 
 How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave ! 
 The dripping sailor on the reeling mast 
 Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past. 
 
 • See my " Memories," page 103.
 
 Among the English Poets 27 
 
 Where lies the land to which the ship would go ? 
 Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. 
 And where the land she travels from ? Away, 
 Far, far behind, is all that they can say. 
 
 This, of course, is not great verse, but there is 
 something of the mystery of the sea in it. 
 
 Clough died when I was seven years old, but 
 I have often heard Matthew Arnold speak of 
 him with the sincerest admiration and affection, 
 and he immortalized his memory in his beautiful 
 monody " Thyrsis," which of all such poems, 
 setting aside " In Memoriam," seems to me to 
 be the most tender and gracious. It is saturated 
 with the same indefinable atmosphere that 
 permeates " The Scholar Gipsy." 
 
 The sea laid its hand, as it were, upon Matthew 
 Arnold also when he voyaged to the South, and 
 brought from him one of his most characteristic 
 utterances : 
 
 Weary of myself, and sick of asking 
 What I am and what I ought to be, 
 At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me 
 Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea. 
 
 And a look of passionate desire 
 
 O'er the sea and to the stars I send ; 
 
 Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me, 
 
 Calm me, ah, compose mc to the end !
 
 28 An Evening in My hihrary 
 
 " Ah, once more," I cried, " ye stars, ye waters, 
 On my heart your mighty charm renew ; 
 Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you. 
 Feel my soul becoming vast like you ! " 
 
 From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven, 
 
 Over the lit sea's unquiet way, 
 
 In the rustling night-air came the answer : 
 
 " VVouldst thou he as these are ? Live as they 
 
 Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 
 Undistracted by the sights they see, 
 These demand not that the things without them 
 Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 
 
 And with joy the stars perform their shining, 
 And the sea its long moon-silvered roll ; 
 For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting 
 All the fever of some suffering soul. 
 
 Bounded by themselves, and unregardful 
 In what state God's other works may be ; 
 In their own tasks all their power pouring 
 These attain the mighty life you see." 
 
 O air-born voice ! long since, severely clear 
 A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear ; 
 " Resolve to be thyself ; and know that he 
 Who finds himself, loses his misery ! " 
 
 I suppose that the name and fame of Kirke 
 White have aheady sunk still deeper into oblivion
 
 Among the English Poets 29 
 
 with the general pubhc than that of Clough, 
 yet here was a man who, had he Hved, would have 
 cHmbed far up the slopes of Parnassus. The 
 unhappy youth only Hved twenty-one years, and 
 then died worn out with intellectual labour still 
 an under-graduate at Cambridge. 
 
 Few are aware that the last and perhaps most 
 perfect verse of Waller's " Go, lovely rose," was 
 added by Kirke White in a volume lent him, which 
 he returned with the beautiful addition : 
 
 Go, lovely rose, 
 Tell her that wastes her time, and me, 
 
 That now she knows, 
 When I resemble her to thee 
 How sweet and fair she seems to be. 
 
 Tell her that's young 
 And shuns to have her graces spy'd, 
 
 That hadst thou sprung 
 In deserts, where no men abide, 
 Thou must have uncommended dy'd. 
 
 Small is the worth 
 Of beauty from the light retired ; 
 
 Bid her come forth. 
 Suffer herself to be desired 
 And not blush so to be admired.
 
 30 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Then die ! that she 
 The common fate of all things rare 
 
 May read in thee : 
 How small a part of time they share 
 That are so wondrous sweet and fair ! 
 
 (Kirlce White) Yet, though thou fade, 
 
 From thy dead leaves let fragrance rise, 
 
 And teach the maid 
 That goodness Time's rude hand defies, 
 The virtue lives when beauty dies. 
 
 Near upon two hundred years did this song 
 wait for its perfect fulfilment, and the shade of 
 Waller must have rejoiced when it heard the 
 dainty supplement. 
 
 There is something deeply pathetic in the 
 splendid promise and untimely extinction of 
 this young genius. One night as he lay in St. 
 John's College with the consciousness of his 
 approaching end heavy upon him, while the 
 wind was roaring in the trees in Trinity backs 
 hard by, in the soHtude of his chamber illumined 
 only by one taper, the poor lad with a weak and 
 trembhng hand leaned from his bed and wrote 
 this touching sonnet on the httle table by his 
 side : 
 
 'Tis midnight — on the globe dead slumber sits 
 And all is silence in the hour of sleep,
 
 Among the English Poets 31 
 
 Save when the hollow gust that swells by fits, 
 In the dark wood roars fearfully and deep. 
 I wake alone to listen and to weep, 
 To watch my taper, the pale beacon burn ; 
 And as still Memory does her vigils keep 
 To think of days that never can return ; 
 By thy pale ray I raise my languid head, 
 My eye surveys the solitary gloom ; 
 And the sad meaning tear unmixed with dread 
 Tells thou dost light me to the silent tomb. 
 Like thee I wane — like thine my life's last ray 
 Will fade in loneliness unwept away. 
 
 It may be conceded that the chief function 
 of the poet is to communicate pleasure, as that 
 of the man of science is to communicate truth, 
 but one of the poet's functions is to express in a 
 perfect and soul-satisfying form the sorrows and 
 losses that visit us all, and, by clothing them with 
 beauty, rob them of some of their crushing weight. 
 When anguish ceases to be dumb consolation is 
 at hand ; and when a poet has found it possible to 
 translate his own griefs into a lyrical cry of sorrow, 
 he has created an anodyne that will do something 
 to assuage the pain of all those in like misery to 
 whom God has not vouchsafed the gift of expres- 
 sion. At the end of Ford's magnificent play " The 
 Broken Heart," there is found this pregnant line : 
 
 They are the silent griefs which cut the heart-strings.
 
 32 An Evening in My Library 
 
 From \\^illiam W^inter, an American, was taken 
 the little boy that he loved, and, when able to 
 lift up his soul from the pit where such a blow 
 had sunk him, he gave to the world this little 
 poem which we ought not willingly to let die : 
 
 Sore and sad has been my heart 
 
 Since I laid him to his rest ; 
 Hard, hard has been the path 
 
 That my weary feet have pressed. 
 But the path is shorter now 
 
 And the end is growing plain, 
 And it won't be very long 
 
 Till I see his face again. 
 
 The world was bright and glad 
 
 When he walked beside me here, 
 And if e'er a trouble came 
 
 Or I ever shed a tear, 
 He smiled the cloud away 
 
 With a single sunny glance. 
 Till my soul was full of joy 
 
 And my heart began to dance. 
 
 When I walk alone at night 
 
 In the paths that he has known 
 I can hear his little footsteps 
 
 Falling softly by my own ; 
 And his hand is clasped in mine. 
 
 And his prattle fills the air, 
 And it breaks my heart afresh 
 
 That there's only shadow there.
 
 Among the English Poets 33 
 
 But the trees are turning brown 
 
 And the sky is grey and cold, 
 And my locks are silver white 
 
 And my world and I are old ; 
 And there's silence all around me, 
 
 And sunset in the West, 
 And it won't be very long 
 
 Till I lay me down and rest. 
 
 Another American with whose work we in 
 England are not very famiHar is Nathaniel Wilhs. 
 He was a scholar and a gentleman, and the re- 
 cognition of his claim to rank among the poets 
 of his country found its expression in the tribute 
 paid to him when he died, for Longfellow, 
 OHver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, 
 and Aldrich were among the pall-bearers at his 
 funeral. But for myself I cannot rank his work 
 higher than the pleasant versifying of a cultivated 
 journalist, except in one instance, when moved 
 by some sudden and single inspiration he wrote a 
 short poem which seems to me to be superior to, 
 and distinguished from, the rest of his pro- 
 duction : 
 
 The shadows lay along the Broadway, 
 
 'Twas near the twilight-tide, 
 And slowly there a lady fair 
 
 Was walking in her pride ; 
 Alone walked she, but viewlessly 
 
 Walked spirits at her side. 
 D
 
 34 ^" Evening in My Library 
 
 Peace cliarmed the street beneath her feet, 
 
 And Honour charmed the air ; 
 And all astir looked kind on her 
 
 And called her good as fair, 
 For all God ever gave to her 
 
 She kept with chary care. 
 
 She kept with care her beauties rare 
 
 From lovers warm and true, 
 For her heart was cold to all but gold 
 
 And the rich came not to woo — 
 But honoured well arc charms to sell 
 
 If priests the selling do. 
 
 Now walking there was one more fair, 
 
 A slight girl, lily-pale ; 
 And she had unseen company 
 
 To make the spirit quail, 
 'Twixt Want and Scorn she walked forlorn 
 
 And nothing could avail. 
 
 No mercy now can clear her brow 
 
 For this world's peace to pray ; 
 For as love's wild prayer dissolved in air 
 
 Her woman's heart gave way. 
 But the sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven 
 
 By man is cursed alway. 
 
 And now that we are in America it becomes 
 appropriate to deal with Walt Whitman, who 
 has been acclaimed hy WiUiam Rossetti as " be-
 
 Among the English Poets 35 
 
 yond compare the greatest of American poets." 
 He has certainly written one poem on the death 
 of Lincoln which is a fine one in spite of its 
 shpshod rhymes, and I will here insert it : 
 
 O Captain ! my Captain ! our fearful trip is done, 
 The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won ; 
 The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
 While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring : 
 But oh ! heart, heart, heart ; 
 O the bleeding drops of red 
 Where on the deck my Captain lies 
 Fallen, cold and dead. 
 
 O Captain ! my Captain ! rise up and hear the bells ; 
 
 Rise up — for you the flag is flying — for you the bugle trills — 
 
 For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths — for you the shores 
 
 a-crowding, 
 For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning. 
 Here, Captain ! dear father ! 
 This arm beneath your head. 
 It is some dream that on the deck 
 You've fallen cold and dead. 
 
 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still ; 
 My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will ; 
 The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 
 From fearful trip, the victor ship comes in with object won. 
 
 Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells ! 
 
 But I with mournful tread 
 
 Walk the deck, my Captain lies 
 Fallen, cold and dead.
 
 36 An Evcnifig in My Library 
 
 But this is not his charactoi-istic style or manner. 
 The " Song of the Broad-Axe " is a fair example 
 of the composition which fills his volumes, and I 
 take without prejudice a sample from the ninth 
 division into which this work is separated : 
 
 The axe leaps. 
 The solid forest gives fluid utterances ; 
 They tumble forth, they rise and form, 
 Hut, tent, landing, survey. 
 Flail, plough, pick, crowbar, spade. 
 Shingle, rail, prop, wainscot, jamb, lath, panel, gable. 
 Citadel, ceiling,saloon, academy, organ, exhibition-house, library. 
 Cornice, trellis, pilaster, balcony, window, shutter, turret, 
 
 porch. 
 Hoe, rake, pitchfork, pencil, waggon, staff, saw, jack plane, 
 
 mallet, wedge, rounce, 
 Chair, tub, hoop, table, wicket, vane, sash, floor, 
 Workbox, chest, stringed instrument, boat, frame, and what not, 
 Capitols of States, and capitol of the nation of States, 
 Long stately rows of avenues, hospitals for orphans, or for the 
 
 poor or sick, 
 Manhattan steamboats and clippers, taking the measure of all 
 
 seas. 
 
 This is not poetry, it is not prose ; it is an 
 idiotic catalogue of words. But it is as impossible 
 to argue with persons who admire this kind of 
 flux from a dictionary, as it is to discuss the 
 principles of beauty in art with an admirer of
 
 Among the English Poets 37 
 
 the cubists. There exists no common denomi- 
 nator of the mind from which to start in the one 
 case or the other. It must be remembered that 
 a very large percentage of ordinary people, if 
 tested, will be found to be quite incapable of 
 accurately humming the simplest and most 
 famihar tune ; that many are wholly or partially 
 colour blind without ever suspecting it them- 
 selves, and that taste in habits, in speech, in the 
 house, and even in furniture, is possessed by an 
 extremely small number of persons, all the world 
 over, when compared with the total populations, 
 and all those who are without taste, and cannot 
 hum a tune, may naturally be incapable of per- 
 ceiving that this list of words has neither rhyme, 
 nor rhythm, nor sense, that it has no distinction 
 of thought, and no felicity of expression, and that 
 it is in fact a literary impertinence. 
 
 But there is something further which with 
 regret must be said of Walt Whitman. Since 
 the world began it has been the glory of the poets 
 that they testify to the sacredness of passionate 
 love ; they have taught that such love is like the 
 flower of the field, which must indeed be rooted 
 in the earth out of sight, but whose beauty is 
 manifested above in the free air where its blossom 
 looks up into the sky. It has been the peculiar 
 disgrace of Walt Whitman that turning his back
 
 38 An Evening in My Library 
 
 on the flower of love he has grouted into the black 
 earth with his nails to gloat and gibber over its 
 root. All other poets have subhmatcd the 
 passions ; this man has approached them with the 
 mental attitude of a stud groom, and his per- 
 formances have accordingly been hailed with the 
 coarse applause of that large and obscene section 
 of the uneducated public whose conception of the 
 relation of the sexes does not rise above the 
 gestations of the farmyard. 
 
 America has without any manner of doubt 
 produced a poet of high rank in Edgar Allan Poe. 
 He led an unhappy and rather disordered life, 
 and died when no more than forty years old in a 
 hospital. The world knows him as the author 
 of " The Raven," which certainly possesses a 
 haunting and original quality, but a yet more 
 wonderful and inspired poem has somehow 
 escaped the general acclaim. " The Conqueror 
 Worm " is an august and terrific vision. 
 
 Lo ! 'tis a gala night 
 
 Within the lonesome latter years. 
 An angel throng, bewinged, bedight 
 
 In veils, and drowned in tears, 
 Sit in a theatre to see 
 
 A play of hopes and fears, 
 While the orchestra breathes fitfully 
 
 The music of the spheres.
 
 Among the English Poets 39 
 
 Mimes in the form of God on high 
 
 Mutter and mumble low, 
 And hither and thither fly, 
 
 Mere puppets they who come and go 
 At bidding of vast formless things 
 
 That shift the scenery to and fro, 
 Flapping from out their condor wings 
 
 Invisible woe ! 
 
 That motley drama — oh, be sure 
 
 It shall not be forgot. 
 With its Phantom chased for evermore 
 
 By a crowd that seize it not, 
 Through a circle that ever returneth in 
 
 To the self-same spot ; 
 And much of Madness, and more of Sin, 
 
 And Horror the soul of the plot. 
 
 But see, amid the mimic rout 
 
 A crawling shape intrude ! 
 A blood-red thing that writhes from out 
 
 The scenic sohtude ! 
 It writhes ! it writhes ! with mortal pangs 
 
 The mimes become its food. 
 And the angels sob at vermin fangs 
 
 In human gore imbued. 
 
 Out — out are the lights — out all. 
 
 And over each quivering form 
 The curtain, a funeral pall. 
 
 Comes down with the rush of a storm ;
 
 40 An 'Evening in My Library 
 
 And the angels all pallid and wan, 
 
 Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
 That the play is the tragedy " MAN," 
 
 And its hero, the " Conqueror Worm." 
 
 Few poets have such a power of expressing 
 terror, doom, and immensity, and also he is a 
 master of tenderness and finish ; as in the two 
 following examples : 
 
 Thou wouldst be loved, — then let the heart 
 From its present pathway part not ; 
 
 Be everything which now thou art, 
 Be nothing that thou art not. 
 
 So with the world thy gentle ways. 
 
 Thy grace, thy more than beauty. 
 Shall be an endless theme of praise. 
 
 And love — a simple duty. 
 
 and again : 
 
 Take this kiss upon the brow 
 
 And, in parting from you now, 
 
 Thus much let me avow, 
 
 You are not wrong who deem 
 
 That my days have been a dream ; 
 
 Yet if hope has flown away 
 
 In a night or in a day, 
 
 In a vision or in none. 
 
 Is it therefore the less gone ? 
 
 All that we see or seem 
 
 Is but a dream within a dream.
 
 Among the English Poets 41 
 
 I stand amid the roar 
 Of a surf-tormented shore, 
 And I hold within my hand 
 Grains of the golden sand 
 How few ! Yet how they creep 
 Through my fingers to the deep 
 While I weep, while I weep ! 
 O God ! can I not grasp 
 Them with a tighter clasp ? 
 O God ! can I not save 
 One from the pitiless wave ? 
 Is all that we see or seem 
 But a dream within a dream ? 
 
 James Russell Lowell wrote the Biglow papers 
 in the American language, but during the great 
 war between the North and the South his pen was 
 seriously and nobly at the service of those who 
 strove to free the slaves. 
 
 Men ! whose boast it is that ye 
 Come of fathers brave and free, 
 If there breathe on earth a slave 
 Are you truly free and brave ? 
 If yc do not feel the chain 
 When it works a brother's pain 
 Are yc not base slaves indeed, 
 Slaves unworthy to be freed ? 
 
 Women ! who shall one day bear 
 Sons to breathe New England air,
 
 42 An Eiiening in My Library 
 
 If ye hear without a blush 
 Deeds to make the roused blood rush 
 Like red lava through your veins 
 For your sisters now in chains — 
 Answer ! are ye fit to be 
 Mothers of the brave and free ? 
 
 Is true freedom but to break 
 Fetters for our own dear sake ? 
 And with leathern hearts forget 
 That we owe mankind a debt ? 
 No ! true freedom is to share 
 All the chains our brothers wear, 
 And with heart and hand to be 
 Earnest to make others free. 
 
 They are slaves who fear to speak 
 
 For the fallen and the weak \ 
 
 They are slaves who will not choose 
 
 Hatred, scoffing, and abuse, 
 
 Rather than in silence shrink 
 
 From the truth they needs must think ; 
 
 They are slaves who dare not be 
 
 In the right with two or three. 
 
 This is handsomely said, though it seems 
 incredible that those who condemned slavery- 
 were ever in so lonely a plight as the last celebrated 
 couplet would suggest. In its place it is ad- 
 mirable, but narrow fanaticism has long ap- 
 propriated it to her own purposes until it is made
 
 Among the English Poets 43 
 
 to imply that an isolated and irreconcilable 
 person must be right because he can find only 
 two others in the world to countenance him. 
 After all it is just as true that 
 
 They are cranks who love to be 
 In the wrong with two or three. 
 
 Lowell was a man of wide attainments and led a 
 notable life. For many years he was the minister 
 for his country in London. Like most of the 
 American poets, including Longfellow, Whittier, 
 Bryant, and Whitman, only his eyes and nose were 
 visible ; mouth, chin, and cheeks being entirely 
 concealed behind an unshaved growth of hair. 
 These appendages cannot themselves have any 
 distinction or beauty of outline or form, and they 
 make it almost impossible for a man to leave a fine 
 impression of his countenance upon the memory, 
 for the mouth, which is the seat of expression, is 
 thus degraded to the position of an invisible hole 
 from which muffled sounds emerge, and into which 
 food is injected — not always with complete 
 success. But what Lowell permitted us to see 
 of his face was pleasing and serene. 
 
 William CuUen Bryant was an American poet 
 who wrote a poem in the grand style, and although 
 he wrote verses for over sixty years, this finest 
 effort, " Thanatopsis," was composed when he
 
 44 ^fi Evening In My Library 
 
 was only eighteen. In this he resembles Milman, 
 who wrote his great prize poem at Oxford, and 
 thereafter through a long Hfe never reached the 
 lofty level again. The concluding passage of 
 " Thanatopsis " rises to a stately and solemn 
 splendour which no other American has reached ; 
 
 Yet not to thine eternal resting-place 
 
 Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish 
 
 Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down 
 
 With patriarchs of the infant world, with kings. 
 
 The powerful of the earth, the wise, the good, 
 
 Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past, 
 
 All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills. 
 
 Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun ; the vales 
 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 
 The venerable woods, rivers that move 
 
 In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
 
 That make the meadows green ; and poured round all 
 
 Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste 
 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 
 Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun. 
 
 The planets, all the infinite host of heaven. 
 
 Arc shining on the sad abodes of death 
 
 Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread 
 
 The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
 
 That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings 
 
 Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness. 
 
 Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
 
 Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
 
 Among the English Poets 45 
 
 Save his own dashings — yet the dead are there ; 
 
 And millions in those solitudes, since first 
 
 The flight of years began, have laid them down 
 
 In their last sleep — the dead reign there alone. 
 
 So shalt thou rest, and what if thou withdraw 
 
 In silence from the living, and no friend 
 
 Take note of thy departure ? All that breathe 
 
 Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh, 
 
 When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care 
 
 Plod on, and each one as before will chase 
 
 His favourite phantom ; yet all these shall leave 
 
 Their mirth and their employments, and shall come 
 
 And make their bed with thee. As the long train 
 
 Of ages glides away, the sons of men — 
 
 The youth in life's fresh spring, and he who goes 
 
 In the full strength of years, matron and maid, 
 
 The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man — 
 
 Shall one by one be gathered to thy side 
 
 By those who in their turn shall follow them. 
 
 So live, that when thy summons comes to join, 
 The innumerable caravan, which moves 
 To that mysterious realm where each shall take 
 His chamber in the silent halls of death, 
 Thou go not like the quarry slave at night, 
 Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed 
 By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave 
 Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
 About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams,
 
 46 An Evening in My Library 
 
 John Grcenleaf Whitticr's poems fill close on 
 five hundred pages of small print in double 
 column. Only the very earnest student can be 
 expected to sift such vast stretches of ordinary 
 sand to discover if there be anywhere in it a 
 nugget of American gold. I believe that I have 
 found one, a fresh, wholesome, fair and dainty 
 ballad entitled " Amy Wentworth." 
 
 Her fingers shame the ivory keys 
 
 They dance so light along; 
 The bloom upon her parted lips 
 
 Is sweeter than the song. 
 
 O perfumed suitor, spare thy smiles, 
 
 Her thouglits arc not of thee. 
 She better loves the salted wind, 
 
 The voices of the Sea. 
 
 Her heart is like an outbound ship 
 
 That at its anchor swings, 
 The murmur of the stranded shell 
 
 Is in the song she sings. ^ 
 
 She sings, and, smiling, hears her praise, 
 
 But dreams the while of one 
 Who watches from his sea-blown deck 
 
 The ice-bergs in the sun. 
 
 She questions all the winds that blow, 
 
 And every fog-wreath dim. 
 And bids the sea birds flying North 
 
 Bear messages to him.
 
 Amotig the English Poets 47 
 
 She speeds them with the thanks of men 
 
 He perilled life to save, 
 And grateful prayers like holy oil 
 
 To smooth for him the wave. 
 
 Brown Viking of the fishing smack ! 
 
 Fair toast of all the town 1 
 The skipper's jerkin ill beseems 
 
 The lady's silken gown. 
 
 But ne'er shall Amy Wentworth wear 
 
 For him the blush of shame, 
 Who dares to set his manly gifts 
 
 Against her ancient name. 
 
 The stream is brightest at its spring, 
 
 And blood is not like wine ; 
 Nor honoured less than he who heirs 
 
 Is he who founds a line. 
 
 Full lightly shall the prize be won 
 
 If Love be Fortune's spur, 
 And never maiden stoops to him 
 
 Who lifts himself to her. 
 
 Her home is brave in Jaffray Street, 
 
 With stately stairways worn 
 By feet of old Colonial knights 
 
 And ladies gentle born. 
 
 Still green about its ample porch 
 
 The English ivy twines. 
 Trained back to show in English oak 
 
 The herald's carven sign.
 
 48 An Evening in My Library 
 
 And on her from the wainscot old 
 
 Ancestral faces frown — 
 And this has worn the soldier's sword, 
 
 And that the judge's gown. 
 
 But strong of will and proud as they 
 
 She walks the gallery floor 
 As if she trod her sailor's deck 
 
 By stormy Labrador ! 
 
 The sweetbriar blooms on Kittery-side 
 
 And green are Elliot's bowers ; 
 Her garden is the pebbled beach, 
 
 The mosses are her flowers. 
 
 She looks across the harbour-bar 
 
 To see the white gulls fly ; 
 His greeting from the northern sea 
 
 Is in their clanging cry. 
 
 She hums a song, and dreams that he, 
 
 As in romance of old. 
 Shall homeward ride with silken sails 
 
 And masts of beaten gold ! 
 
 O ! rank is good, and gold is fair. 
 
 And high and low mate ill, 
 But love has never known a law 
 
 Beyond its own sweet will ! 
 
 John Vance Cheney, a barrister of Philadelphia, 
 ^nd afterwards curator of a great library at
 
 Among the English Poets 49 
 
 Chicago, has written some skilful verse. I cite 
 a charming example of his work : 
 
 Who drives the horses of the sun 
 
 Shall lord it but a day ; 
 Better the lowly deed were done 
 
 And kept the humble way. 
 
 The rust will find the sword of fame, 
 
 The dust will hide the crown ; 
 Aye ! none shall nail so high his name 
 
 Time will not tear it down. 
 
 The happiest heart that ever beat 
 
 Was in some quiet breast 
 That found the common daylight sweet 
 
 And left to Heaven the rest. 
 
 Against this I feel compelled to put certain 
 four celebrated lines of Scott : 
 
 Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife ! 
 
 To all the sensual world proclaim 
 One crowded hour of glorious life 
 
 Is worth an age without a name ! 
 
 Thomas Bailey Aldrich, a Boston poet, has 
 written volumes of verses much appreciated in 
 America, and I have selected a dainty little poem 
 to represent him here : 
 
 I little know or care 
 
 If the blackbird on the bough 
 E
 
 50 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Is filling all the air 
 
 With his soft crescendo now ; 
 For she is gone away, 
 And when she went she took 
 The Springtime in her look, 
 The peach-blow in her cheek, 
 The laughter from the brook, 
 The blue from out the May — 
 And what she calls a week 
 Is for ever and a day ! 
 
 It's little that I mind 
 
 How the blossoms pink and white 
 
 At every touch of wind 
 
 Fall a-trembling with delight. 
 
 For in the leafy lane, 
 
 Beneath the garden boughs. 
 
 And through the silent house 
 
 One thing alone I seek. 
 
 Until she come again 
 
 The May is not the May, 
 
 And what she calls a week 
 
 Is for ever and a day. 
 
 Longfellow wrote with an even gentleness 
 and serenity, and there will always be a large 
 class who love and treasure his benign verses. 
 The poems by which he is best known are perhaps 
 the weakest that came from him. All the world,
 
 Among the Efiglish Poets 5 1 
 
 for example, knows his " Excelsior." The first 
 stanza ends thus : 
 
 A banner with a strange device, 
 Excelsior. 
 
 and the second one alludes to : 
 
 The accents of that unknown tongue, 
 Excelsior. 
 
 and as the word excelsior means " a taller man " 
 the banner certainly may claim to have borne a 
 strange device, and Latin, one must imagine, must 
 have been an unknown tongue to the writer. 
 The best level to which he attains is to be found 
 in such verses as these I now insert : 
 
 O little feet ! that such long years 
 
 Must wander on through hopes and fears, 
 
 Must ache and bleed beneath your load ; 
 
 I, nearer to the wayside inn 
 
 Where toil shall cease and rest begin, 
 
 Am weary thinking of your road ! 
 
 O little hands ! that weak or strong 
 Have still to serve or rule so long. 
 Have still so long to give or ask ; 
 I, who so much with book and pen 
 Have toiled among my fellow-men, 
 Am weary thinking of your task.
 
 I 
 I 
 
 52 An Evening in My Library 
 
 O little hearts ! that throb and beat 
 
 With such impatient, feverish heat, 
 
 Such limitless and strong desires ; 
 
 Mine, that so long has glowed and burned 
 
 With passions into ashes turned, 1 
 
 Now covers and conceals its fires. 
 
 O little souls ! as pure and white 
 And crystalline as rays of light 
 Direct from heaven, their source divine ; 
 Refracted through the mist of years 
 How red my setting sun appears, 
 How lurid looks this soul of mine. 
 
 This is sweetly benevolent and charming 
 although it leaves the reader smilingly sceptical 
 about the poet's burning and glowing passions 
 that have consumed themselves to ashes ; and the 
 sorrows of children have not, it is clear, struck 
 the writer with any real poignant force. Com- 
 pare for a moment the red-hot passion of wrath 
 that breathes in every line of Mrs. Browning's 
 " Cry of the Children," which mounts finally 
 to the last culminating verse : 
 
 They look up with their pale and sunken faces 
 
 And their look is dread to see, 
 For they mind you of their angels in high places 
 
 With eyes turned on Deity — 
 " How long," they say, " how long, O cruel nation. 
 Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart —
 
 Among the E?iglish Poets 53 
 
 Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, 
 And tread onward to your throne amid the mart ? 
 Our blood splashes upward, O gold heaper, 
 
 And your purple shows your path ! 
 But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper 
 
 Than the strong man in his wrath." 
 
 This is nobly to use a great gift against cruelty 
 and wrong ; and how sadly seldom do the great 
 poets advance from the communication of 
 pleasure to the condemnation of evil or even to the 
 enlargement of charity. Mrs. Browning, William 
 Watson, and Thomas Hood are the three who 
 conspicuously have thus striven. 
 
 America during the days of slavery produced an 
 entirely original and intensely characteristic form 
 of negro ballad, which expressed the lovable 
 qualities of the poor blacks and the haunting 
 mournfulness that penetrated their lives. I insert 
 the two best samples I can cite : 
 
 OLD FOLKS AT HOME 
 
 Way down upon de Swancc Ribber 
 
 Far, far away, 
 Dere's wha my heart is turning cbbcr, 
 
 Dere's wha dc old folks stay. 
 All up and down de whole creation 
 
 Sadly I roam. 
 Still longing for dc old plantation 
 
 And for dc old folks at home.
 
 54 -^f^ Evening in My Library 
 
 All dc world am sad and dreary 
 
 Eberywhcre I roam, 
 Oh ! darkeys, how my heart grows weary :i 
 
 Far from de old folks at home. 1 
 
 All round de little farm I wandered 
 
 When I was young. 
 Den many happy days I squandered, 
 
 Many de songs I sung. 
 When I was playing wid my brudder 
 
 Happy was I, 
 Oh ! take me to my kind old mudder, 
 
 Dere let me live and die. 
 
 One little hut among de bushes. 
 
 One dat I love, 
 Still sadly to my memory rushes 
 
 No matter where I rove. 
 When will I see de bees a-humming 
 
 All round de comb ? 
 When will I hear de banjo tumming 
 
 Down in my good old home ? 
 
 All de world am sad and dreary 
 
 Eberywhere I roam, 
 Oh ! darkeys, how my heart grows weary 
 
 Far from de old folks at home.
 
 Among the English Poets 55 
 
 MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME, GOOD NIGHT ! 
 
 The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home ; 
 
 'Tis summer ; the darkeys are gay ; 
 The corn top's ripe, and the meadow's in the bloom, 
 
 While the birds make music all the day. 
 The young folks roll on the little cabin floor, 
 
 All merry, all happy and bright ; 
 By-n-by hard times comes a-knocking at the door : 
 
 Then my old Kentucky home, good night ! 
 
 Weep no more, my lady, 
 O, weep no more to-day ! 
 We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home, 
 For the old Kentucky home far away. 
 
 They hunt no more for the possum and the coon 
 
 On the meadow, the hill, and the shore ; 
 They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon 
 
 On the bench by the old cabin door. 
 The day goes by like a shadow o'er the heart, 
 
 With sorrow where all was delight ; 
 The time has come when the darkeys have to part — 
 
 Then my old Kentucky home, good night ! 
 
 The head must bow, and the back will have to bend, 
 
 Wherever the darkey may go ; 
 A few more days, and the trouble all will end 
 
 In the field where the sugar-canes grow. 
 A few more days for to tote the weary load, 
 
 No matter ! 'twill never be light ; 
 A few more days, till we totter on the road — 
 
 Then my old Kentucky home, good night !
 
 56 An Evening in Aly Library 
 
 Weep no more, my lady, 
 O, weep no more to-day ! 
 We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home, 
 For the old Kentucky home far away. 
 
 There is a sense of vague, indefinite, universal 
 sorrow, an unending sadness without hope which 
 pervades all these songs of slavery. These two 
 examples are from the pen of Stephen Collins 
 Foster, who was born in Pennsylvania in 1826 
 and died in 1 864 ; he composed the melodies for 
 his own words, and the songs and their settings 
 have travelled all over the English-speaking world. 
 They seem to belong to a period long dead, and 
 the emancipated negro now sings and dances 
 something called a " cake-walk," which appears 
 to have for its object the forceful expression of an 
 ebullient and jocund vitality. 
 
 In the winter of 1884-5 I paid a visit to the late 
 Mr. Sherman Rogers, a noted citizen of Buffalo, 
 and there met his son, Robert Cameron Rogers, 
 a poet who has written verses that possess dis- 
 tinction and charm. His " Rosary " is de- 
 servedly famous : 
 
 The hours I spent with thee, dear heart, 
 Are as a string of pearls to me ; 
 I count them over every one apart. 
 My rosary.
 
 Among the English Poets 57 
 
 Each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, 
 To still a heart in absence wrung ; 
 I tell each bead unto the end and there 
 A cross is hung. 
 
 O memories that bless — and burn ! 
 
 barren gain — and bitter loss ! 
 
 1 kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn 
 
 To kiss the cross, 
 
 Sweetheart, 
 To kiss the cross.* 
 
 Sometime in the last century Prince Troubetz- 
 koi and I had a joint exhibition of our pictures 
 in two adjoining rooms at Messrs. Dowdeswells' 
 in Bond Street ; I well remember how full of 
 sunshine were his canvases and how gloomy mine 
 by contrast appeared ; but what was more 
 important to me than that pictorial eclipse was 
 the privilege it afforded me of meeting Princess 
 Troubetzkoi, the author of one of the very few 
 great love songs written by women. The 
 Princess was born an American : 
 
 Take all of mc — I am thine own, heart, soul. 
 Brain, body — all ; all that I am or dream 
 Is thine for ever ; yea, though space should teem 
 With thy conditions, I'd fulfil the whole — 
 
 • A Mr. Winter claimed to have written these verses in 1905 
 Robert Cameron Rogers, however, published them in 1H91.
 
 58 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Were to fulfil them to be loved of thee — 
 
 Oh ! love me ! were to love me but a way 
 
 To kill me — love me ! So to die would be 
 
 To live for ever. Let me hear thee say 
 
 Once only, '* Dear, I love thee," then all life 
 
 Would be one sweet remembrance, thou its king : 
 
 Nay, thou art that already, and the strife 
 
 Of twenty worlds could not uncrown thee. Bring, 
 
 Time ! my monarch to possess his throne 
 Which is my heart and for himself alone. 
 
 Compare this with Mrs. Browning's fine sonnet 
 from the Portuguese, number XLIII: 
 
 How do I love thee ? Let me count the ways. 
 
 1 love thee to the depth and breadth and height 
 My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight 
 For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. 
 
 I love thee to the level of every day's 
 
 Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. 
 
 I love thee freely, as men strive for right ; 
 
 I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. 
 
 I love thee with the passion put to use 
 
 In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. 
 
 I love thee with a love I seemed to lose 
 
 With my lost saints. — I love thee vidth the breath, 
 
 Smiles, tears, of all my life ! and if God choose 
 
 I shall but love thee better after death. 
 
 In addition to Mrs. Browning, the nineteenth 
 century produced Christina Rossetti, and the 
 
 I 
 
 I
 
 Among the English Poets 59 
 
 two stand out gloriously as the greatest women 
 poets that the world has seen since Sappho. I 
 put here a love poem of Christina Rossetti's 
 which has the subtle quahty of haunting the 
 memory when once read more than any of those 
 already cited : 
 
 I took my heart in my hand 
 
 O my love, O my love. 
 I said : — " Let me fall or stand, 
 
 Let me live or die. 
 But this once hear me speak 
 
 O my love, O my love. 
 Yet a woman's words are weak ; 
 
 You should speak — not L" 
 
 You took my heart in your hand 
 
 With a friendly smile, 
 With a critical eye you scanned, 
 
 Then set it down, 
 And said : — " It is still unripe ; 
 
 Better wait awhile. 
 Wait till the skylarks pipe. 
 
 Till the corn grows brown." 
 
 As you set it down it broke — 
 
 Broke, but I did not wince, 
 I smiled at the speech you spoke, 
 
 At your judgment that 1 heard ;
 
 6o An Evening in My Library 
 
 But I have not often smiled 
 
 Since then, nor questioned since, 
 
 Nor cared for cornflowers wild, 
 Nor sung with the singing bird. 
 
 I take my heart in my hand, 
 O, my God ! O, my God ! 
 
 My broken heart in my hand 
 Thou hast seen ; judge Thou. 
 
 My hope was written on sand, 
 
 0, my God ! O, my God ! 
 Now let Thy judgment stand — 
 
 Yea, judge me now. 
 
 This contemned of a man. 
 
 This marred one heedless day, 
 This heart take Thou to scan 
 
 Both within and without ; 
 Refine with fire its gold, 
 
 Purge Thou its dross away. 
 Yea, hold it in Thy hold 
 
 Whence none can pluck it out. 
 
 I take my heart in my hand, 
 
 1 shall not die but live, 
 Before Thy face I stand, 
 
 1, for Thou callest such ; 
 All that I have I bring, 
 
 All that I am I give. 
 Smile Thou and I shall sing 
 But shall not question much.
 
 Among the English Poets 6 1 
 
 Christina Rossetti was, it seems to me, the greatest 
 writer of rehgious verse in the last century, not 
 even excepting Keble and Cardinal Newman, 
 though the latter's " Lead, kindly light, amid 
 the encircling gloom," as a single poem perhaps 
 attains to the highest place of all. I will give 
 two examples of her beautiful work in this kind : 
 
 So tired I am, so weary of to-day, 
 So unrefreshed from foregone weariness, 
 So overburdened by foreseen distress, 
 So lagging and so stumbling on my way 
 I scarce can rouse myself to watch or pray. 
 To hope, or aim, or toil for more or less — 
 Ah, always less and less, even while I press 
 Forward and toil and aim as best I may — 
 Half starved of soul and heartsick utterly 
 Yet lift I up my heart and soul and eyes 
 Which fail in looking upward, toward the prize ; 
 Me, Lord, Thou seest though I see not Thee ; 
 Me now, as once the thief in Paradise, 
 Even me, O Lord, my Lord, remember me. 
 
 Again : 
 
 Wearied of sinning, wearied of repentance, 
 Wearied of self, I turn, my God, to Thee ; 
 
 To Thee, my Judge, on Whose all-righteous sentence 
 Hangs mine eternity ; 
 
 I turn to Thcc, I plead Thyself with Thee, 
 Be pitiful to nic.
 
 62 A?i Evening in My hibj-ary 
 
 Wearied I loathe myself, I loathe my sinning, 
 My stains, my festering sores, my misery ; 
 
 Thou the Beginning, Thou ere my beginning 
 Didst see and didst foresee 
 
 Me miserable, me sinful, ruined me 
 I plead Thyself with Thee. 
 
 I plead Thyself with Thee Who art my Maker, 
 Regard Thy handiwork that cries to Thee, 
 
 I plead Thyself with Thee Who wast partaker 
 Of mine infirmity ; 
 
 Love made Thee what Thou art, the love of me, 
 I plead Thyself with Thee. 
 
 All her work bears the stamp of devotion and 
 of an ever-present religious emotion that pene- 
 trated her whole life — a pervading sadness fills 
 her heart and inspires her pen : 
 
 Does the road wind up-hill all the way ? 
 
 Yes, to the very end. 
 Will the day's journey take the whole long day ? 
 
 From morn to night, my friend. 
 
 And the sadness leads on to an unutterable weari- 
 ness of spirit, that finds expression in such a heart 
 cry as this : 
 
 I would have gone ; God bade me stay ; 
 
 I would have worked ; God bade me rest ; 
 He broke my will from day to day, 
 
 He read my yearnings unexpressed 
 And said them nay. 
 
 I
 
 Among the English Poets 63 
 
 Now I would stay ; God bids me go ; 
 
 Now I would rest ; God bids me work ; 
 He breaks my heart tossed to and fro, 
 
 My soul is wrung with doubts that lurk 
 And vex it so. 
 
 I go, Lord, where Thou sendest me ; 
 
 Day after day I plod and moil ; 
 But Christ, my God, when will it be 
 
 That I may let alone my toil 
 And rest with Thee ? 
 
 Surely this is touching and beautiful verse, 
 and should secure the writer a permanent place 
 in the most sacred corner of the hearts of the 
 devotional. Christina Rossetti's work always 
 seems to be the unpremeditated spontaneous 
 utterance of her heart ; it is free from the verbal 
 preciousncss of her brother's poems, indeed some- 
 times there is a lack of finish that is to be regretted, 
 as for instance in the four verses the first of which 
 I quote above, beginning : 
 
 Does the road wind up-hill all the way ? 
 
 The third line of each of the four verses is the 
 only one which contains the same number of feet 
 in each verse ; she has not been at the pains to 
 make the other corresponding lines the same 
 length. 
 
 Dante Gabriel Rossetti wrote one poem of
 
 64 An 'Evening in My Library 
 
 great human interest, " Jenny," too long for 
 insertion here. It is entirely free from the 
 preciousness and difficulty of his other work of 
 which it has been said, as in laudation, that it is 
 literary poetry written for poets. But if poetry 
 cannot be understood and appreciated by or- 
 dinary educated people, I shall not invite ordinary 
 educated people to admire it in this book. He is 
 occasionally condensed and wonderful, and I 
 know of no four lines that express hopelessness 
 so complete and utter as do these : 
 
 When vain desire at last and vain regret 
 Go hand in hand to death and all is vain, 
 What shall assuage the unforgotten pain 
 
 And teach the unforgetful to forget ? 
 
 And before passing away for the moment from 
 writers of religious verse it is permissible to cite 
 perhaps the most moving lines ever written, 
 written as they were in deep anguish by one who 
 had fallen into a pit of sin and repented in the 
 dust : 
 
 And every human heart that breaks 
 
 In prison cell or yard, 
 Is as that broken box that gave 
 
 Its treasure to the Lord 
 And filled the unclean leper's house 
 
 With the scent of costliest nard.
 
 Among the English Poets 65 
 
 Ah ! happy they whose hearts can break 
 
 And peace of pardon win ! 
 How else may man make straight his plan 
 
 And cleanse his soul from sin ? 
 How else but through a broken heart 
 
 May Lord Christ enter in ? 
 
 But to return from this lengthened digression, 
 to America, OHver Wendell Holmes, I think, must 
 have written more poems to be recited at dinner 
 parties, openings of buildings, anniversaries of 
 public events, and dedications of public libraries 
 than any writer before him or since him. He 
 affected the detestable habit of writing " one 
 takes his hat " instead of " one takes one's hat " 
 (one does not take his hat unless one is a thief), 
 but he spells " favour " and other such words 
 properly, not vulgarly robbing them of the " u " 
 that is their birthright and their certificate of 
 noble Norman ancestry. 
 
 In the " Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," 
 after a very touching prose passage on the " great 
 procession of the unloved," he inserts some 
 verses, the last of which is this very beautiful 
 
 one : 
 
 O hearts that break and give no sign 
 
 Save whitening lip and fading tresses 
 Till death pours out his cordial wine 
 
 Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses —
 
 66 An Evening in My hihrary 
 
 If singing breath or echoing cord 
 
 To every hidden pang were given 
 What endless melodies were poured 
 
 As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven! 
 
 Mary Kyle Dallas, of Philadelphia, died in 
 1897, having contributed many bright and 
 felicitous verses to ephemeral papers and maga- 
 zines, and I think the following dainty song 
 deserves to be remembered : 
 
 He'd nothing but his violin, 
 
 I'd nothing but my song, 
 
 But we were wed when skies were blue 
 
 And summer days were long ; 
 
 And when we rested by the hedge 
 
 The robins came and told 
 
 How they had dared to woo and win 
 
 Wlien early spring was cold. 
 
 We sometimes supped on dew-berries, 
 
 Or slept among the hay, 
 
 But oft the farmers' wives at eve 
 
 Came out to hear us play 
 
 The rare old songs, the dear old tunes — 
 
 We could not starve for long 
 
 While my man had his violin 
 
 And I my sweet love-eong.
 
 Among the English Poets 67 
 
 Apart from Edgar Allan Poe, the negro 
 melodies, and the single wonderful poem by 
 Luders already quoted, America does not seem 
 to have produced much that is strikingly original 
 and it seems interesting and remarkable that 
 Austraha should have, in Lindsay Gordon, 
 Henry Kendall and others, sounded a note of 
 poetry more original and characteristic of the 
 country than has yet been heard in the United 
 States. In Lindsay Gordon's " Sick Stockrider " 
 there is the atmosphere of Austraha and a sense 
 of the wide skies and masculine hfe of the bush 
 enforced in every line. This is the finest stanza 
 in it : 
 
 I've had my share of pastime, and I've done my share of toil, 
 
 And life is short — the longest life a span ; 
 I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil 
 
 Or for wine that maketh glad the heart of man. 
 For good undone and gifts misspent and resolutions vain 
 
 'Tis somewhat late to trouble. This I know, 
 I should live the same life over, if I had to live again ; 
 
 And the chances are I go where most men go. 
 
 Henry Lawson pubhshcd a volume of poems 
 in 1896 at Sydney that should be better known in 
 England than they are. His hit and rhyme seem 
 easy, natural and careless. 
 
 I do not recall a setting sail from the old
 
 68 An Evening in My Library 
 
 country for the far-away Dominions more con- 
 vincingly told than in his " Vagabond." I quote 
 three verses of it : 
 
 White handkerchiefs wave from the short black pier 
 
 As we glide to the grand old sea. 
 But the song of my heart is for none to hear 
 
 If one of them waves for me. 
 A roving, roaming life is mine, 
 
 Ever by field and flood, 
 For not far back in my father's line 
 
 Was a dash of the gipsy blood. 
 
 The sailors say 'twill be rough to-night 
 
 As they fasten the hatches down. 
 The south is black, and the bar is white 
 
 And the drifting smoke is brown. 
 The gold has gone from the western haze 
 
 The sea birds circle and swarm, 
 But we shall have plenty of sunny days 
 
 And little enough of storm. 
 
 The hill is hiding the short black pier 
 
 As the last white signal's seen ; 
 The points run in, and the houses veer. 
 
 And the great bluff stands between. 
 So darkness swallowed the far white speck 
 
 On many a wharf and quay. 
 The night comes down on a restless deck 
 
 Grim cliffs and — The Open Sea !
 
 Among the English Poets 69 
 
 Again : 
 
 The world is narrow and ways are short, and our lives are dull 
 
 and slow, 
 For little is new where the crowds resort, and less where the 
 
 wanderers go ; 
 Greater or smaller, the same old things we see by the dull 
 
 road-side. 
 And tired of all is the spirit that sings of the days when the 
 
 world was wide. 
 
 They sailed away in the ships that eailed ere science controlled 
 
 the main, 
 When the strong brave heart of a man prevailed as 'twill never 
 
 prevail again. 
 They knew not whither, nor much they cared — let fate or the 
 
 winds decide — 
 The worst of the Great Unknown they dared in the days when 
 
 the world was wide. 
 
 Henry Kendall deserves to be better known 
 in England than he at present seems to be ; he 
 is a poet of the first class, with a wide range of 
 faculty and power — masterly in finish, with 
 strength and delicacy happily combined: 
 
 The song that once I dreamed about, 
 
 The tender touching thing, 
 As radiant as the rose without — 
 
 The love of wind and wing ;
 
 70 An Evening in My Library 
 
 The perfect verses to the tune 
 
 Of woodland music set, 
 As beautiful as afternoon, 
 
 Remain unwritten yet. 
 
 Pcrliaps the lady nf the past 
 
 Upon these lines may light, 
 The purest verses and the last 
 
 That I may ever write. 
 She need not fear a word of blame ; 
 
 Her tale the flowers keep ; 
 The wind that heard me breathe her name 
 
 Has been for years asleep. 
 
 But in the night and when the rain 
 
 The troubled torrent fills, 
 I often think I see again 
 
 The river in the hills. 
 And when the day is very near 
 
 And birds are on the wing, 
 My spirit fancies it can hear 
 
 The song I cannot sing. 
 
 He also possessed a luxuriance and abundance 
 of unforced rhyme that is easy and delightful. 
 In the following poem, which I reproduce entire, 
 not only is this gift abundantly manifest but there 
 is the spirit of Australia in every line : 
 
 They built his mound in the rough red ground 
 
 By the dip of a desert dell, 
 Where all things sweet are killed by the heat 
 
 And scattered o'er flat and fell.
 
 Among the English Poets jl 
 
 In a burning zone they left him alone, 
 
 Past the uttermost Western plain, 
 And the nightfall dim heard his funeral hymn 
 
 In the voices of wind and rain. 
 
 The songs austere of the forests drear 
 
 And the echoes of clift and cave, 
 When the dark is keen where the storm hath been 
 
 Fleet over the far-away grave. 
 And through the days when the torrid rays 
 
 Strike down in a coppery gloom 
 Some spirit grieves in the perished leaves. 
 
 Whose theme is that desolate tomb. 
 
 No human foot or paw of brute 
 
 Halts now where the stranger sleeps ; 
 But clouds and star his fellows are 
 
 And the rain that sobs and weeps. 
 The dingo yells by the far iron fells. 
 
 The plover is loud in the range, 
 But they never come near the slumbcrer here 
 
 Whose rest is a rest without change. 
 
 Ah ! in his life had he mother or wife 
 
 To wait for his steps on the floor ? 
 Did beauty wax dim while waiting for him 
 
 Who passed through the threshold no more ? 
 Doth it trouble his head ? He is one with the dead ; 
 
 He lies by the alien streams ; 
 And sweeter than sleep is death that is deep 
 
 And unvcxcd by the lordship of drcanu
 
 72 An Evening in My Library 
 
 In his " Orara " there is a passage which I now 
 insert which beautifully expresses that familiar 
 sense that we all so often experience when looking 
 up a valley and river that comes down to us out 
 of unknown foldings of the hills, that somewhere 
 beyond our sight there may be secret hollows and 
 dells more beautiful than anything in the world : 
 
 The soft white feet of afternoon 
 
 Are on the shining meads, 
 The breeze is as a pleasant tune 
 
 Amongst the happy reeds. 
 
 The air is full of mellow sounds, 
 
 The wet hill heads are bright, 
 And down the fall of fragrant grounds 
 
 The deep ways flame with light. 
 
 A rose-red space of streams I see 
 
 Past banks of tender fern ; 
 A radiant brook, unknown to me 
 
 Beyond its upper turn. 
 
 The singing silver life I hear 
 
 Whose home is in the green 
 Far-folded woods of fountains clear 
 
 Where I have never been. 
 
 Ah, brook above the upper bend, 
 
 I often long to stand 
 Where you in soft cool shades descend 
 
 From the untrodden land !
 
 Among the Knglish Poets 73 
 
 Ah, folded woods that hide the grace 
 
 Of moss and torrents strong, 
 I often wish to know the face 
 
 Of that which sings your song ! 
 
 But I may linger long and look 
 
 Till night is over all ; 
 My eyes will never see the brook 
 
 Or sweet strange waterfall. 
 
 The world is round me with its heat 
 
 And toil and cares that tire ; 
 I cannot wdth my feeble feet 
 
 Climb after my desire. 
 
 But on the lap of lands unseen, 
 
 Within a secret zone, 
 There shine diviner gold and green 
 
 Than man has ever known. 
 
 And where the silver waters sing 
 
 Down hushed and holy dells 
 The flower of a celestial spring — 
 
 A tenfold splendour dwells. 
 
 Yea ! in my dream of fall and brook 
 
 By far sweet forests furled, 
 I see that light for which I look 
 
 In vain through all the world.
 
 74 ^'' Evening in My Library 
 
 The glory of a larger sky 
 
 On slopes of hills sublime 
 That speak with God and Morning, high 
 
 Above the waves of Time ! 
 
 Ah ! haply in this sphere of change 
 
 Where shadows spoil the beam 
 It would not do to chmb that range 
 
 And test my radiant Dream. 
 
 The slightest glimpse of yonder place 
 
 Untrodden and alone 
 Might wholly kill that nameless grace 
 
 The charm of the Unknown. 
 
 And therefore though I look and long 
 
 Perhaps the lot is right 
 Which keeps the river of the song 
 
 A beauty out of sight. 
 
 This gift of facile rhyme needs other gifts in a 
 poet to preserve it from the danger of lapsing 
 into jingle ; it was possessed in our own country 
 aboundingly by Thomas Hood, whose joke verses 
 have, I think, somehow prevented his true 
 greatness being properly valued. Next to, or 
 perhaps above, religious verse we ought to place 
 work inspired by the gift of charity, and the 
 undoubted master in this kind is Hood. His 
 " Bridge of Sighs " stands by itself above all such
 
 Among the English Poets 75 
 
 poetry. Its quaint versification, its terror, its 
 awful veracity, its measureless pity give it a dis- 
 tinction that is unique, and it was Lord Houghton 
 who with perfect taste suggested the simple but 
 glorious epitaph upon Hood's tomb : 
 
 Here lies Thomas Hood 
 He sang the Song of the Shirt. 
 
 The " Bridge of Sighs " is longer than the 
 poems I had destined for this book, but its 
 supreme merit enforces its entire quotation : 
 
 One more Unfortunate, 
 Weary of breath. 
 Rashly importunate, 
 Gone to her death ! 
 
 Take her up tenderly, 
 Lift her with care ; 
 Fashion'd so slenderly, 
 Young, and so fair ! 
 
 Look at her garments 
 Clinging like cerements ; 
 Whilst the wave constantly 
 Drips from her clothing ; 
 Take her up instantly. 
 Loving, not loathing. —
 
 76 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Touch her not scornfully ; 
 Think of her mournfully, 
 Gently and humanly ; 
 Not of the stains of her, 
 All that remains of her 
 Now is pure womanly. 
 
 Make no deep scrutiny 
 Into her mutiny 
 Rash and undutiful ; 
 Past all dishonour, 
 Death has left on her 
 Only the beautiful. 
 
 Still, for all slips of hers. 
 One of Eve's family — 
 Wipe those poor lips of hers 
 Oozing so clammily. 
 
 Loop up her tresses 
 Escaped from the comb. 
 Her fair auburn tresses ; 
 Whilst wonderment guesses 
 Where was her home ? 
 
 Who was her father ^ 
 Who was her mother ? 
 Had she a sister ? 
 Had she a brother ? 
 Or was there a dearer one 
 Still, and a nearer one 
 Yet, than all other }
 
 Among the English Poets 77 
 
 Alas ! for the rarity 
 Of Christian charity 
 Under the sun ! 
 Oh ! it was pitiful ! 
 Near a whole city full, 
 Home she had none. 
 
 Sisterly, brotherly, 
 Fatherly, motherly. 
 Feelings had changed : 
 Love, by harsh evidence ; 
 Thrown from its eminence ; 
 Even God's providence 
 Seeming estranged. 
 
 Where the lamps quiver 
 
 So far in the river, 
 
 With many a light 
 
 From window and casement, 
 
 From garret to basement, 
 
 She stood, with amazement, 
 
 Houseless by night. 
 
 The bleak wind of March 
 Made her tremble and shiver ; 
 But not the dark arch. 
 Or the black flowing river : 
 Mad from life's history, 
 Glad to death's mystery. 
 Swift to be hurl'd — 
 Anywhere, anywhere 
 Out of the world I
 
 78 An Ere?ji}ig in My Library 
 
 In she plunged boldly, 
 No matter how coldly 
 The rough river ran — 
 Over the brink of it, 
 Picture it — think of it, 
 Dissolute Man ! 
 Lave in it, drink of it. 
 Then, if you can ! 
 
 Take her up tenderly, 
 Lift her with care ; 
 Fashion'd so slenderly, 
 Young and so fair ! 
 
 Ere her limbs frigidly 
 Stiffen too rigidly, 
 Decently, — kindly, — 
 Smooth, and compose them. 
 And her eyes, close them 
 Staring so blindly 1 
 
 Dreadfully staring 
 Thro' muddy impurity. 
 As when with the daring 
 Last look of despairing 
 Fix'd on futurity. 
 
 Perishing gloomily. 
 Spurred by contumely, 
 Cold inhumanity, 
 Burning insanity,
 
 Among the English Poets 79 
 
 Into her rest, — 
 Cross her hands humbly, 
 As if praying dumbly. 
 Over her breast ! 
 
 Owning her weakness, 
 Her evil behaviour, 
 And leaving, with meekness, 
 Her sins to her Saviour ! 
 
 The poems " Ruth," " I remember, I re- 
 member," and " The Deathbed," are all supremely- 
 perfect and place Hood in the first rank of poets 
 of the nineteenth century : 
 
 She stood breast high amid the corn 
 Clasped by the golden light of morn, 
 Like the sweetheart of the sun 
 Who many a glowing kiss had won. 
 
 On her cheek an autumn flush 
 Deeply ripened — such a blush 
 In the midst of brown was born 
 Like red poppies grown with corn. 
 
 Round her cyc8 her tresses fell, 
 Which were blackest none could tell, 
 But long lashes veiled a liglit 
 That had else been all too bright.
 
 8o An Evening in My Library 
 
 And her hat with shady brim 
 Made her tressy forehead dim : 
 Thus she stood amid the stooks, 
 Praising God with sweetest looks. 
 
 " Sure," I said, " Heaven did not mean 
 Where I reap thou should'st but glean ; 
 Lay thy sheaf adown and come, 
 Share my harvest and my home." 
 
 Again 
 
 I remember, I remember 
 The house where I was born ; 
 The little window where the sun 
 Came peeping in at morn ; 
 He never came a wink too soon 
 Nor brought too long a day. 
 But now I often wish the night 
 Had borne my breath away. 
 
 I remember, I remember 
 The roses red and white, 
 The violets, and the lily cups, 
 Those flowers made of light ! 
 The lilacs where the robin built 
 And where my brother set 
 The laburnum on his birthday — 
 The tree is living yet. 
 
 I remember, I remember 
 
 Where I was used to swing 
 
 And thought the air must rush as fresh 
 
 To swallows on the wing ;
 
 Among the English Poets 8 1 
 
 My spirit flew in feathers then 
 That is so heavy now 
 And summer pools could hardly cool 
 The fever on my brow. 
 
 I remember, I remember 
 
 The fir trees dark and high ; 
 
 I used to think their slender tops 
 
 Were close against the sky ; 
 
 It was a childish ignorance, 
 
 But now 'tis little joy 
 
 To know I'm farther off from Heaven 
 
 Than when I was a boy. 
 
 Again : 
 
 We watched her breathing through the night, 
 
 Her breathing soft and low, 
 As in her breast the wave of life 
 
 Kept heaving to and fro. 
 
 So silently we seemed to speak. 
 
 So slowly moved about 
 As we had lent her half her powers 
 
 To eke her living out. 
 
 Our very hopes belied our fears, 
 
 Our fears our hopes belied. 
 We thought her dying when she slept 
 And sleeping when she died — 
 G
 
 82 AtJ Evening in My Library 
 
 For when the morn came dim and sad 
 
 And chill with early showers 
 Her quiet eyelids closed — she had 
 
 Another morn than ours. 
 
 Many other poems and ballads, such as 
 
 She's up and gone, the graceless girl, 
 
 and 
 
 O, saw ye not fair Inez, 
 
 She's gone into the West, 
 
 and 
 
 The autumn is old, 
 
 The sere leaves are flying, 
 
 are all beautiful exceedingly ; as a writer he 
 suffered from being regarded as the public jester 
 of his time, just as John Toole, the actor, suffered 
 in like manner, for the latter possessed con- 
 summate powers as a pathetic player which the 
 public never encouraged because accustomed to 
 expect and receive nothing but comic jesting 
 from him. But there can be no doubt that the 
 fame of Hood will ultimately rest entirely on his 
 serious work — which is what he would have 
 desired. 
 
 Fine work sooner or later reaches its proper 
 niche in the temple of Fame, from which it is 
 never subsequently dethroned, but time is neces- 
 sary both to elevate what has suffered neglect
 
 Aynong the English Poets 83 
 
 and to depose what has enjoyed a passing un- 
 deserved popularity. 
 
 There can be no doubt that in the fifties of 
 the last century Southey had an apparently 
 solid reputation as a poet which has since dis- 
 appeared. It would now be quite difficult to 
 find any man of letters who could honestly aver 
 that he had ever read " The Curse of Kehama," 
 or " Thalaba," or " Madoc," yet these immense 
 productions, of dimensions comparable with 
 nothing less than interplanetary space, were upon 
 everyone's table and were universally admired 
 in those days — which, it must be remembered, 
 were days when the crinoHne deformed the 
 fairest works of God, and all men praised the 
 Proverbial Philosophy of Martin Tupper. 
 
 Now Southey's poetry has gone where Tupper 
 and the crinohne have gone. But he was a 
 really great prose writer, and his " Metrical 
 Tales " such as " Bishop Hatto," " The Inchcape 
 Rock," " Lord William," and a score of others 
 remain very excellent examples of the nursery 
 ballad, though none of them quite attain to the 
 level of "John Gilpin," which I suppose is the 
 highest achievement of the kind. 
 
 Coleridge, my great kinsman, was Southey's 
 brother-in-law, and also wrote some turgid and 
 voluminous verse which the world has willingly
 
 84 An Eve fling in My Library 
 
 let die, but on the other hand he on occasions 
 rose to flights of visionary splendour, as in " Kubla 
 Khan," and the " Hymn before Sunrise in the 
 Vale of Chamouni" ; and his "Ancient Mariner," 
 and " Christabel " remain of their kind unsur- 
 passed. From the latter I extract the following 
 beautiful passage : 
 
 Alas ! they had been friends in youth 
 
 But whispering tongues can poison truth, 
 
 And constancy lives in realms above 
 
 And life is thorny and youth is vain 
 
 And to be wroth with one we love 
 
 Doth work like madness in the brain. 
 
 And thus it chanced, as I divine 
 
 With Roland and Sir Leoline — 
 
 Each spake words of high disdain 
 
 And insult to his heart's best brother — 
 
 They parted, ne'er to moet again ! 
 
 But never either found another 
 
 To free the hollow heart from paining — 
 
 They stood aloof, the scars remaining, 
 
 Like cliffs that had been rent asunder ; 
 
 A dreary sea now flows between 
 
 But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder 
 
 Shall wholly do away I ween 
 
 The marks of that which once hath been. 
 
 And from the " Ancient Mariner " I extract with 
 pride and delight the concluding stanzas, which
 
 Among the English Poets 85 
 
 have become the treasured possession of all who 
 have espoused the cause of humaneness to our 
 humble fellow-creatures all the world over : 
 
 O Wedding Guest ! this soul hath been 
 
 Alone on a wide wide sea, 
 So lonely 'twas that God Himself 
 
 Scarce seemed there to be. 
 
 O, sweeter than the marriage-feast 
 
 'Tis sweeter far to me 
 To walk together to the kirk 
 
 With a goodly company. 
 
 To walk together to the kirk 
 
 And all together pray, 
 While each to his great Father bends. 
 Old men and babes and loving friends 
 
 And youths and maidens gay. 
 
 Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 
 
 To thee, thou Wedding Guest ! 
 He prayeth well who lovetli well 
 
 Both man and bird and beast. 
 
 He prayeth best who lovcth best 
 
 All things both great and small, 
 For the dear God who lovcth us 
 
 He made and lovcth all.
 
 86 An Evening in My Library 
 
 I take leave to cite two other small poems before 
 passing on to other poets : 
 
 O ! fair is Love's first hope to gentle mind 
 As Eve's first star through fleecy cloudlet peeping, 
 And sweeter than the gentle South-West wind 
 O'er willowy meads and shadowed waters creeping 
 And Ceres' golden fields — the sultry hind 
 Meets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping. 
 
 Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn ? 
 Where may the grave of that good man be ? 
 By the side of a spring on the breast of Helvellyn 
 Under the twigs of a young birch tree. 
 The oak that in summer was sweet to hear 
 And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year 
 And whistled and roared in the winter alone 
 Is gone — and the birch in its stead is grown. 
 
 The Knight's bones are dust 
 
 And his good sword rust ; 
 His soul is with the Saints, I trust. 
 
 When Coleridge was young he entertained an 
 enthusiastic admiration for the Sonnets of Bowles, 
 which it is said he copied out many times to give 
 to his friends. 
 
 In deference to Coleridge's admiration I here 
 cite what seems to me to be the best of these 
 Sonnets. It is entitled " Dover Chffs " : 

 
 Among the English Poets 87 
 
 On these white cliffs, that calm above the flood 
 Uplift their shadowing heads, and, at their feet, 
 Scarce hear the surge that has for ages beat. 
 Sure many a lonely wanderer has stood ; 
 And whilst the Ufted murmur met his ear, 
 And o'er the distant billows the still eve 
 Sailed slow, has thought of all his heart must leave 
 To-morrow ; of the friends he loved most dear ; 
 Of social scenes, from which he wept to part ; 
 But if, like me, he knew how fruitless all 
 The thoughts that would full fain the past recall 
 Soon would he quell the risings of his heart ; 
 And brave the wild winds and unhearing tide, 
 The world his country, and his God his guide. 
 
 Charles Lamb's affection for Coleridge was 
 life-long, and the " friend " he speaks of in his 
 " Old Familiar Faces " is Coleridge ; the lines 
 were written during a temporary misunderstand- 
 ing, the only one that ever arose between them. 
 Whatever may have been Coleridge's failings he 
 was able to acquire and retain throughout his 
 life the love of great and good men. The 
 austerely virtuous are seldom so beloved as the 
 radiantly imperfect. 
 
 I have had playmates, I have had companions 
 
 In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days — 
 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
 
 88 An Evening In My Library 
 
 I have been laughing, I have been carousing, 
 Drinking late, sitting late with my bosom cronies — 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I loved a love once, fairest among women ; 
 Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her — 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man ; 
 Like an ingrate 1 left my friend abruptly — 
 Left him to muse on the old familiar faces. 
 
 Ghost-hkc I paced round the haunts of my childhood, 
 Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse 
 Seeking to find the old familiar faces. 
 
 Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother, 
 Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling ? 
 So miglit we talk of the old familiar faces — 
 
 How some they have died, and some they have left me 
 And some are taken from me ; all are departed — 
 All, all are gone, the old familiar faces. 
 
 Referring back to poems that have their 
 foundation in the gift of charity, Wordsworth's 
 " Reverie of Poor Susan," though entirely without 
 the deep motive of " The Song of the Shirt " 
 and " The Bridge of Sighs," yet very certainly 
 may claim to be of that class :
 
 Among the English Poets 89 
 
 At the corner of Wood Street when daylight appears 
 Hangs a thrush that sings loud — it has sung for three years — 
 Poor Susan has passed by the spot and has heard 
 In the silence of morning the song of the bird. 
 
 'Tis a note of enchantment. What ails her ? She sees 
 A mountain ascending, a vision of trees ; 
 Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide 
 And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside. 
 
 Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale 
 Down which she so often has tripped with her pail, 
 And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's, 
 The one only dwelling on earth that she loves. 
 
 She looks, and her heart is in Heaven ; but they fade, 
 The mist and the river, the hill and the shade ; 
 The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise, 
 And the colours have all passed away from her eyes. 
 
 At the corner of Wood Street which runs 
 into Cheapside from the north there still (1915) 
 stands a magniiicent plane tree whose branches 
 hang .clear over the black and grimy house-tops 
 into the roadway. Thousands upon thousands 
 pass it every day in a never-ending ebb and flow ; 
 poor Susan and the thrush that hung out at the 
 corner and the good old poet are dead and gone 
 these many years ; but the tree that he must 
 have looked upon remains, and there are yet some
 
 90 An Evening in My Library 
 
 of us who when we chance to pass by in that now 
 thronged and tumultuous thoroughfare look up 
 at it out of the din and dust with veneration. 
 Long may it flourish an alien in that wilderness 
 of brick and soot. 
 
 Wordsworth is a poet for quiet-hearted folk 
 who with him have time in their lives to go away 
 alone among the hills and lakes and the flat 
 meadows and feel " the slow ample beauty of the 
 world." 
 
 Only Wordsworth has looked long into the 
 golden West and written of the Spirit of God : 
 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting Suns, 
 
 yet when once said how immense and inevitable ! 
 
 If anyone wishes to understand Wordsworth 
 at his best he should read " The Brothers," and 
 if when he has finished it he does not take the 
 poet for good into his heart, I think he can have 
 no heart to take him into. 
 
 The concluding page of " Michael " also is 
 moving in a most compelling manner. I suppose 
 not many now embark on " The Prelude," yet 
 imbedded in it are many fine and profound 
 passages. 
 
 In the third book on " Residence at Cambridge " 
 he describes how his rooms at John's were close 
 against Trinity Chapel :
 
 Among the English Poets 91 
 
 Her pealing organ was my neighbour too ; 
 And from my pillow, looking forth by light 
 Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold 
 The antechapel where the statue stood 
 Of Newton with his prism, and silent face, 
 The marble index of a mind for ever 
 Voyaging through strange seas of thought, alone. 
 
 Everyone knows the wonderful statue, one of 
 Roubiliac's greatest works, and in these Hnes 
 surely worthily extolled ; here then is a felicitous 
 conjunction of poet, sculptor, and philosopher, 
 each the greatest of his time and age. 
 
 Further in the same book there is a sombre 
 picture of the Cambridge of that day : 
 
 for all degrees 
 And shapes of spurious fame and short-lived praise 
 Here sate in state, and fed with daily alms 
 Retainers won away from solid good ; 
 And here was Labour, his own bond slave ; Hope 
 That never set the pains against the prize ; 
 Idleness halting with his weary clog, 
 And poor misguided Shame ; and witless Fear, 
 And simple Pleasure foraging for Death ; 
 Honour misplaced, and Dignity astray ; 
 Feuds, factions, flatteries, enmity and guile 
 Murmuring submission, and bald government 
 (The idol weak as the idolater) 
 And Decency and Custom starving Truth,
 
 92 An Evening in My Library 
 
 And blind Authority beating with his staff 
 The child that might have led him ; Emptiness 
 Followed as of good omen, and meek Worth 
 Left to herself unheard of and unknown. 
 
 This is surely a long way from " We are Seven," 
 " The Pet Lamb," and the trivialities with which 
 his name is associated too often by those who have 
 read nothing else. 
 
 And the invocation at the final conclusion of the 
 whole work to Coleridge is a very noble tribute 
 of poet to poet and friend to friend. Words- 
 worth read the whole poem to Coleridge, who 
 immediately on the very night wrote his verses 
 beginning : 
 
 Friend of the wise ! and teacher of the good ! 
 
 which end thus : 
 
 And when — O Friend ! my comforter and guide, 
 
 Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength, 
 
 Thy long sustained Song finally closed, 
 
 And thy deep voice had ceased — yet thou thyself 
 
 Wert still before my eyes and round us both 
 
 That happy vision of beloved faces — 
 
 Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close 
 
 I sate, my being blended in one thought 
 
 (Thought was it ? or aspiration ? or resolve ?) 
 
 Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound — 
 
 And when I rose, I found myself in prayer.
 
 Among the English Poets 93 
 
 An interesting opportunity of comparing the 
 work and methods of the poets occurred when 
 both Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott, unbe- 
 known to each other, wrote poems commemora- 
 ting the same event. 
 
 In 1805 a visitor to the Lake Country lost his 
 life in the fastnesses of Helvellyn and his body 
 was only discovered several months later, when it 
 was found that with touching fidelity his little 
 dog had watched alone by the body, sustaining 
 its own life in that august solitude in some manner 
 unknown. 
 
 I cite Scott's poem first : 
 
 I climbed the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn, 
 
 Lakes and mountains beneath me gleamed misty and wide ; 
 
 All was still save by fits when the eagle was yelling 
 
 And starting around me the echoes replied. 
 
 On the right Striden edge round the red tarn was bending 
 
 And Catchedecam its left verge was defending. 
 
 One huge nameless rock in the front was ascending 
 
 When I marked the sad spot where the wanderer had died. 
 
 Dark green was that spot 'mid the brown mountain heather 
 Where the Pilgrim of Nature lay stretched in decay, 
 Like the corpse of an outcast abandoned to weather 
 Till the mountain winds wasted the tcnantlcss clay, 
 Not yet quite deserted, though lonely extended. 
 For faithful in death his mute favourite attended, 
 The much loved remains of her master defended 
 And chased the hill fox and the raven away.
 
 94 ^ff Evening in My Library 
 
 How long didst thou think that his silence was slumber ? 
 When the wind waved his garment, how oft didst thou start ? 
 How many long days and long weeks didst thou number 
 Ere he faded before thee, the friend of thy heart ? 
 And oh ! was it meet that — no requiem read o'er him — 
 No mother to weep and no friend to deplore him 
 And thou little guardian alone stretched before him 
 Unhonoured the Pilgrim from life should depart ? 
 
 When a Prince to the fate of the Peasant has yielded 
 
 The tapestry waves dark round the dim lighted hall ; 
 
 With scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded 
 
 And pages stand mute by the canopied pall ; 
 
 Through the courts at deep midnight the torches are gleaming, 
 
 In the proudly arched chapel the banners are beaming 
 
 Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming 
 
 I-amenting a chief of the people should fall. 
 
 But meeter for thee, gentle lover of nature. 
 
 To lay down thy head like the meek mountain lamb 
 
 When 'wildered he drops from some cliff huge in stature ■ 
 
 And draws the last sob by tlie side of his dam. 
 
 And more stately thy couch by this desert lake lying. 
 
 Thy obsequies sung by the grey plover flying, 
 
 With our faithful friend but to witness thy dying 
 
 In the arms of Helvellyn and Catchedecam. 
 
 And this is how Wordsworth treats the same 
 
 tragedy : 
 
 A barking sound the shepherd hears, 
 A cry as of a dog or fox ; 
 He halts — and searches with his eyes 
 Among the scattered rocks — 
 
 i
 
 Among the 'English Poets 95 
 
 And now at distance can discern 
 A stirring in a brake of fern, 
 And instantly a dog is seen 
 Glancing through that covert green. 
 
 The dog is not of mountain breed, 
 Its motions, too, are wild and shy, 
 With something, as the shepherd thinks. 
 Unusual in its cry ; 
 Nor is there any one in sight 
 All round in hollow or on height, 
 Nor shout nor whistle strikes his ear ; 
 What is the creature doing here ? 
 
 It was a cove, a huge recess 
 
 That keeps till June December's snow, 
 
 A lofty precipice in front, 
 
 A silent tarn below ; 
 
 Far in the bosom of Helvellyn, 
 
 Remote from public road or dwelling. 
 
 Pathway or cultivated land. 
 
 From trace of human foot or hand. 
 
 There sometimes doth a leaping fish 
 Send through the tarn a lonely cheer ; 
 The crags repeat the raven's croak 
 In symphony austere ; 
 Thither the rainbow comes — the cloud — 
 And mists that spread the flying shroud, 
 And sunbeams ; and the sounding blast 
 That if it could would hurry past 
 But that enormous barrier holds it fast.
 
 96 Ati Erening in My Library 
 
 Not free from boding thoughts, awhile 
 The shepherd stood ; then makes his way 
 O'er rocks and stones, following the dog 
 As quickly as he may, 
 Nor far had gone before he found 
 A human skeleton on the ground ; 
 The appalled discoverer with a sigh 
 Looks round to learn the history. 
 
 From those abrupt and perilous rocks 
 
 The man had fallen, that place of fear ! 
 
 At length upon the shepherd's mind 
 
 It breaks and all is clear ; 
 
 He instantly recalled the name. 
 
 And who he was, and whence he came ; 
 
 Remembered too the very day 
 
 On which the traveller passed this way. 
 
 But hear a wonder, for whose sake 
 
 This lamentable tale I tell ! 
 
 A lasting monument of words 
 
 This wonder merits well — 
 
 The dog, which still was hovering nigh 
 
 Repeating the same timid cry, 
 
 This dog had been through three months' space 
 
 A dweller in this savage place. 
 
 Yes, proof was plain that, since the day 
 When this ill-fated traveller died. 
 The dog had watched about the spot 
 Or by his master's side.
 
 Among the English Poets 97 
 
 How nourished here througl\ such long time 
 He knows who gave that love subHme 
 And gave that strength of feeling, great 
 Above all human estimate. 
 
 Here the story is told simply and impressively, 
 and the beautiful love and fidelity of the little 
 dog is lifted up at the close for us to honour and 
 even to reverence. 
 
 The digression in the fourth verse fitly and 
 truly describes the solemn scenery of the tragedy. 
 
 Scott also digresses in his fourth verse to 
 introduce " scutcheons " and " beaming banners " 
 and the very human trappings of pompous death 
 among the great that so delighted his heart, and 
 he seems more concerned at the absence of re- 
 quiems over the corpse than at the touching love 
 of the little faithful creature, but he becomes 
 reconciled to the absence of requiems when he 
 reflects that the dead man was only a "gentle 
 lover of nature " and not a chief. 
 
 How much stronger and more convincing is 
 Wordsworth's truthful recital of the finding of 
 the body by a shepherd than Scott's employment 
 of the first person singular in which from the start 
 the reader has no belief. 
 
 Lastly, the jingle and the rhymes constantly 
 dictate the sense in Scott, both of which faults 
 are entirely absent in Wordsworth. 
 
 H
 
 98 An Evening in My Library 
 
 All truly great poets teach sympathy towards 
 animals given into our dominion so forlornly 
 and helplessly, adjuring us as does Wordsworth 
 in the " Hart, leap well " — 
 
 Never to blend our pleasure or our pride 
 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels. 
 
 Ruskin has said that " all the holy and humble 
 men of heart and the truly brave, and those that 
 love God and their brother man, of necessity 
 are merciful to animals," and he once criticised 
 a celebrated picture of an otter hunt in these 
 words : 
 
 I would have Mr. Landseer, before he gives us any more 
 writhing otters or yelping packs, reflect whether that which is 
 best worthy of contemplation in a hound be its ferocity, or in 
 an otter its agony, or in a human being its victory over a poor 
 little fish-catching creature a foot long. 
 
 There is nothing manly in such practices, and 
 I can remember only one respectable poet who 
 has defended them. He was a clergyman. The 
 Rev. Mr. Kingsley has written many famous songs, 
 and I suppose that it would be quite impossible 
 to estimate the number of times his " Three 
 Fishers " have sailed out into the West at charity 
 and other ballad concerts. A less obvious and 
 therefore less popular song is this one :
 
 A7nong the English Poets 99 
 
 When all the world is young, lad, 
 
 And all the trees are green ; 
 And every goose a swan, lad, 
 
 And every lass a queen ; 
 Then hey ! for boot and horse, lad, 
 
 And round the world away. 
 Young blood must have its course, lad, 
 
 And every dog his day. 
 
 When all the world is old, lad, 
 
 And all the trees are brown. 
 And all the sport is stale, lad. 
 
 And all the wheels run down ; 
 Creep home and take your place there 
 
 The spent and maimed among, 
 God grant you find one face there 
 
 You loved when all was young. 
 
 His " Ode to the North-East Wind," in spite 
 of its invocation to " ye dappled darlings," 
 meaning the hounds, to " see a fox die," ends on a 
 fine note thus : 
 
 'Tis the hard grey weather 
 
 Breeds hard Englishmen. 
 What's the soft South-Wester ? 
 
 'Tis the lady's breeze 
 Bringing home their true-loves 
 
 Out of all the seas ; 
 But the black North-Eastcr 
 
 Through the snowstorm hurled
 
 loo An Evening in My Library 
 
 Drives our English hearts of oak 
 
 Seaward round the world. 
 Come as came our fathers 
 
 Heralded by thee, 
 Conquering from the eastward, 
 
 Lords of land and sea. 
 Come, and strong within us 
 
 Stir the Viking's blood ; 
 Bracing brain and sinew, 
 
 Blow, thou wind of God ! 
 
 This association of nature with the joys, 
 sorrows, and Hfe of mankind, this sympathy of 
 the human heart with the visible universe about 
 us, has permeated the poets since the days of 
 Johnson in a manner comparatively unknown 
 before his time. Perhaps it is, as it has been called, 
 a pathetic fallacy, but the poets of the nineteenth 
 century have taught us to delight in imagining 
 that the vision of things around us corresponds 
 in some strange and intimate manner with our 
 own joys and sorrows, and with the joys and sorrows 
 of mankind, and so it seems that to the listening 
 heart there indeed come voices from the fields 
 and woods and falHng waters, and from the 
 trampling waves of the sea, and whisperings from 
 the wandering airs among the trees at evening, 
 and callings to us in the watches of the winter 
 night from the bewildered chimes across the snow.
 
 Among the English Poets loi 
 
 that fall upon the spiritual ear of the mind 
 " most like articulate sounds of things to come," 
 mysterious, but blessed if the hearer be reverent, 
 a secret communing with God in Nature, from 
 which we return, not without benediction, 
 carrying back into the dust of life a haunting 
 memory that nothing can profane. The curtain 
 has been lifted for us ; we have stood within the 
 veil, and we can say with the poet : 
 
 Ah, then, if mine had been the painter's hand 
 To express what then I saw, and add the gleam, 
 The light that never was on sea or land. 
 The consecration and the poet's dream ! * 
 
 There is no mood of man with which the poet 
 will not associate the visions of the visible world ; 
 even Spring itself may bring pain when it sings 
 songs to a heavy heart. 
 
 Out of doors are budding trees, calling birds, and opening flowers, 
 Purple rainy distances, fragrant winds and lengthening hours. 
 
 Only in the loving heart, with its unforgetting mind, 
 
 There is grief for seasons gone, and the friend we cannot find. 
 
 For upon this lovely earth mortal sorrow still must bide 
 And remembrance still must lurk like a pang in beauty's side. 
 
 Ah ! one wistful heartache now April with her joy must bring, 
 And the want of you return always with returning Spring. t 
 
 • Wordsworth : Elegiac stanzas on a picture of Peel Castle. 
 t Bliss Carman.
 
 102 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Who indeed shall define the limits of the mighty 
 influence of beauty in the world about us upon 
 our motives, our actions, our life and our death ? 
 Every stone upon the road should teach us 
 patience and endurance, and every seed of the 
 field should teach us hope and faith if we will 
 but attend and lay bare our hearts to the influence 
 that is in them ; for so only shall we ever come 
 to see anything of the splendour of that wonderful 
 order in the midst of which we are placed ; so 
 only wall it be vouchsafed to us indeed to feel the 
 majesty of that far-off voice borne down to us 
 through countless generations of mankind : 
 
 Thus the heaven and the earth were finished and all the host 
 
 of them ; 
 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it wa» 
 
 very good. 
 
 But to return to the subject of song writing 
 which was Kingsley's best gift, I suppose the 
 first and almost greatest master of the art was 
 Herrick. All the world knows his " To Daffodils," 
 " Gather ye rosebuds while ye may," " Her eyes 
 the glow worm lend thee," " Cherry Ripe," and 
 " Bid me to live and I will live thy protestant 
 to be." But Swinburne has pointed out that 
 there are many of his songs of superlative merit
 
 Among the English Poets 103 
 
 which have remained comparatively unknow^n. 
 One very beautiful one is entitled " To Meadows " : 
 
 Ye have been fresh and green, 
 Ye have been filled Wnh. flowers 
 
 And ye the walks have been 
 
 Where maids have spent their hours. 
 
 You have beheld how they 
 
 With wicker arks did come 
 To kiss and bear away 
 
 The richer cowslips home. 
 
 You've heard them sweetly sing 
 
 And seen them in a round ; 
 Each virgin like a spring 
 
 With honeysuckles crowned. 
 
 But now we see none here 
 
 Whose silvery feet did tread 
 And with dishevelled hair 
 
 Adorned this smoother mead. 
 
 Like unthrifts, having spent 
 
 Your stock and needy grown 
 You're left here to lament 
 
 Your poor estates alone. 
 
 In his serious poems, which he calls his " noble 
 numbers," he often reaches a high level of direct 
 and powerful expression, as in several stanzas
 
 104 ^^^ Evening in My Library 
 
 of his " Litany to the Holy Spirit." Here are 
 some of them : 
 
 When the passing bell doth toll 
 And the furies in a shoal 
 Come to fright a passing soul, 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort mc ! 
 
 When the tapers now burn blue 
 And the comforters are few 
 And that number more than true, 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 
 When the priest his last hath prayed 
 And I nod to what is said 
 'Cause my speech is now decayed. 
 Sweet Spirit, comfort me ! 
 
 The old long-disappeared world when watch- 
 men patrolled the streets calling out the hours 
 of the night and adding whether it was foul or 
 fair, are recalled by Herrick's sombre lines 
 entitled " The Bellman " : 
 
 Along the dark and silent night 
 With my lantern and my light 
 And the tinkling of my bell 
 Thus I walk, and tliis I tell ; 
 Death and dreadfulness call on 
 To the general session, 
 To whose dismal bar we there 
 All accounts must come to clear.
 
 Among the English Poets 105 
 
 Scores of sins we've made here many, 
 Wiped out few, God knows, if any. 
 Rise, ye debtors, then, and fall 
 To make payment while I call. 
 Ponder this when I am gone : 
 By the clock 'tis almost one. 
 
 Next to Herrick and perhaps sharing his throne 
 comes Burns as a writer of songs, although some 
 of his work is so Scotch as to become a foreign 
 language. There really seems no reason why 
 " would " should be spelt " wad," more par- 
 ticularly as " could " never appears spelt " cad," 
 and to an Englishman a language that assumes 
 the adroit privilege of changing itself to suit the 
 exigence of rhyme ceases to be a speech and 
 becomes a philological convenience. 
 
 Burns translates the English word " no " into 
 " nae " when he wants it to rhyme with " day " 
 and into " na " when he wants it to rhyme with 
 " twa " ; the word " give " remains " give " 
 when he wants it to rhyme with " live " but 
 transforms itself nimbly to " gi'c " when it is 
 necessary to make it rhyme with " me," and the 
 word " mouth " becomes when convenient some- 
 thing spelt " mou' " which the reader is invited to 
 pronounce as rhyming with " dew " and " hue." 
 If a poet can make '* mouth " rhyme with " dew " 
 there is nothing to prevent his making " face "
 
 io6 An Evening in My Library 
 
 rhyme with " hat," and he is certainly reheved 
 from all necessity or temptation to allow the 
 rhyme ever to dictate the sense in his com- 
 positions. 
 
 Nevertheless several of the songs of Burns 
 appear surpassingly exquisite even to an English- 
 man to whom some of the verbal gymnastics 
 of the Scotch language are absurd. 
 
 Mary, at thy window be, 
 
 It is the wished, the trysted hour. 
 Those smiles and glances let me see 
 That make the miser's treasure poor ; 
 How blithely wad I bide the stoure, 
 A weary slave from sun to sun. 
 Could I the rich reward secure, 
 The lovely Mary Morison. 
 
 Yestreen, when to the trembling string 
 The dance gaed through the lighted ha', 
 To thee my fancy took its wing, 
 
 1 sat, but neither heard nor saw, 
 Though this was fair and that was braw 
 And yon the toast of a' the town, 
 
 I sighed and said amang them a', 
 " Ye are na Mary Morison." 
 
 O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace 
 Wha for thy sake would gladly die ? 
 Or canst thou break that heart of his 
 Whose only fault is loving thee ?
 
 Again : 
 
 Again 
 
 Among the English Poets 107 
 
 If love for love thou wilt na gi'e 
 At least be pity to me shown, 
 A thought ungentle canna be 
 The thought of Mary Morison. 
 
 O wert thou in the cold blast 
 
 On yonder lea, on yonder lea. 
 My plaidie to the angry airt 
 
 I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee ; 
 Or did misfortune's bitter storms 
 
 Around thee blaw, around thee blaw, 
 Thy bield should be my bosom 
 
 To share it a', to share it a'. 
 
 Or were I in the wildest waste 
 
 Sae bleak and bare, sae bleak and bare. 
 The desert were a paradise 
 
 If thou wert there, if thou wert there ; 
 Or were I monarch o' the globe 
 
 Wi' thee to reign, wi' thee to reign, 
 The brightest jewel in my crown 
 
 Wad be my queen, wad be my queen. 
 
 As I came in by our gate end 
 
 As day was waxin' weary, 
 O wha came tripping down the street 
 
 But bonnie Peg, my dearie. 
 Her air sae sweet, and shape complete, 
 
 Wi' nae proportion wanting, 
 The Queen of Love did never move 
 
 Wi' motion mair enchanting.
 
 io8 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Wi' linked hands we took the sands 
 Adown yon winding river, 
 
 And oh ! that hour and broomy bower 
 Can I forget it ever ? 
 
 Again ; 
 
 Again : 
 
 O my luve's like a red, red rose 
 That's newly sprung in June ; 
 
 O my luve's like the melodie 
 That's sweetly played in tune. 
 
 As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, 
 
 So deep in luve am I ; 
 And I will luve thee still, my dear, 
 
 Till a' the seas gang dry. 
 
 Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear. 
 And the rocks melt wi' the sun. 
 
 And I will luve thee still, my dear, 
 While the sands o' life shall run. 
 
 And fare thee weel, my only luve ! 
 
 And fare thee weel awhile. 
 And I will come again, my luve. 
 
 Though it were ten thousand mile. 
 
 Ye flowery banks o' bonnie Doon, 
 How can ye blume sae fair ? 
 How can ye chant, ye little birds. 
 And I sae fu' o' care ?
 
 Among the Knglish Poets 109 
 
 Thou'U break my heart, thou bonnie bird 
 That sings upon the bough, 
 Thou minds me o' the happy days 
 WTien my fause luve was true. 
 
 Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird 
 That sings beside thy mate. 
 For sae I sat, and sae I sang 
 And wist na o' my fate. 
 
 Aft hae I roved by bonnie Doon 
 To see the woodbine twine 
 And ilka bird sang o' its hive, -■- 
 And sae did I o' mine. 
 
 Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose 
 Frae off its thorny tree. 
 And my fause luver staw my rose 
 But left the thorn wi' me. 
 
 Love, passionate love, inspires all the great 
 work of Burns, as it has inspired all the noblest 
 poets in their prime. 
 
 Of all the poetry that is the expression of the 
 emotion of love, pure, undefilcd, passionate and 
 overwhelming, I suppose that most men of letters 
 would agree that Keats's " Eve of St. Agnes " is 
 one of the most perfect specimens in our language. 
 
 Besides the wealth and luxuriance of the 
 versification giving a sense of easy royal power, 
 there is here the very translation, as it were, of the 
 passions from earth to heaven ; set down for all
 
 I I o An Evening in My hibrai'y 
 
 time in exquisite music is the eternal verity that 
 passionate love can indeed lift us up out of our 
 clay and breathe upon us something of im- 
 mortality, and that they to whom it has been 
 given to partake of this divine emotion can stand 
 together at the gate of heaven, their earthly part 
 transfigured, and gaze upon the glory within. 
 Then having shown us this with a power surely 
 seldom surpassed, the poet with infinite tenderness 
 lets us feel how well he knew the transience of 
 such glimpses of Paradise vouchsafed to mortal 
 men and maids, and a world of regret breaks 
 forth in the last verse as the lovers pass away 
 from our sight for ever : 
 
 And they are gone ; aye, ages long ago 
 These lovers fled away into the storm. 
 
 Love poems are probably the most well-known 
 to all kinds of readers ; the following two verses of 
 Shelley are always regarded as a very perfect speci- 
 men of the shorter poems inspired by passion : 
 
 One word is too often profaned 
 
 For me to profane it, 
 One feeling too falsely disdained 
 
 For thee to disdain it — 
 One hope is too like despair 
 
 For prudence to smother, 
 And pity from thee more dear 
 
 Than that from another.
 
 Among the English Poets 1 1 1 
 
 I can give not what men call love, 
 
 But wilt thou accept not 
 The worship the heart lifts above 
 
 And the heavens reject not — 
 The desire of the moth for the star, 
 
 Of the night for the morrow, 
 The devotion to something afar 
 
 From the sphere of our sorrow ? 
 
 Another of Shelley's love poems which has 
 been exquisitely set to music by Maud Valerie 
 White is the following : 
 
 Mary dear, that you were here, 
 With your brown eyes bright and clear, 
 And your sweet voice like a bird 
 Singing love to its lone mate 
 
 In the ivy bower disconsolate ; 
 Voice the sweetest ever heard 
 In this azure Italy. 
 Mary dear, come to me soon. 
 
 1 am not well whilst thou are far ; 
 As sunset to the sphered moon, 
 As twilight to the Western star 
 Thou, beloved, art to me. 
 
 O Mary dear, that you were here ; 
 The castle echo whispers " Here ! " 
 
 No poems of this class are long. Long of 
 course in this regard is an indefinable word, and
 
 1 1 2 An Evening in My Library 
 
 perhaps some might think Mrs. Browning's 
 " Lady Geraldine's Courtship " long, but it is 
 none the less a fine love-poem. 
 
 All the poets of all ages have drawn up for us 
 the waters of life from this everlasting well. 
 One of the earliest known is also one of the most 
 glorious, " The song of songs which is Solomon's," 
 and in no age has the song died out. The passion 
 of love remains unchangeable amid change, the 
 mystery of life and a perpetual begetter of poetry. 
 
 Passionate love then inspires the poets, and the 
 poets with one accord proclaim the stainless 
 sanctity of that love, and herein they do humanity 
 a priceless service. 
 
 The long poems of Shelley somehow fail to 
 reach the twentieth -century heart ; sapphire 
 thrones, and jasper walls in a world out of time 
 and place, tameless hurricanes beyond the stars 
 on the verge of formless space, and twilight 
 phantasms of incommunicable dreams, leave us 
 cold and unconvinced, and prefaces that inform 
 us that these endless recitals about numberless 
 and immeasurable halls and impossible cataracts 
 are allegorical of some situation of the human 
 mind fail to vitalise such nebulous rhapsodies 
 with anything very definite and informing. 
 
 Two unsurpassable fragments on the moon, 
 by Shelley, were published posthumously :
 
 A?mng the English Poets 1 1 3 
 
 And art thou pale for weariness 
 
 Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth, 
 
 Wandering companionless 
 
 Among the stars that have a different birth, 
 
 And ever changing like a joyless eye 
 
 That finds no object worth its constancy ? 
 
 The Other is, if possible, even finer : 
 
 And like a dying lady, lean and pale, 
 Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil. 
 Out of her chamber led by the insane 
 And feeble wanderings of her fading brain, 
 The moon arose up in the murky East 
 A white and shapeless mass. 
 
 A very dainty Httle poem of Shelley was 
 published by Leigh Hunt in the " Indicator " 
 two years and a half before his death, as follows : 
 
 The fountains mingle with the river 
 
 And the rivers with the ocean. 
 The winds of heaven mix for ever 
 
 With a sweet emotion ; 
 Nothing in the world is single : 
 
 All things by a law divine 
 In one spirit meet and mingle. 
 
 Why not I with thine ? 
 
 See the mountains kiss high heaven 
 And the waves clasp one another ; 
 
 No sister flower would be forgiven 
 If it disdained its brother ;
 
 I 14 An Evening in My Library 
 
 And the sunlight clasps the earth 
 And the moonbeams kiss the sea : 
 
 What are all these kissings worth 
 If thou kiss not me ? 
 
 Shelley's " Dirge for the Year " was written 
 at the end of 1821, six months before his untimely 
 death ; the second verse when once read can never 
 be forgotten : 
 
 Orphan Hours, the Year is dead, 
 
 Come and sigh, come and weep ! 
 Merry Hours smile instead 
 
 For the Year is but asleep. 
 See it smiles as it is sleeping, 
 Mocking your untimely weeping. 
 
 As an earthquake rocks a corse 
 
 In its coffin in the clay 
 So white winter, that rough nurse. 
 
 Rocks the death-cold Year to-day. 
 Solemn Hours ! wail aloud 
 For your mother in her shroud. 
 
 As the wild air stirs and sways 
 
 The tree-swung cradle of a child, 
 So the breath of these rude days 
 
 Rocks the Year — be calm and mild, 
 Trembling Hours, she will arise 
 With new love within her eyes.
 
 Among the 'English Poets 1 1 5 
 
 January grey is here 
 
 Like a sexton by her grave, 
 February bears the bier, 
 
 March with grief doth howl and rave 
 And April weeps — but O ! ye Hours 
 Follow with May's fairest flowers. 
 
 Many of Shelley's very finest lyrics, by which 
 he will live through the ages, were first published 
 after he was dead. They indicate that his powers 
 were mounting higher when he was cut ofF at only 
 thirty years of age, and that the loss to the world 
 was immeasurable when he sank into the dark 
 waves of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Yet even more disastrous to the world of 
 literature was the forlorn and tragic end of Keats, 
 who perished a mere lad of twenty-four. It is 
 difficult to imagine to what prodigious heights 
 of magnificence he would have ascended had he 
 lived. Anxieties caused by poverty, and the 
 anguish of an unsatisfied passion deprived the 
 world of unimaginable glories. 
 
 " He might have lived longer if he had loved 
 less," was the conclusion of Lord Houghton. 
 
 But Youth and its dreams and cntliusiasms, 
 Youth and its towering ambitions and its infinite 
 capacities finds in Keats its final fulfilment, 
 endorsement, and justification, to the confusion 
 of all greybeards prating of its immaturity.
 
 1 1 6 Aji Evening in My Library 
 
 Here is a boy who has written an ode to the 
 nightingale of such consummate and amazing 
 lovehness as to preclude all subsequent poets, 
 possessed of becoming and sane modesty, from 
 challenging an impossible comparison by touching 
 the same subject. Here is a boy that has written 
 a love poem that can never be surpassed, a sonnet 
 that all the masters of that metre may envy, 
 and has so apostrophized a Grecian urn as to have 
 in a manner sublimated every ancient chased 
 goblet in the world. 
 
 Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird ; 
 
 No hungry generations tread thee down. 
 The voice I hear this passing night was heard 
 
 In ancient days by emperor and clown ; 
 Perhaps the self-same song that found a path 
 
 Through the sad heart of Ruth, when sick for home, 
 She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
 
 The same that oft-times hath 
 Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
 
 Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn. 
 
 For such a verse as this one can but stand 
 uncovered and praise God. 
 
 He shares with Shakespeare the distinction of 
 being inimitable. Neither can be parodied. 
 
 Shelley erected to his memory a monument 
 not made with hands in his " Adonais." Of
 
 Among the English Poets 1 1 7 
 
 such tributes, among poets, of the living to the 
 dead, Tennyson's " In Memoriam " is of course 
 the most surpassing example, but very close to 
 Shelley's " Adonais " should be placed WilHam 
 Watson's " Lacrymae Musarum," which he 
 wrote when Tennyson died and which brought 
 him at once into the front rank of living poets, 
 where he has remained. He is never common- 
 place, he is never obscure ; he possesses deep 
 feeling, proud dignity, and is a lord of language. 
 I here insert one of his short poems which is a 
 fine example of his pregnant method : 
 
 In the night, in the night 
 
 When thou liest alone, 
 
 Ah, the sounds that are blown 
 
 In the freaks of the breeze 
 By the spirit that sends 
 The voice of far friends 
 
 With the sigh of the seas 
 In the night ! 
 
 In the night, in the night 
 
 When thou liest alone, 
 
 Ah, the ghosts that make moan 
 
 From the days that arc sped ; 
 The old dreams, the old deeds, 
 The old wound that still bleeds 
 
 And the face of the dead 
 In the night !
 
 1 1 8 An Evening in My Library 
 
 In the night, in the night 
 When thou liest alone. 
 With the grass and the stone 
 
 O'er thy chamber so deep. 
 Ah, the silence at last 
 Life's dissonance past. 
 
 And only pure sleep 
 In the night. 
 
 William Watson often writes with a great 
 purpose, as in his " Purple East," thus sharing 
 with Thomas Hood and Mrs. Browning the honour 
 that attaches to poets who use their gifts for the 
 condemnation of cruelty and wrong. 
 
 Austin Dobson is a charming poet who writes 
 with no other purpose than to give himself and 
 us innocent and most refined delight. He has a 
 fancy to retroject himself into the eighteenth 
 century, and indeed in the result, while possessing 
 himself of all that was really precious in that cen- 
 tury, he has draped it in a tenderness all his own : 
 
 The ladies of St. James's 
 
 Go swinging to the play ; 
 Their footmen run before them 
 
 With a " Stand by ! Clear the way ! " 
 But Phyllida, my Phyllida ! 
 
 She takes her buckled shoon, 
 When we go out a-courting 
 
 Beneath the harvest moon.
 
 Among the English Poets 1 1 9 
 
 The ladies of St. James's 
 
 Wear satin on their backs ; 
 They sit all night at Ombre 
 
 With candles all of wax ; 
 But Phyllida, my Phyllida ! 
 
 She dons her russet gown, 
 And runs to gather May dew 
 
 Before the world is down. 
 
 The ladies of St. James's ! 
 
 They are so fine and fair, 
 You'd think a box of essences 
 
 Was broken in the air ; 
 But Phyllida, my Phyllida ! 
 
 The breath of heath and furze, 
 When breezes blow at morning, 
 
 Is not so fresh as hers. 
 
 The ladies of St. James's ! 
 
 They're painted to the eyes, 
 Their white it stays for ever. 
 
 Their red it never dies ; 
 But Phyllida, my Phyllida ! 
 
 Her colour comes and goes ; 
 It trembles to a lily. 
 
 It wavers to a rose. 
 
 The ladies of St. James's ! 
 
 You scarce can understand 
 The half of all their speeches. 
 
 Their phrases arc so grand ;
 
 1 20 An Evening in My Library 
 
 But Phyllida, my Phyllida ! 
 
 Her shy and simple words 
 Are clear as, after rain drops, 
 
 The music of the birds. 
 
 The ladies of St. James's ! 
 
 They have their fits and freaks ; 
 They smile on you — for seconds, 
 
 They frown on you — for weeks ; 
 But Phyllida, my Phyllida ! 
 
 Come either storm or shine. 
 From Shrove-tide unto Shrove-tide, 
 
 Is always true — and mine. 
 
 My Phyllida ! my Phyllida ! 
 
 I care not though they heap 
 The hearts of all St. James's, 
 
 And give me all to keep ; 
 I care not whose the beauties 
 
 Of all the world may be. 
 But Phyllida, my Phyllida ! 
 
 Is all the world to me. 
 
 Again : 
 
 Between the rail of woven brass, 
 That hides the " Strangers' Pew," 
 
 I hear the grey-haired vicar pass 
 From Section One to Two. 
 
 And somewhere on my left I see — 
 Whene'er I chance to look — 
 
 A soft-eyed girl, St. Cecily, 
 Who notes them — in a book.
 
 Among the English Poets 121 
 
 Ah, worthy Goodman, — sound divine ! 
 
 Shall I your wrath incur, 
 If I admit these thoughts of mine 
 
 Will sometimes stray — to her ? 
 
 I know your theme, and I revere ; 
 
 I hear your precepts tried ; 
 Must I confess I also hear 
 
 A sermon at my side ? 
 
 Or how explain this need I feel, 
 
 This impulse prompting me 
 Within my secret self to kneel 
 
 To Faith, — to Purity ! 
 
 Again : 
 
 Monsieur the Cure down the street 
 
 Comes with his kind old face, 
 With his coat worn bare and his straggling hair, 
 
 And his green umbrella-case. 
 
 You may sec him pass by the little " Grande Places'' 
 
 And the tiny " Hold de Ville " ; 
 He smiles as he goes to the Jleuriste Rose, 
 
 And the pompier Thcophilc. 
 
 He turns, as a rule, through the " Marchi " cool 
 
 Where the noisy fishwives call ; 
 And his compliment pays to the " belle Ihirise,'' 
 
 As she knits in her dusky stall.
 
 There's a letter to drop at the locksmith's shop, 
 
 And Toto, the locksmith's niece, 
 Has jubilant hopes, for the Cure gropes ; 
 
 In his tails for a pain d'ipice. ■ 
 
 There's a little dispute with a merchant of fruit, 1 
 
 Who is said to be heterodox. 
 That will ended be with a " Mafoi, out ! " 
 
 And a pinch from the Cure's box. H 
 
 There is also a word that no one heard 
 
 To the furrier's daughter Lou ; 
 And a pale cheek fed with a flickering red. 
 
 And a " Bon Dieu garde Wsieu ! " 
 
 But a grander way for the Sous-prefet, 
 
 And a bow for Ma'am'sellc Anne ; 
 And a mock " off-hat " to the Notary's cat, 
 
 And a nod to the Sacristan : 
 
 For ever through life the Cure goes 
 
 With a smile on his kind old face — 
 With his coat worn bare and his straggling hair. 
 
 And his green umbrella-case. 
 
 Andrew Lang was a man of taste, and when 
 Austin Dobson's volume, " The Sign of the 
 Lyre," appeared he hailed it with some verses 
 of his own in " Longman's Magazine," of which the 
 last three were as follows : 
 
 A fan, and a folio, a ringlet, a glove 
 
 'Neath a dance by Laguerre on the ceiling above 
 
 And a dream of the days when the bard was in love.
 
 Among the English Poets 1 2 3 
 
 A scent of dead roses, a glance at a pun, 
 A toss of old powder, a glint of the sun, 
 They meet in the volume that Dobson has done ! 
 
 If there's more that the heart of a man can desire 
 He may search in his Swinburne for fury and fire, 
 If he's wise — he'll alight at " The Sign of the Lyre." 
 
 It is characteristic and appropriate that Austin 
 Dobson dedicated his " Sign of the Lyre " to 
 Edwin A. Abbey and Alfred Parsons, for these 
 two consummate draughtsmen produced together 
 the most exquisite pictorial representation of 
 eighteenth-century life that the world has seen 
 in their " She Stoops to Conquer." Indeed, 
 this work and another, " The Quiet Life," also 
 the result of the memorable association of these 
 two great masters, mark perhaps the highest 
 achievement in the illustrator's art during the 
 whole of the nineteenth century. 
 
 The world has since been submerged beneath 
 photographic " processes " and the pen drawing 
 is hkcly to be relegated to museums. 
 
 Goldsmith's play enjoys a reputation due 
 mainly to the high esteem in which the author is 
 held ; it has never commanded a long run during 
 the last forty years in which 1 have been a 
 playgoer ; but his " Deserted ViUage " has gone 
 into the language till thousands quote from it
 
 I 24 An Evening in My Library 
 
 every day who for the most part are now ignorant 
 whence the happy phrases come. It is a poem 
 as certain to Hve, as is Gray's " Elegy," as long as 
 English is spoken in the world. They are both 
 specimens of the uninspired poem. Goldsmith's 
 poem is, as far as my reading extends as a test, 
 entirely original, a quality conspicuously absent 
 from Gray's " Elegy." 
 
 When I use the word " inspired " in relation 
 to poetry I do not, of course, use it in the theo- 
 logical sense by which the idea is conveyed that 
 the historian is divinely prevented from error, 
 and the teacher from false doctrine, but I use 
 it entirely in the literary and emotional sense, 
 and an exact definition of it is difficult. 
 
 There are ideas which one cannot imagine any 
 amount of patient thought, or careful observation, 
 or deep erudition ever producing by themselves 
 in the most cultivated mind ; such ideas arise 
 star-like in the firmament of the poet's imagination 
 he knows not how nor whence. They seem to 
 come to the chosen as a free gift ; these and 
 these alone are the inspired. 
 
 To take an example : 
 
 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that 
 bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace ! 
 
 Could any labour, or observation, or learning
 
 Among the English Poets 125 
 
 produce in so few simple words the lovely idea 
 that is here given us ? Or again : 
 
 Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm ; 
 for love is strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave ; the 
 coals thereof are coals of fire which hath a most vehement 
 flame. 
 
 Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods 
 drown it : 
 
 If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, 
 it would utterly be contemned. 
 
 Here the majesty of love is transfigured before 
 us in one unsurpassable sentence ; no mere art 
 can attain to this, and this is the voice of in- 
 spiration. 
 
 The Bible is full of passages that learning, 
 literary dexterity, profound knowledge, and a 
 high nobility of mind would all be powerless to 
 produce without the magic touch of the spirit. 
 
 Those who in this age have not yet allowed the 
 pursuit of barren knowledge to deaden their 
 hearts, or the idolatry of Science to destroy their 
 imagination, must perceive that this is what it is 
 called, The Book, supreme, enthroned where 
 no mortal pen is ever likely to displace it. 
 
 But although (Iray's " Elegy " is not inspired, 
 he would be a foolish person who denied to it a 
 very perfect excellence.
 
 1 2 6 An Evening in My Library 
 
 There can be no mistake as to how the master 
 produced this noble work. Every Hne is Hke a 
 carefully laid piece of mosaic, and it bears in 
 every verse the patent evidence of long-balanced 
 thought ; moreover, by exhibiting Gray's far- 
 stretched familiarity with other poets, the poem 
 proves that he built it up, long pondering over 
 and perfecting it. Throughout it echoes seem 
 to come from Cowley, from Collins, from Milton 
 and many another earlier poet. 
 
 For one of the best and rightly famous stanzas 
 he was, it cannot reasonably be doubted, indebted 
 to West, in whose poems the following verse can 
 be found : 
 
 Ah me, what boots it all our boasted power, 
 Our golden treasure and our purple state ? 
 
 They cannot ward the inevitable hour 
 Nor stay the fearful violence of fate. 
 
 In the gift of inspiration, as in everything, 
 Shakespeare of course stands next the throne. 
 Nothing outside the Bible can well surpass the 
 lines spoken by Macbeth when he hears of Lady 
 Macbeth's death : 
 
 To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, 
 
 Creeps in this petty pace from day to day 
 
 To the last syllable of recorded time, 
 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 
 The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle !
 
 Among the English Poets 127 
 
 Life's but a walking shadow ; a poor player 
 That struts and frets his hour upon the stage 
 And then is heard no more ; it is a tale 
 Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
 Signifying nothing. 
 
 Thus with one stroke Shakespeare transfigures 
 for us the mind of the man who wades through 
 slaughter to a throne. 
 
 The closing scene of " King Lear " must be 
 felt by everyone to be instinct with this magic 
 quality. 
 
 We have had many respectable efforts by con- 
 temporary poets and those of the last century 
 to express their emotions of patriotism, but 
 nothing ever written comes within measurable 
 distance of Shakespeare's glorious outburst in 
 " Richard II " : 
 
 This Royal throne of Kings, this sceptred isle, 
 
 This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
 
 This other Eden, demi-Paradisc, 
 
 Tliis fortress, built by Nature for herself 
 
 Against infection and the hand of war ; 
 
 This happy breed of men, this little world ; 
 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea 
 
 Which serves it in the office of a wall, 
 
 Or as a moat defensive to a house 
 
 Against the envy of less happy lands ; 
 
 This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.
 
 128 Afi Evening in My Library 
 
 No doubt it comes far away behind this supreme 
 utterance, but nevertheless Campbell's exclama- 
 tory tribute to England's Sea Throne comes well 
 in front of all subsequent national songs : 
 
 Ye mariners of England 
 
 That guard our native seas, 
 
 Whose flag has braved a thousand years 
 
 The battle and the breeze, 
 
 Your glorious standard launch again 
 
 To match another foe ! 
 
 And sweep through the deep 
 
 While the stormy winds do blow, 
 
 While the battle rages loud and long 
 
 And the stormy winds do blow. 
 
 The spirits of your fathers 
 
 Shall start from every wave ! 
 
 For the deck it was their field of fame 
 
 And ocean was their grave ; 
 
 Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell 
 
 Your manly hearts shall glow 
 
 As ye sweep through the deep 
 
 While the stormy winds do blow, 
 
 While the battle rages loud and long 
 
 And the stormy winds do blow. 
 
 Britannia needs no bulwarks, 
 
 No towers along the steep ; 
 
 Her march is o'er the mountain waves, 
 
 Her home is on the deep.
 
 Among the English Poets 129 
 
 With thunders from her native oak 
 
 She quells the floods below 
 
 As they roar on the shore 
 
 When the stormy winds do blow, 
 
 When the battle rages loud and long 
 
 And the stormy winds do blow. 
 
 The meteor flag of England 
 
 Shall yet terrific burn ; 
 
 Till danger's troubled night depart 
 
 And the star of peace return. 
 
 Then, then, ye ocean warriors, 
 
 Our song and feast shall flow 
 
 To the fame of your name 
 
 When the storm has ceased to blow. 
 
 When the fiery fight is heard no more 
 
 And the storm has ceased to blow. 
 
 But to return to Shakespeare, it is not only in 
 majesty and inspiration that he is supreme ; in 
 sheer loveliness he is unsurpassable, as in the last 
 act of the " Merchant of Venice " : 
 
 Lorenzo. The moon shines bright ; in such a night as this, 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees 
 And they did make no noise, in such a night 
 Troilus methinks mounted the Trojan walls 
 And sighed his soul out toward the Grecian tents 
 Where Crcssid lay that night. 
 K
 
 130 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Jessica. In such a night 
 
 Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew 
 And saw the lion's shadow ere himself 
 And ran dismayed away, 
 
 Lorenzo. In such a night 
 
 Stood Dido with a willow in her hand 
 Upon the wild sea banks and waft her love 
 To come again to Carthage. 
 
 Jessica. In such a night 
 
 Medea gathered the enchanted herbs 
 That did renew old Loves. 
 
 Lorenzo. In such a night 
 
 _^ Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew 
 
 And with an unthrift love did run from Venice 
 
 As far as Belmont. 
 
 Jessica. In such a night 
 
 Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, 
 Stealing her soul with many vows of faith 
 And ne'er a true one. 
 
 Lorenzo. In such a night 
 
 Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew 
 Slander her love, and he forgave it her. 
 
 Jessica. I would out-night you, did nobody come ; 
 But hark, I hear the footing of a man ! 
 
 And here let me point out that every master 
 of verse from Shakespeare to Tennyson has
 
 Among the English Poets 1 3 i 
 
 obeyed the laws of prosody, and that the sanction 
 of the ages reaching back through thousands of 
 years to Homer defines poetry as bound by those 
 laws, and relegates composition that does not 
 obey them to the other harmony of prose. 
 
 It has been reserved to the vanity of modern 
 chirpers to print prose down the middle of a page 
 in a meadow of margin and present it thus to an 
 uncultivated public under the designation of 
 poetry. I take a sample of this absurd afi^ectation 
 from a volume, certainly entitled " Poems " on 
 the cover, by the late Mr. Henley : 
 
 A late lark twitters from the quiet skies ; and from the 
 West, where the Sun, his day's work ended, lingers as in content, 
 there falls on the old grey city an influence luminous and 
 serene, a shining peace. The smoke ascends in a rosy and golden 
 haze. The spires shine and are changed. In the valley 
 shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, closing his bene- 
 diction, sinks, and the darkening air thrills with a sense of 
 triumphing night — night with her train of stars and her great 
 gift of sleep. 
 
 So be my passing ! My task accomplished and the long 
 day done, my wages taken, and in my heart some late lark 
 singing, let me be gathered to the quiet West the Sun down 
 splendid and serene. Death. 
 
 This is not written in blank verse or any other 
 metre, neither is it written in verse that rhymes. 
 It is an admirable piece of prose.
 
 I 3 2 An Evening in My Library 
 
 If this is to be accepted as poetry, a large por- 
 tion of Ruskin's works hitherto known for prose 
 is really poetry, and in short, there is no distinction 
 definable or perceptible between prose and 
 poetry — a conclusion only tolerable to persons 
 without literary instincts or classical knowledge. 
 
 W. E. Henley could, however, write fine poetry 
 on occasion, as the following example will show : 
 
 Out of the night that covers me 
 
 Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 
 I thank whatever gods may be 
 
 For my unconquerable soul. 
 
 In the fell clutch of circumstance 
 
 I have not winced nor cried aloud ; 
 Under the bludgeonings of chance 
 
 My head is bloody, but unbowed. 
 
 Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
 
 Looms but the Horror of the shade, 
 And yet the menace of the years 
 
 Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. 
 
 It matters not how strait the gate, 
 
 How charged with punishments the scroll, 
 
 I am the master of my fate, 
 I am the captain of my soul. 
 
 Here Henley has something large and manly 
 to say and he says it memorably.
 
 Among the English Poets 1 3 3 
 
 Francis Thompson was a contemporary of 
 Henley, and has been honoured with the rap- 
 turous acclaim of the reviewers. But they are 
 an esoteric band to whom nothing is obscure 
 and to whom difficulties of diction are a dehght. 
 
 The following is a fair example of Francis 
 Thompson's style : 
 
 My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust, 
 And now my heart is as a broken fount 
 Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever 
 
 From the dark thoughts that shiver 
 Upon the sighful branches of my mind. 
 
 Such is : what is to be ? 
 The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind ? 
 I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds ; 
 Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds 
 From the hid battlements of Eternity ; 
 Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then 
 Round the half glimpsed turrets slowly wash again ; 
 
 But not on him who summoneth 
 
 I first have seen, enwound 
 With glooming robes purpurcal, cypress crowned ; 
 His name I know, and what his trumpet saith. 
 
 These arc hard sayings for those not included 
 in the above esoteric band. I have tried to 
 understand the words " Such is " in the sixth 
 line in vain, and I cannot myself with the best 
 intention in the world determine to what the
 
 1 34 At2 Evening in My Library 
 
 poet is alluding when he speaks of the " pulp " 
 and the " rind " in the next line. Perhaps the 
 pulp is this world and the rind the next ; per- 
 haps the pulp is the poet's body and the rind his 
 soul, or it may be the other way about and the 
 rind is his body and the pulp is his soul. Follow- 
 ing the words " what is to be ? " the pulp might 
 perhaps mean the present and the rind the 
 future, but then with all earthly fruit the pulp 
 is not reached till the rind is disposed of, and 
 therefore one would suppose that the pulp must 
 come after the rind in time, but we know the 
 present and do not know the future and the 
 poet appears to know that the pulp is bitter 
 and to be in a condition of uncertainty as to the 
 taste of the rind. Can it be that this is an un- 
 earthly fruit whose pulp is outside the rind and 
 is reached first ? Or does the passage mean 
 nothing at all ? 
 
 Much of Francis Thompson's work presents 
 these difficulties to an ordinary reader. But at 
 his best he can write such a passage as this : 
 
 Once — in that nightmare-time which still doth haunt 
 My dreams, a grim unbidden visitant — 
 
 Forlorn and faint and stark, 
 I had endured through watches of the dark 
 The abashless inquisition of each star. 
 
 Yea was the outcast mark
 
 Among the English Poets 1 3 5 
 
 Of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny : 
 
 Stood bound and helplessly 
 For Time to shoot his barbed minutes at me ; 
 Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour 
 
 In night's slow-wheeled car : 
 
 Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length 
 
 From under those dread wheels ; and bled of strength, 
 
 I waited the inevitable last. 
 Then came there past 
 A child, like thee, a spring flower ; but a flower 
 Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring 
 And through the city streets blown withering. 
 She passed, — O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing ! 
 And of her own scant pittance did she give, 
 
 That I might eat and live, 
 Then fled a swift and trackless fugitive. 
 
 After all, in spite of the critics, the great truth 
 remains that the finest work is always perfectly 
 simple. All the enduring literature that comes 
 down through ages past, and is destined to live 
 through ages to come, speaks clearly from the 
 heart ; the moment a man's writing becomes 
 obscure, or difficult, it may please a brief genera- 
 tion of critics, but it is not for all time. 
 
 There was a young Scotchman named John 
 Leyden, the son of a peasant in the Vale of 
 Teviot, born in 1775, who wrote a fine poem 
 that should have lived ; ambition, and the spirit of
 
 136 An Evening in My Library 
 
 adventure took him out to India, where the chmate 
 brought his Hfe to an end at the age of thirty-six 
 — a broken, disappointed man. His " Ode to an 
 Indian Gold Coin " is original and memorable. 
 
 Slave of the dark and dirty mine ! 
 
 What vanity has brought thee here ? 
 How can I love to see thee shine 
 
 So brightly whom I bought so dear ? 
 
 The tent ropes flapping lone I hear 
 For twilight-converse, arm in arm ; 
 
 The jackal's shriek bursts on mine ear, 
 When mirth and music wont to charm. 
 
 By Cherical's dark wandering streams 
 
 Where cane-tufts shadow all the wild, 
 Sweet visions haunt my waking dreams 
 
 Of Teviot loved while still a child ; 
 
 Of castled rocks stupendous piled 
 By Esk or Eden's classic wave, 
 
 Where loves of youth and friendship smiled 
 Uncursed by thee, vile yellow slave ! 
 
 Fade day dreams sweet, from memory fade ! 
 
 The perished bliss of youth's first prime. 
 That once so swift on fancy played 
 
 Revives no more in after-time. 
 
 Far from my sacred natal clime, 
 I haste to an untimely grave ; 
 
 The daring thoughts that soared sublime 
 Are sunk in Ocean's Southern wave. 
 
 i
 
 Among the English Poets 137 
 
 Slave of the Mine ! thy yellow light 
 
 Gleams baleful as the tomb-fire drear, 
 A gentle vision comes by night 
 
 My lonely widowed heart to cheer ; 
 
 Her eyes are dim with many a tear, 
 That once were guiding stars to mine ; 
 
 Her fond heart throbs with many a fear, — 
 I cannot bear to see thee shine. 
 
 For thee, for thee, vile yellow slave, 
 
 I left a heart that loved me true ! 
 I crossed the tedious ocean-wave 
 
 To roam in climes unkind and new. 
 
 The cold wind of the stranger blew 
 Chill on my withered heart : — the grave 
 
 Dark and untimely met my view — 
 And all for thee, vile yellow slave ! 
 
 Ha ! comest thou now so late to mock 
 
 A wanderer's banished heart forlorn, 
 Now that his frame the lightning shock 
 
 Of Sun-rays tipped with death has borne ? 
 
 From love, from friendship, country, torn, 
 To memory's fond regrets a prey. 
 
 Vile slave, thy yellow dross I scorn ! — 
 Go mix thee with thy kindred clay ! 
 
 James Thomson, who wrote " The Seasons " 
 and other poHshcd work, was a man of wide 
 travel and refined taste. 
 
 His long poem on liberty is full of evidence of
 
 I 3 8 An Evening in My Library 
 
 his intimate personal knowledge of Italy and 
 Europe, and there are passages in " The Seasons " 
 that indicate the sweet chasteness of his mind. 
 
 No poet could treat with greater delicacy the 
 happy accident described in " Summer," line 126 
 et sequetur, by which Musidora, bathing in a 
 secluded stream, unmasks her loveliness unawares 
 to her Damon ; the whole passage is an example 
 of the true function of the poet in elevating and 
 refining the passions. 
 
 Anyone who cares for elegance and correctness 
 and nothing more will enjoy a complete satisfac- 
 tion in the perusal of Thomson. 
 
 Dr. Johnson said of Thomson's " Seasons " : 
 " The reader wonders that he never saw before 
 what Thomson shews him, and that he never yet 
 felt what Thomson impresses." 
 
 His mantle fell upon Cowper, who was a youth 
 when Thomson died in 1748. 
 
 In these days few will embark with enthusiasm 
 on a passionless poem in six books with the 
 appropriate title of " The Task," although the 
 persevering student will find himself frequently 
 confronted with familiar lines, such as, 
 
 God made the country, and man made the town. 
 
 and 
 
 England, with all thy faults, I love thee still.
 
 Among the English Poets 139 
 
 The bishops of the eighteenth century are 
 neatly touched off by the poet in his "Tiro- 
 
 cinium " 
 
 The wretch shall rise, and be the thing on earth 
 
 Least qualified in honour, learning, worth. 
 
 To occupy a sacred awful post 
 
 In which the best and worthiest tremble most. 
 
 The Royal Letters are a thing of course, 
 
 A King that would might recommend his horse ; 
 
 And Deans no doubt, and chapters with one voice 
 
 As bound in duty would confirm the choice. 
 
 Behold your bishop ! well he plays his part, 
 
 Christian in name and infidel in heart, 
 
 Ghostly in office, earthly in his plan, 
 
 A slave at Court, elsewhere a lady's man, 
 
 Dumb as a senator, and as a priest 
 
 A piece of mere church furniture at best ; 
 
 To live estranged from God his total scope 
 
 And his end sure, without one glimpse of hope. 
 
 Cowper will live to a far distant future as the 
 author of " The diverting History of John 
 Gilpin ; showing how he went further than he 
 intended, and came safe home again." 
 
 I suppose the Enghsh poet who has displayed 
 the greatest mastery of rhyme is Byron. Through 
 hundreds of stanzas in " Don Juan " the rhyme 
 never once dictates the sense, and altogether
 
 140 An Evening in My Library 
 
 as a manifestation of sheer mental force the whole 
 immense poem is a wonderful production. 
 
 Byron first launched into the world of letters 
 the grotesque style and invited it to accept such 
 couplets as this : 
 
 Let not a monument give you or me hopes 
 Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops. 
 or this : 
 
 Forgetting each omission is a loss to 
 The world, not quite so great as Ariosto. 
 
 or, 
 
 There's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in 
 
 Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine. 
 
 The earlier cantos of the poem leave upon the 
 reader the impression of exquisite pictures of 
 touching loveliness presented to our contempla- 
 tion in horrid frames of cold and bitter cynicism. 
 
 A beautiful vision of peace and beauty and 
 love is so admirably drawn as to melt the heart, 
 and immediately, as though to mock us for being 
 moved, he jeers at us with gelid ribaldry. The 
 man is fleering at his own heart for its reverence 
 for beauty which is indestructible in spite of all 
 his flouts ! 
 
 In the third Canto he suddenly pens some 
 perfect stanzas to Evening " that heavenliest 
 hour of Heaven," three of which I here quote :
 
 Among the English Poets 141 
 
 Ave Maria ! blessed be the hour ! 
 
 The time, the climb, the spot, where I so oft 
 
 Have felt the moment in its fullest power 
 
 Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft, 
 
 While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, 
 
 Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft 
 
 And not a breath crept through the rosy air 
 
 And yet the forest leaves seemed stirred with prayer. 
 
 Oh Hesperus ! thou bringest all good things 
 
 Home to the weary, to the hungry cheer. 
 
 To the young bird the parent's brooding wings, 
 
 The welcomed stall to the o'erlaboured steer ; 
 
 Whate'er of peace about our hearthstone clings, 
 
 Whate'er our household gods protect of dear. 
 
 Are gathered round us by thy look of rest ; 
 
 Thou bring'st the child, too, to the mother's breast. 
 
 Soft hour ! which wakes the wish and melts the heart 
 
 Of those who sail the seas, on the first day 
 
 When they from their sweet friends are torn apart ; 
 
 Or fills with love the pilgrim on liis way. 
 
 As the far bell of vesper makes him start, 
 
 Seeming to weep the dying day's decay ; 
 
 Is this a fancy that our reason scorns ? 
 
 Ah ! surely nothing dies but something mourns ! 
 
 And within a few lines he is jesting about 
 " buffoons " and " wooden spoons." 
 
 The first four Cantos seem to me to be enough 
 of this kind of work for most readers,
 
 142 An Evening in My Library 
 
 The beauties become rarer and the constant 
 dull abuse of his contemporaries tedious in the 
 later Cantos. To speak of the blameless Southey 
 thus : 
 
 .... shuffling Southey, that incarnate lie, 
 
 to speak of Wordsworth as a " blockhead," to call 
 Coleridge " drunk " is not poetry, it is not even 
 dignified invective. It is stupid vulgarity, and 
 all the coronets in the world will not save the 
 man who pubhshcs such stuff from writing 
 himself down a cad. 
 
 "Childe Harold" is wholly without the gro- 
 tesque, and is a precious companion to the traveller 
 who wanders over Italy with the fourth Canto in 
 his hand. But the perpetual intrusion upon the 
 reader, both here and in Don Juan, of the poet's 
 supposed private grievances, becomes tiresome. 
 There have been many poets since Shakespeare 
 who have conceived themselves to have been 
 unhappily married, and who have suffered the 
 censure of their contemporaries, but they have 
 none of them wept and roared and exposed their 
 lacerated hearts to a gaping pubhc as this man 
 has done ; and indeed as several charming ladies, 
 consecutively or together, seem to have been very 
 generous in pouring emollients upon that lacerated 
 heart, the poet can hardly have been in so sad
 
 Among the English Poets 143 
 
 a case as he would have us beheve. But he 
 secured for all time, by this exposure, the devoted 
 adoration of his countryw^omen of tender years, 
 and will ever be the idol of the school girl whose 
 gentle eyes fill over the woes of the noble exile. 
 
 His judgment of his fellow-poets led him to 
 celebrate the superiority of Crabbe and Rogers 
 to Wordsworth and Coleridge, a judgment 
 posterity has not endorsed. 
 
 Rogers was a man of taste, and also of wealth, 
 and he secured the services of Turner and 
 Stothard to illustrate his poems, and some of the 
 finest work of both these great masters adorns the 
 volume ; and thus the ingenious author has 
 ensured the perpetual survival of his work. He 
 was the writer of one universally familiar verse : 
 
 That very law which moulds a tear 
 And bids it trickle from its source, 
 That law preserves the earth a sphere 
 And guides the planets in their course. 
 
 though I harbour the suspicion that Science will 
 hardly endorse the first hnc. 
 
 Byron always celebrated Pope as the superior 
 of all who came after him, and no doubt in the 
 art of poetry, considered solely as a literary 
 production. Pope is a supreme master. His 
 prosody is always faultless, and the balance of
 
 144 ^^ Evefihig in My Lib?'ary 
 
 his couplets never fails, till its perfect constancy 
 threatens to become monotonous to the ear. 
 In felicitous phrases he applauds the ingenious 
 and virtuous, and chastises the dull and vicious. 
 In the mass of his work he is without passion, 
 without tenderness, the loveliness of nature makes 
 no appeal to his heart, and his heart makes no 
 response to the loveliness of nature. He never 
 rises into a flight of eloquence, never burns with 
 a fine indignation, never yields to a gust of 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 He never attains the grand style, yet never 
 sinks below a scholarly level of distinction. 
 Though he lampoons the pompous donkeys of 
 his age, he does it genially and without malice ; 
 and when Dennis, who had pursued him for years 
 with malignant asperity, fell on evil days and was 
 blind, he wrote a prologue for a benefit per- 
 formance inaugurated for Dennis' relief. He 
 reigned in the cold and precise age of letters, 
 before the glorious dawn of inspired passion, 
 sentiment, and love, that illumined the approach 
 of the nineteenth century. 
 
 Few poets have contributed so many notable 
 quotations to our common parlance which are 
 now passed from mouth to mouth by the un- 
 lettered, in happy ignorance of their origin, 
 such as ;
 
 Among the 'English Poets 145 
 
 For fools rush in where angels fear to tread. 
 A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. 
 The feast of reason and the flow of soul. 
 The proper study of mankind is man. 
 To err is human, to forgive divine. 
 Who shall decide when doctors disagree ? 
 
 and a hundred more. 
 
 I select two poems not in his usual heroic 
 metre which seem enformed by a more genuine 
 and pleasing emotion than the rest of his work. 
 
 I. Happy the man whose wish and care 
 A few paternal acres bound, 
 Content to breathe his native air 
 In his own ground. 
 
 Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, 
 Whose flocks supply him with attire, 
 Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 
 In winter fire. 
 
 Blessed who can unconcern'dly find 
 Hours, days and years slide soft away. 
 In health of body, peace of mind, 
 Quiet by day ; 
 
 Sound sleep by night ; study and ease 
 Together mixed ; sweet recreation ; 
 And innocence, which most does please 
 With meditation. 
 L
 
 146 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Thus let me live, unseen, unknown. 
 Thus unlamented let me die ; 
 Steal from the world, and not a stone 
 Tell where I lie. 
 
 2. Father of all ! in every age 
 In every clime adored 
 By saint, by savage, and by sage, 
 Jehovah, Jove, or Lord ! 
 
 Thou Great First Cause, least understood, 
 
 Who all my sense confined, 
 To know but this, that thou art good 
 
 And that myself am blind ; 
 
 Yet gave me, in this dark estate 
 
 To see the good from ill : 
 And binding Nature fast in fate 
 
 Let free the human will. 
 
 What conscience dictates to be done. 
 
 Or warns me not to do ; 
 This, teach me more than hell to shun. 
 
 That, more than heaven pursue. 
 
 What blessings thy free bounty gives 
 
 Let me not cast away ; 
 For God is paid when man receives ; 
 
 T' enjoy is to obey. 
 
 (
 
 Among the English Poets 147 
 
 Yet not to earth's contracted span 
 
 Thy goodness let me bound, 
 Or think thee Lord alone of man, 
 
 When thousand worlds are round. 
 
 Let not this weak unknowing hand 
 
 Presume thy bolts to throw, 
 And deal damnation round the land 
 
 On each I judge thy foe. 
 
 If I am right, thy grace impart 
 
 Still in the right to stay ; 
 If I am wrong, O teach my heart 
 
 To find that better way. 
 
 Save me alike from foolish pride 
 
 Or impious discontent, 
 At aught thy wisdom has denied 
 
 Or aught thy goodness lent. 
 
 Teach me to feel another's woe, 
 
 To hide the fault I see ; 
 That mercy I to others show, 
 
 That mercy show to me. 
 
 Mean though I am, not wholly so 
 
 Since quickened by thy breath ; 
 O lead me, whcreso'cr I go 
 
 Through this day's life or death !
 
 148 An 'Evening in My Library 
 
 This day be bread and peace my lot : 
 
 All else beneath the sun 
 Thou know'st if best bestowed or not 
 
 And let thy will be done. 
 
 To thee, whose temple is all space, 
 Whose altar, earth, sea, skies ; 
 
 One chorus let all beings raise, 
 All nature's incense rise. 
 
 Dryden, who preceded Pope, and has also 
 covered countless pages with heroic couplets, 
 did not pen his great ode " Alexander's Feast " 
 till within three years of his death, when he was 
 about sixty-seven ; it remains his chief claim to 
 fame, and there can be little doubt that it re- 
 ceived a lasting addition to its lustre when, thirty- 
 six years after the poet's death, it was taken up 
 and set to immortal music by the great Handel. 
 
 I suppose many thousands have heard of 
 Young's " Night Thoughts " to one who has read 
 them ; and indeed a man must be an earnest 
 student to embark with a Hght heart on three 
 hundred pages of moral reflections in heroic 
 couplets, and he would not have waded far before 
 all lightness would have left his heart. 
 
 Nevertheless, some serious people like to have 
 such a book at their bedside where it may serve
 
 Among the English Poets 149 
 
 " a double debt to pay," first to compose, and 
 then to suspend the workings of the mind. 
 
 But with most of us in this cheerful age we 
 shall not have penetrated far before we give our 
 adhesion to a line on page 47, 
 
 'Tis time, high time, to shift this dismal scene. 
 
 Dr. Young was Rector of Welwyn, and, in the 
 chancel of the church there, repose his mortal re- 
 mains, till " the last day," in a poem on which he 
 has graphically described what will then take place : 
 
 Now monuments prove faithful to their trust 
 And render back their long committed dust ; 
 Now charnels rattle ; scattered limbs, and all 
 The various bones, obsequious to the call 
 Self moved advance ; the neck perhaps to meet 
 The distant head ; the distant legs the feet. 
 Dreadful to view, see through the dusky ^y 
 Fragments of bodies in confusion fly, 
 To distant regions journeying, there to claim 
 Deserted members, and complete the frame. 
 This severed head and trunk shall join once more 
 Though realms now rise between, and oceans roar. 
 
 So far, however, these difllculties of conjunction 
 of the several parts of the body cannot assail 
 the remains of the learned doctor ; and let us 
 hope that an occasion for disturbing those re- 
 mains will never arise.
 
 150 An Evening in My Library 
 
 The " Night Thoughts " have been in the past, 
 and will be in the future, kept alive by the for- 
 tunate circumstance that Blake illustrated them 
 when his wonderful genius was at its prime. 
 
 Blair's " Grave " in a similar manner has been 
 preserved from oblivion. 
 
 Blake's highest achievements were his illustra- 
 tions of these two poems, and of the Book of Job. 
 Unfortunately all three volumes have long 
 reached a price in the book market that places 
 them beyond the reach of ordinary buyers. 
 
 Both Young and Blair had long been dead 
 before Blake's mighty pencil suddenly conferred 
 immortality upon their disappearing poems. 
 
 It is remarkable that although Young's poem 
 " Night Thoughts " is now familiar only to 
 earnest students of English letters, many of its 
 lines have gone permanently into the language, 
 and are quoted every day, such as 
 
 Procrastination is the thief of time. 
 
 It cannot be accepted, off-hand, as conclusive 
 evidence of poetic merit, when quotations from a 
 poet's works have become universally current in 
 conversation. Dr. Watts cannot be classed 
 among the great singers of England, but none of 
 us have escaped such lines as 
 
 Let dogs delight to bark and bite. 
 Birds in their httle nests agree.
 
 Among the English Poets 1 5 1 
 
 How doth the little busy bee 
 Improve each shining hour. 
 
 and 
 
 'Tis the voice of the sluggard ; I heard him complain, 
 " You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again." 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Nicholas Brady and Nahum 
 Tate, poet laureate, entered into a conspiracy 
 at the end of the seventeenth century to take 
 the Psalms of David and turn them into jingling 
 rhyme. A fair sample of their misguided ac- 
 tivity is their paraphrase of some verses from 
 Psalm XLII : 
 
 As pants the hart for cooling streams 
 
 When heated in the chase, 
 So longs my soul, O God, for Thee 
 
 And Thy refreshing grace. 
 
 For Thee, my God, the living God, 
 
 My thirsty soul doth pine, 
 O when shall I behold Thy Face 
 
 Thou Majesty Divine ? 
 
 Why restless, why cast down, my soul ? 
 
 Hope still, and thou shalt sing 
 The praise of Him Who is thy God, 
 
 Thy health's eternal Spring.
 
 152 An Evening in My Library 
 
 The verses of the Psalm here mutilated are 
 these : 
 
 1. Like as the hart desireth the water brooks : so longeth 
 my soul after thee, O God. 
 
 2. My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living God : 
 when shall I come to appear before the presence of God ? 
 
 6. Why art thou so full of heaviness, O my soul : and why 
 art thou so disquieted within me ? 
 
 7. Put thy trust in God : for I will yet give him thanks for 
 
 the help of his countenance. 
 
 David, it will be observed, made no reference 
 to blood sports and the allusion to the " chase " 
 is an offensive interpolation ; the vision raised 
 by the Psalmist is of the beautiful creature coming 
 in peace to drink of the water brooks, unmolested 
 by any of the bellowing brutahty of the " chase." 
 Moreover, in the Psalm, the hart comes undriven 
 and wilhngly down to quench its thirst, and it is 
 thus that David desires to come to God, whereas 
 Tate and Brady, by making the creature's thirst 
 due to its being hunted, totally misunderstand 
 the whole spirit of the Psalm upon which they 
 laid their irreverent and witless hands. 
 
 The " Old Hundredth," originally to be 
 found, I beheve, at the end of the Scotch Bible, 
 may seem to some to rise above the hopeless 
 drab level of Tate and Brady, but an unpre-
 
 Among the English Poets 1 5 3 
 
 judiced comparison of the Psalm with the verses 
 will, I think, show that it is to the music — in 
 which, no doubt, there is something large, 
 elemental, and august, that the mind really 
 refers, when memory pleasingly recalls this 
 hymn. 
 
 Hymnals, by some strange and sinister mis- 
 fortune, seem to be collected and published by 
 persons of no literary judgment or taste. 
 
 Only a very stupid man could write, and only a 
 still stupider man, devoid of even any dormant 
 sense of humour, could select for use in church, 
 a hymn of which one verse runs thus : 
 
 Whatever, Lord, we lend to Thee 
 Repaid a thousandfold will be ; 
 Then gladly will we give to Thee. 
 
 Yet such infelicities crowd the pages of these 
 collections. 
 
 But we should be wrong to reject all devotional 
 poetry without consideration merely because we 
 find no bathos so final and complete as that 
 collected in Hymnals. Hcrrick, Cardinal New- 
 man, and Christina Rossetti have given us noble 
 " sacred numbers." 
 
 Scattered through the voluminous writings of 
 George Macdonald, whose work is constantly
 
 154 ^fi Evening in My Library 
 
 informed with a devotional spirit, there are 
 admirable short poems : 
 
 The sky has turned its heart away, 
 
 The earth its sorrow found ; 
 The daisies turn from childhood's play 
 
 And creep into the ground. 
 
 The earth is black and cold and hard ; 
 
 Thin films of dry white ice, 
 Across the rugged wheel-tracks barred, 
 
 The children's feet entice. 
 
 Dark flows the stream, as if it mourned 
 
 The winter in the land ; 
 With idle icicles adorned 
 
 The mill-wheel soon will stand. 
 
 But, friends, to say 'tis cold, and part 
 
 Is to let in the cold ; 
 We'll make a summer of the heart 
 
 And laugh at winter old. 
 
 And all the world over, people have taken to 
 their hearts his four lines : 
 
 Alas ! how easily things go wrong ! 
 
 A sigh too much, or a kiss ^o long, 
 And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, 
 
 And life is never the same again.
 
 Among the English Poets 1 5 5 
 
 This is followed by another verse, and the 
 curious may search for it, as I do not myself 
 think that it adds anything needed to the little 
 poem. 
 
 George Macdonald will always be beloved as 
 much for what he was, as for what he wrote, 
 and all those who had the happiness to know him 
 will probably endorse this. It may not lead so 
 surely to posthumous fame, but it must aKvays 
 be more personally blessed to be something 
 stainless and beautiful than to write it. 
 
 The posthumous fame of a writer certainly 
 is not enhanced by the merit of his personal life 
 and character, and we may be sure that Byron's 
 work derived no added glamour from the beauty 
 and purity of his life, but rather that a greater 
 vogue was achieved by it with the gaping pubUc, 
 owing to the scandals that adhered to the name 
 of the noble exile in all his foreign wanderings. 
 It is possible that it was in recognition of this 
 aptitude of the public to be fascinated by 
 aristocratic impropriety that he adopted in " Don 
 Juan" the daring themes and grotesque style that 
 characterises the work. 
 
 The grotesque style in which "Don Juan" is 
 written was in Byron's hands a not unfit expression 
 of the disordered tumult of his mind, but it after- 
 wards was developed by Browning into a settled
 
 I 5 6 An Evening in My Library 
 
 practice, without relation to the emotions of the 
 poet, or to the subject of the work. 
 
 Browning indeed was a man who lived quite a 
 conventional life ; he went regularly to his club 
 and dined out in the manner of the most re- 
 spectable Londoner, and his adoption of the 
 grotesque style was an artificial literary pose, 
 having no connexion of any kind with his 
 condition of mind or habit of life, and posterity 
 will decide, when time shall afford the necessary 
 perspective for a clear and just view, whether 
 the most excellent philosophy and the most 
 pregnant suggestions are really best conveyed in 
 lines with dislocating rhymes and no rhythm ; 
 or whether it may not be that both the poetry 
 and the philosophy lose something under this 
 treatment. The tradition that an essential 
 attribute of poetry is that it should have melody, 
 and fall musically upon the ear, comes to us with 
 the sanction of the ages, but Browning, except 
 on rare and precious occasions, seems to own no 
 allegiance to this tradition. A great many 
 persons not conspicuous for lack of intelligence 
 have found themselves unable to understand 
 much of this poet's work ; both my father and 
 my grandfather had sufficient capacity for clear 
 thought and lucid expression to achieve some 
 success as judges, but both of them were quite
 
 Among the English Poets 1 57 
 
 unable to extract the meaning from much of 
 Browning. 
 
 At his best he gave us such poems as " The 
 Patriot " : 
 
 It was roses, roses, all the way, 
 
 With myrtle mixed in my path like mad ; 
 
 The house roofs seemed to heave and sway, 
 The church-spires fla med, such flags they had 
 
 A year ago on this very day. 
 
 The air broke into a mist with bells, 
 
 The old walls rocked with the crowd and cries. 
 
 Had I said, " Good folk, mere noise repels — 
 But give me your sun from yonder skies ! " 
 
 They had answered, " And afterward what else ? " 
 
 Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun 
 
 To give it my loving friends to keep ! 
 Nought man could do, have I left undone, 
 
 And you see my harvest, what I reap 
 This very day, now a year is run. 
 
 There's nobody on the house-tops now — 
 
 Just a palsied few at the windows set ; 
 For the best of the night is all allow, 
 
 At the Shambles' Gate — or better yet 
 By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. 
 
 Two fine poems in the volume " Pacchiarotto 
 and other Poems " have the strange device of 
 revealing only in the last line the whole point
 
 15B Ati Evening in My Library 
 
 and subject ; the reader of " Fears and Scruples " 
 when he reaches the last line, is perforce obliged 
 to go back and peruse the whole poem again, 
 and a like surprise is kept for the last line of " A 
 Forgiveness," though why a tale of remorseless 
 vengeance is given such a title does not appear. 
 
 Browning will live by the "Gallop from Ghent" 
 and the " Pied Piper," and many short pieces, not 
 by the interminable and difhcult works that 
 fill over a thousand pages of small print in double 
 column. He observes the laws of prosody, and 
 yet so utterly unmelodious does he make his lines 
 that it seems almost a needless restraint, and had 
 he written what he had to say in prose it might 
 have given more comfort to the ear and lost 
 nothing thereby. 
 
 " Henceforward ! O mortar, paint-pot O, 
 Farewell to ye ! " cried Pacchiarotto. 
 
 This might pass in one of Tom Hood's comic 
 compositions, but there is no intention to be 
 funny in Pacchiarotto, and so this kind of clumsy 
 grotesqueness becomes simply tiresome. 
 
 Again, take such a passage as this : 
 
 Let tongue rest and quiet thy quill be, 
 
 Earth is earth and not Heaven and ne'er will be, 
 
 Man's work is to labour and leaven, 
 
 As best he may Earth here with Heaven,
 
 Among the English Poets i 59 
 
 Let him work on and on as if speeding 
 Work's end, but ne'er dream of succeeding 
 Because if success were intended 
 Why Heaven would begin e'er Earth ended. 
 
 Here the thought is fine and sad and beautiful, 
 but the method of saying it is not only unmusical 
 but irritatingly ugly. He cannot possibly mean 
 us to laugh at the first line, and yet to ask us to 
 accept it as serious poetry is ridiculous. 
 
 When Browning wanted to tell us that Science 
 
 That mass man sprung from was a jelly-lump, 
 
 prose would have been a fitter vehicle than blank 
 verse for conveying the information. 
 
 Browning in his characteristic style is at his best 
 in the tenth canto of the " Ring and the Book," 
 and by reading it carefully through a man may 
 ascertain definitely whether he wdll ever have 
 a taste for this kind of work. But whether 
 Browning will hereafter live as a poet, he must 
 always survive as a fine manly writer who penned 
 many memorable sayings. 
 
 God's in His Heaven, all's right with the world ! 
 
 Of all the poets of the nineteenth century 
 Browning least made manifest his own character 
 in his work, his own personal joys and sorrows and 
 emotions seldom find expression in his writings.
 
 i6o An Evening in My Library 
 
 The very opposite habit affects nearly all the 
 work of Coventry Patmore. In " The Angel 
 in the House," with engaging simplicity, but with 
 chaste sweetness, he relates the story of his own 
 courtship and marriage. 
 
 As an example of his best work, convincing 
 in its tenderness, I here cite a Httle poem which 
 must pull at the heart-strings of every father : 
 
 My little son, who looked from thoughtful eyes 
 
 And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise, 
 
 Having my law the seventh time disobeyed, 
 
 I struck him, and dismissed 
 
 With hard words and unkissed, 
 
 His Mother, who was patient, being dead. 
 
 Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep, 
 
 I visited his bed. 
 
 But found him slumbering deep, 
 
 With darkened eyelids, and their lashes wet. 
 
 And I, with moan. 
 
 Kissing away his tears, left others of my own ; 
 
 For, on a table drawn beside his head, 
 
 He had put, within his reach, 
 
 A box of counters, and a red-veined stone, 
 
 A piece of glass abraded by the beach 
 
 And six or seven shells, 
 
 A bottle with bluebells 
 
 And two French copper coins, ranged there with careful art. 
 
 To comfort his sad heart.
 
 Among the English Poets 1 6 1 
 
 So when that night I prayed 
 
 To God, I wept, and said : 
 
 Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath 
 
 Not vexing Thee in death. 
 
 And Thou rememberest of what toys 
 
 We made our joys, 
 
 How weakly understood, 
 
 Thy great commanded good. 
 
 Then, fatherly not less 
 
 Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay, 
 
 Thou'lt leave Thy wrath, and say, 
 
 " I will be sorry for their childishness." 
 
 I do not propose to include in this book 
 citations from poems whose whole purpose seems 
 to me to be unpleasant without beauty to redeem 
 it. 
 
 There is a world of difference between the 
 " Cenci " of Shelley and *' The Widow in the 
 Bye Street" by Masefield. The "Cenci" is 
 certainly an unpleasant subject, but the treat- 
 ment is august and terrible and its very first line 
 is immense : 
 
 That matter of the murder is hushed up. 
 
 Masefield's poem, full of pothouse oaths and 
 brutal realism which is the very antithesis of art, 
 offends taste on every page. Even the reahsm 
 19 false, for there are no " cheers " in Court at 
 
 M
 
 1 62 An Evening in My Library 
 
 an English murder trial when the judge passes 
 the sentence of death, and a poet would not 
 think that a description of an execution is en- 
 hanced by mentioning that the chaplain was 
 " snuffling at the nose." That is not art, it is 
 photography. It might pass as unflinching 
 journalism for a Yellow press that spares us 
 nothing. 
 
 Masefield invites the public in " The Ever- 
 lasting Mercy " to read a dialogue between two 
 poaching individuals, of which this is a sample : 
 
 " You closhy put." 
 
 " You bloody liar." 
 
 " This is my field." 
 
 " This is my wire." 
 
 " I'm ruler here." 
 
 " You ain't." 
 
 " I am." 
 
 " I'll fight you for it." 
 
 " Right, by damn," etc., etc. 
 
 This is disgusting brutalism. It is sheer 
 insolence to print the garbage of the stews and 
 call it poetry ; to be oifensive is not to be strong, 
 and grossness and coarseness have nothing to do 
 with art or literature. 
 
 " The Daffodil Fields " has many redeeming 
 passages, wholesome and sweet, but like " The
 
 Among the English Poets 163 
 
 Widow in the Bye Street," it turns on the jealousy 
 of two men over a woman, and ends in the death 
 by violence of both men. The only difference 
 being that in the first work one is murdered and 
 the other hanged, and in the second work they 
 kill each other. 
 
 In the technical part of his craft Masefield 
 has easy power, his prosody is never at fault, 
 and he has a fluent gift of rhyme that is ever 
 present. 
 
 Mr. Bernard Shaw shares with Mr. Masefield 
 the notoriety of having, without circumlocution 
 or shame, projected upon the public the foul 
 expletive which never passes the lips of any 
 decent person. 
 
 This kind of reahsm is not literature ; faithful 
 and photographic delineations of disgusting 
 things seen and done and spoken is not the 
 function of the poet or the painter. Cunning 
 technique in painting and skilful rhyming in 
 poetry may be displayed in such work. But 
 art and letters arc the subhmation of those 
 dexterities by nobility of mind ; the man of 
 letters, therefore, has no more to do with foul 
 language than has a painter to do with the 
 slaughter-house as a subject for his brush. 
 
 Heaven may be out of reach, but the poet and 
 the painter should at least teach us to look up.
 
 1 64 An 'Evening in My Library 
 
 There was a little book of verses published in 
 1892, " Songs about Life, Love and Death," by 
 Anne Reeve Aldrich, which should not have fallen 
 away out of sight as has been its fate, while so 
 much that cumbers the earth remains blatantly 
 visible. 
 
 Here is one little poem from this forgotten 
 book : 
 
 take me back to those low-lying lands 
 
 I used to love. I want that inlet's tide 
 That runs out moaning 'twixt the yellow fields 
 
 To where the shimmering blue is rippling wide, 
 And lay my broken body on the sands 
 
 Where strong and sparse marsh-grasses wave above 
 The salty earth that bears them ; let me rest, 
 
 For I am very tired of faithless love. 
 
 And let me feel upon my pallid mouth 
 
 The wind's rough, friendly kisses, cold and clean, 
 
 Against the lips that can but shape a moan 
 Where warmer falser kisses once have been. 
 
 1 want to lay my cheek on kindly earth, 
 
 I want to see the truthful sky above, 
 I want those old things I have long forgot, 
 For I am very tired of faithless love. 
 
 : 
 
 And in this other that follows there is recorded 
 an experience many will have shared :
 
 Among the English Poets 165 
 
 How can it be that I forget 
 
 The way he phrased my doom, 
 When I recall the arabesque 
 
 That carpeted the room ? 
 
 How can it be that I forget 
 
 His look and mien that hour, 
 When I recall I wore a rose 
 
 And still can smell the flower ? 
 
 How can it be that I forget 
 
 Those words which were the last, 
 When I recall the tune a man 
 
 Was whistling as he passed ? 
 
 These things are what we keep from life's 
 
 Supremest joy or pain ; 
 For memory locks her chaff in bins, 
 
 And throws away the grain. 
 
 Here is another little pregnant poem : 
 
 I thought I knew her past as mine 
 
 Until she lay there dead, 
 And I explored that Indian chest 
 Lacquered in gold and red. 
 
 I did not stop to moralize ; 
 
 The lesson there was plain. 
 I hurried home to tear and burn 
 
 And make her lobs my gain.
 
 1 66 An Evening in My Library 
 
 How inconsiderate to die 
 
 And leave such things to paint 
 An unguessed past, when friends bereaved 
 
 Prefer to mourn a saint ! 
 
 Another American woman whose work is, I 
 think, better known than that of Anne Reeve 
 Aldrich is Lucy Larcom, and I quote a few of her 
 lines which have a charming freshness : 
 
 I do not own an inch of land 
 
 But all I see is mine, — 
 The orchard and the mowing fields. 
 
 The lawn and gardens fine — 
 The winds my tax-collectors are, 
 
 They bring me tithes divine, 
 Wild scents and subtle essences, 
 
 A tribute rare and free ; 
 And more magnificent than all 
 
 My window keeps for me 
 A glimpse of blue immensity, 
 
 A little strip of sea. 
 
 The writing of songs to be set felicitously to 
 music is a special art ; from a literary point of 
 view and to the ear and heart of a reader a poem 
 may seem to possess all the qualities needed for a 
 perfect song, and yet a composer may condemn 
 it as quite unsuited for his purpose. 
 
 As an amusing example of the different points
 
 Among the English Poets 167 
 
 of view that appertain to the writer and the 
 composer I can cite a case in my own experience. 
 A composer who was setting a song from " Gloria " 
 by myself complained of this concluding verse : 
 
 And all the world is humming 
 
 May's rapturous high tune, 
 And Gloria is coming 
 
 To crown the pomp of June. 
 
 and asserting that singers would be sure to give 
 the impression that the last line was 
 
 To crown the pump of June, 
 
 requested me to change it into : 
 
 To crown this perfect June. 
 
 I preferred to run the risk of the " pump ! " 
 F. E. Weatherly seems to have the gift of 
 writing songs peculiarly fitted for setting. In- 
 numerable modern concert songs owe their words 
 to him. 
 
 I think a modern song, to achieve a great success, 
 needs, like Kingslcy's " Three Fishers," a story 
 as its chief motive, and if possible a love story. 
 The story should be simple and affecting, and it 
 should be told with genuine feeling, also the 
 words used should all be simple ordinary words 
 that cannot be mistaken for other ones, as in 
 my unfortunate effort above quoted.
 
 1 68 An Evening in My Library 
 
 One of VVeatherly's most popular songs I will 
 now cite. It was set to music and sung by 
 Lawrence Kelly, now many years ago, but I think 
 it remains his best achievement : 
 
 " Row me o'er the strait, Douglas Gordon, 
 
 Row me o'er the strait, my love, my love," said she, 
 " Where we greeted in the summer, Douglas Gordon, 
 
 Beyond the little Kirk by the old, old trysting tree ! " 
 Never a word spoke Douglas Gordon 
 
 But he looked into her eyes so tenderly, 
 And he set her at his side, 
 And away across the tide. 
 
 They floated to the little Kirk 
 
 And the old, old trysting tree. 
 
 " Give me a word of love, Douglas Gordon, 
 
 Just a word of pity, O my love," said she, 
 " For the bells will ring to-morrow, Douglas Gordon, 
 
 My wedding bells, my love, but not for you and me ! 
 They told me you were false, Douglas Gordon, 
 
 And you never, never came to comfort me." 
 And she saw the great tears rise, 
 In her lover's silent eyes. 
 
 As they drifted to the little Kirk 
 
 And the old, old trysting tree. 
 
 " And it's never, never, never, Douglas Gordon, 
 Never in this world that you may come to me, 
 
 But tell me that you love me, Douglas Gordon, 
 And kiss me for the love of all that used to be ! "
 
 Among the English Poets 1 69 
 
 Then he flung away his sail, his oars, and rudder, 
 And he took her in his arms so tenderly, 
 
 And they drifted to the main, 
 
 And the bells may call in vain. 
 For she and Douglas Gordon 
 
 Are drowned in the sea. 
 
 When I spoke on a former page of Ruskin I 
 should have mentioned that late in life he wrote 
 some tender and worthy verse. Early in his Hfe 
 he had written a volume of poetry privately 
 printed and of no value, although his fame as a 
 prose writer has induced collectors to pay as 
 much as forty guineas for a copy of it. I here, 
 however, transcribe two specimens of his later 
 verses : 
 
 Alas ! for man who hath no sense 
 Of gratefulness nor confidence 
 
 But still regrets and raves, 
 Till all God's love can scarcely win 
 One soul from taking pride in sin 
 
 And pleasure over graves. 
 
 Yet teach me, God, a milder thought 
 Lest I, of all Thy blood has bought 
 
 Least honourable be ; 
 And this that leads mc to condemn 
 Be rather want of love for them 
 
 Than jealousy for Thee.
 
 170 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Again : 
 
 Trust thou thy love ; if she be proud is she not sweet ? 
 Trust thou thy love ; if she be mute is she not pure ? 
 Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet, 
 Fail Sun and Breath ! yet for thy peace, she shall endure. 
 
 Great poets can generally write fine prose ; 
 but it is less often that great prose writers can 
 perform with any distinction in verse. As with 
 Ruskin, so with Walter Savage Landor ; master 
 of a very splendid prose, his excursions into poetry 
 do nothing to enhance his fame. 
 
 A certain four lines of his have, however, gone 
 round the world : 
 
 I strove with none, for none was worth my strife, 
 Nature I loved, and, next to nature, art ; 
 I warmed both hands before the fire of life ; 
 It sinks and I am ready to depart. 
 
 Hartley Coleridge suffered the eclipse that often 
 falls upon the son of a famous father — Stat magni 
 nominis umbra. The world declines to accept 
 more than one poet from the same family. Had 
 his father written the two poems I now cite they 
 would be famiHar to everyone : 
 
 The earliest wish I ever knew 
 Was woman's kind regard to win ; 
 I felt it long e'er passion grew, 
 E'er such a wish could be a sin.
 
 Among the 'English Poets 171 
 
 And still it lasts ; the yearning ache 
 No cure has found, no comfort known ; 
 If she did love, 'twas for my sake^ 
 She could not love me for her own. 
 
 Again : 
 
 Long time a child, and still a child, when years 
 
 Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I ; 
 
 For yet I lived like one not born to die ; 
 
 A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears 
 
 No hope I needed, and I knew no fears. 
 
 But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking 
 
 I waked to sleep no more, at once o'ertaking 
 
 The vanguard of my age with all arrears 
 
 Of duty on my back — nor child nor man, 
 
 Nor youth nor sage, I find my head is grey, 
 
 For I have lost the race I never ran, 
 
 A rathe December blights my lagging May ; 
 
 And still I am a child, though I be old, 
 
 Time is my debtor for my years untold. 
 
 All Hartley Coleridge's work has eminently 
 the quahty of finish ; and in passing I may 
 remark that it is interesting to notice the relation 
 of inspiration to finish. Work that is produced 
 with lavish pains, and carefulness, and sensibility, 
 and scholarship by any great master, has this 
 quality of finish, a quality more lasting than any 
 other, which will keep a fame alive and flourishing 
 through the ages.
 
 172 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Work, however lofty in design, and however 
 vigorous in execution, if it lacks finish, bears 
 about it the seeds of decay. It may fascinate a 
 generation, but it is not for all time. 
 
 And though inepired poems generally, but not 
 always, have finish, the finish by a divine felicity 
 accompanying the birth of the work as it wells 
 from the poet's heart, the master of finish has 
 not necessarily the power to summon at his call 
 the breath of inspiration. 
 
 " The Conqueror Worm," already quoted, is 
 a fine example of an inspired poem without 
 finish, yet Poe's " El Dorado," a httle poem 
 without any inspiration, shows that he could 
 be — when he wished — as elegant and finished as 
 Horace. 
 
 Shelley, whose inspired lyrics seem to surpass 
 all the poems of Wordsworth of the same class, 
 yet surely falls below him the moment the 
 afflatus is withdrawn ; and it is remarkable that 
 even the finest work of Wordsworth appears to be 
 generally quite uninspired. 
 
 Early in the last century Mrs. Hemans enjoyed 
 a very wide popularity. Every child was taught 
 to recite by heart " The boy stood on the burning 
 deck " in order to point the moral of blind 
 obedience to parents. Keepsakes and albums were 
 the perfectly appropriate fields for the display
 
 Among the English Poets 173 
 
 of her talent, and she possessed a facile power of 
 penning such pleasant verse as this : 
 
 The free, fair homes of England ! 
 
 Long, long in hut and hall 
 May hearts of native proof be reared 
 
 To guard each hallowed wall ! 
 And green for ever be the groves 
 
 And bright the flowery sod. 
 Where first the child's glad spirit loves 
 
 Its country and its God ! 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald's paraphrase from the 
 Persian of Omar Khayyam has achieved, I 
 suppose, a greater success with the public than 
 any single poem written in the nineteenth 
 century. Like Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus," the 
 first edition fell dead. Indeed copies of it which 
 were issued at a shilling were bought for twopence, 
 they are now priceless possessions. Knowing no 
 word of the Persian language myself, and my 
 readers being, I imagine, generally in like case, 
 we can none of us allot to Omar and to Fitzgerald 
 their respective merits in this joint production. 
 
 It must always be difficult for an astronomer, 
 and Omar was one, constantly in the contempla- 
 tion of infinities of space and time, to return to 
 the observation of the transience of human 
 affairs, without an abiding sense of their insignifi-
 
 174 -^^ Evefii?ig in My Library 
 
 cance and of the utter futility of all human effort 
 in the gulf of time endless before and after. 
 
 Perhaps the philosophy that proclaims that all 
 is vanity would be difficult to resist did we all live 
 for ever. But inasmuch as during the actual life 
 of a man he cannot dwell in abstractions, but is 
 very much indeed interested in things about him 
 both physical and mental, happiness for him lives 
 in seizing those few years in a grasp of intimate 
 activity, rather than in sitting in a lonely place 
 doing nothing himself, and telling everybody else 
 that it is no use to do anything. 
 
 And when to this sterile and monotonous 
 doctrine of negation there is added a recommenda- 
 tion to seek consolation in frequent cups of wine, 
 we shall do well to choose another guide to life, 
 however musically, and with however stately a 
 diction, the bibulous advice is given. 
 
 But considered only as poetry apart from its 
 teaching, this work is splendid and sonorous : 
 
 Oh Thou, who man of baser earth did'st make, 
 And who with Eden did'st devise the Snake, 
 For all the sin wherewith the face of man 
 Is blackened, man's forgiveness give — and take ! 
 
 This grim audacity permeates the whole poem 
 — Omar never bows his head. 
 
 Sir Edwin Arnold's " Light of Asia " was an
 
 Amo?ig the English Poets 175 
 
 endeavour to introduce to us in a poetical form 
 the life and teaching of the founder of the Buddhist 
 religion. 
 
 Earnest students of English poetry will of 
 course make themselves familiar with it, but for 
 others a poem between four and five thousand 
 lines in length will appear a formidable adventure! 
 
 Early in the fourth book there is a very beautiful 
 description of an Indian night and then of the 
 interior of the Prince's palace : 
 
 Within — 
 Where the moon glittered through the lace-worked stone, 
 Lighting the walls of pearl-shell and the floors 
 Paved with veined marble — softly fell her beams 
 On such rare company of Indian girls, 
 It seemed some chamber sweet in Paradise 
 Where Devis rested. All the chosen ones 
 Of Prince Siddartha's pleasure home were there, 
 The brightest and most faithful of the Court ; 
 Each form so lovely in the peace of sleep 
 That you had said, " This is the pearl of all ! " 
 Save that beside her or beyond her lay 
 Fairer and fairer, till the pleasured gaze 
 Roamed o'er that feast of beauty as it roams 
 From gem to gem in some great goldsmith-work, 
 Caught by each colour till the next is seen. 
 
 And for another hundred lines the sacred peace 
 and seclusion of this "still House of Love" is
 
 176 An Even! fig in My Library 
 
 exquisitely described, leading up to the climax 
 when the Prince abandons it all to go forth a 
 pilgrim and found the religion that to-day claims 
 more than a third of mankind for its adherents. 
 
 Mary E. Coleridge, who wrote " The King 
 with Two Faces " and other interesting prose 
 works, wrote some strange and sometimes obscure 
 verse. Here, however, are two powerful stanzas 
 that are not at all obscure : 
 
 It is because you were my friend 
 I fought you as the devil fights, 
 Whatever fortune God may send 
 For once I set the world to rights ; 
 
 And that was when I thrust you down 
 And stabbed you twice and twice again, 
 Because you dared take off your crown 
 And be a man like other men. 
 
 Women seldom write fine verse unconnected 
 with their own personal joys and sorrows. There 
 is a strong sense of personal expression in most of 
 Christina Rossetti's best work. Mrs. Browning 
 of course is an exception to this general rule, and 
 there is a beautiful poem by Cora Kennedy 
 Aitken, which though breathing a large, de- 
 votional spirit, is not the least subjective or self- 
 contemplative. Here are five of her verses 
 which surely we ought not willingly to let die ;
 
 Ainong the English Poets 177 
 
 The evening with soft footsteps steals along 
 
 The velvet green of the cathedral close ; 
 
 Gravely her tender eyelids droop among 
 
 The solemn trees that guard God's holy house ; 
 
 And her sweet eyes upon the clustering graves 
 
 Rest like a benediction, quieter 
 
 Than ever in the wild old years they were 
 
 And merciful to-night are the soft hands she waves. 
 
 Her thoughts are angel's thoughts ; there is no need 
 
 To look for blessing to the soaring stone 
 
 That, white upon the air, like a soul freed 
 
 Upward to God climbs fearlessly alone ; 
 
 There is no need to listen for the bell 
 
 To overflow with music, — when hearts beat 
 
 As fast and full with aspirations sweet 
 
 Doth any sweetest music sweeter story tell ? 
 
 This is God's house ; here prayers arise and praise 
 And music from its cloistered home below 
 Flames in victorious symphonies that glow 
 In golden strength among the windows' rays, 
 To claim the royal thoughts that shine enthroned 
 Magnificent among the lily wings 
 Of angels or the purple robes of kings 
 Or the sad eyes of saints by a wild world disowned. 
 
 All things the windows hold, there is no lack 
 Of form or colour or divine idea ; 
 And music from their contact wanders back 
 A thing more wondrous and more sweet to hear, 
 N
 
 178 An Evening in My Library 
 
 And peals its benediction to and fro 
 
 Largesse on largesse crying as it goes 
 
 Till even the humblest churchyard flower knows 
 
 Something of God and dreams of all that's left to know. 
 
 Here with the dreaming flowers at our feet 
 
 The soul that grieves the most might rest from grief, 
 
 Might think because of them that life is sweet, 
 
 Perforce believe for their sake in belief ! 
 
 I would I knew, oh ! thou divinest night 
 
 And thou white-browed cathedral, if the soul 
 
 May grow, as you are, calm and beautiful 
 
 By living always as you do with Heaven in sight ! 
 
 If these verses had come from the pen of some 
 well-known poet, I cannot but think that they 
 would have enjoyed a wide reputation. But I 
 am myself wholly unable to discover the causes 
 that assign popularity to one and obscurity to 
 another poem of equal merit. Wolfe's *' Burial 
 of Sir John Moore " has spread to the ends of the 
 earth, and yet few comparatively are those who 
 know another poem of his, of singular beauty, 
 which I here transcribe : 
 
 HI had thought thou could'st have died 
 
 I might not weep for thee j 
 But I forgot when by thy side 
 
 That thou could'st mortal be :
 
 Among the E?ig/ish Poets ij<) 
 
 It never through my mind had passed 
 The time would e'er be o'er, 
 And I on thee should look my last 
 And thou should'st smile no more 
 
 And still upon that face I look 
 
 And think 'twill smile again, 
 And still the thought I will not brook 
 
 That I must look in vain. 
 But when I speak thou dost not say 
 
 What thou ne'er left'st unsaid, 
 And now I feel as well I may, 
 
 Sweet Mary ! thou art dead ! 
 
 If thou would'st stay, e'en as thou art, 
 
 All cold and all serene, 
 I still might press thy silent heart 
 
 And where thy smiles have been. 
 While e'en thy chill, bleak corse I have 
 
 Thou seemest still my own ; 
 But there I lay thee in thy grave. 
 
 And I am now alone. 
 
 I do not think where'er thou art 
 
 Thou hast forgotten me ; 
 And I perhaps may soothe this heart 
 
 In thinking too of thee. 
 Yet there was round thee such a dawn 
 
 Of light ne'er seen before, 
 As fancy never could have drawn 
 
 And never can restore.
 
 I 80 An Evening in My hihrary 
 
 Henry Crabbe Robinson in his delightful diary 
 in chapter x. of the first volume relates how 
 Wordsworth after requesting him to repeat Mrs. 
 Barbauld's final stanza in her poem " Life " 
 twice over, muttered as he paced up and down 
 the sitting-room at Rydal Mount, " I am not in 
 the habit of grudging people their good things, 
 but I wish I had written those lines." 
 
 This is the stanza so praised : 
 
 Life, we have been long together, 
 Through pleasant and through cloudy weather ; 
 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear, 
 Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear ; 
 Then steal away, give little warning, 
 
 Choose thine own time ; 
 Say not good night, but in some brighter clime 
 
 Bid me good morning. 
 
 and in chapter x. of the third volume Henry 
 Crabbe Robinson tells us that he heard from 
 Rogers that Fanny Burney repeated this stanza 
 to herself every night. 
 
 In the later years of the nineteenth century 
 Swinburne enjoyed a very considerable reputation. 
 He introduced to the world a manner, novel and 
 individual, which secured many admirers. He 
 attended with an almost exclusive devotion to 
 the effect it is possible to make upon the ear with
 
 Among the 'English Poets 1 8 1 
 
 words, dexterously selected, balanced, and juxta- 
 posed, and so felicitous, with practice, became his 
 verbal appositions, that those who were fascinated 
 by them did not too curiously enquire what 
 might be the thought that the poet thus pur- 
 ported to express. 
 
 It is even possible that there are many readers 
 who are quite indifferent to what may be supposed 
 to be expressed by Swinburne, being solely 
 satisfied v^dth the method of expression ; and 
 indeed the very tenuity of thought is an added 
 delight to those whose pleasure is concentrated 
 exclusively on the poet's harmonious verbality. 
 But the euphuist uninformed by lofty and lumin- 
 ous thought is not likely to grip the attention 
 and command the applause of mankind per- 
 manently. 
 
 I select a sample of Swinburne's manner from 
 his " Atalanta in Calydon," in which he speaks of 
 Venus Anadyomene thus : 
 
 For an evil blossom was born 
 Of sea-foam and the frothing of blood, 
 Blood-red and bitter of fruit, 
 And the seed of it laughter and tears, 
 And the leaves of it madness and scorn ; 
 A bitter flower from the bud. 
 Sprung of the sea without root, 
 
 Sprung without graft from the years.
 
 1 8 2 An Evening in My Library 
 
 The weft of the world was untorn 
 
 That is woven of the day on the night, 
 The hair of the hours was not white 
 
 Nor the raiment of time overworn 
 When a wonder, a world's delight, 
 
 A perilous goddess was born ; 
 
 And the waves of the sea as she came 
 
 Clove, and a foam at her feet, 
 Fawning, rejoiced to bring forth 
 
 A fleshly blossom, a flame. 
 
 Filling the heavens with heat 
 
 To the cold white ends of the north. 
 
 We all recognise the beauty of the old myth 
 of Venus rising in her loveliness from the foam 
 of the sea, but none of us are likely to regard 
 the introduction of " frothing of blood " into 
 the picture as an addition to its charm, and the 
 line 
 
 Sprung without graft from the years 
 
 is, I suppose, an oblique way of saying that the 
 birth of Venus took place at a date now un- 
 ascertainable ; if it does not mean that I am 
 unable to perceive any sense in it at all, and if it 
 does mean that, the method of saying it is 
 awkward and uncomfortable. 
 
 The next four lines seem to mean that this date 
 of the birth of Venus was a very early one, but 
 it can hardly be maintained by the most en-
 
 Among the 'English Poets 1 8 3 
 
 thusiastic admirer of the poet that there is any- 
 thing fehcitous either in the ideas or their ex- 
 pression by which this thought or fact is conveyed 
 to us. 
 
 Read aloud with conviction this kind of work 
 may convey to a Hstener a sense of the presence 
 of some wonderful thoughts and images which 
 he is unfortunately at the moment unable to 
 fix or define. But if he subsequently takes the 
 volume in his own hand and reads it to himself 
 even that pleasing hallucination vanishes. 
 
 V/illiam Morris combined in his life the manu- 
 facture of wall papers, the writing of poetry, 
 and the conduct of a Socialist newspaper. Cer- 
 tainly the designs of his wall papers were a happy 
 innovation upon the earlier Victorian patterns, 
 and his poetry exhibited something of the 
 character of the papers, for it unrolled itself 
 endlessly in a pleasant continuity of expression 
 for a termination of which there never seemed 
 any very definite reason. 
 
 When he began " The Earthly Paradise " he 
 felicitously called himself " the idle singer of an 
 empty day," and thus profi^cred the work should 
 be accepted with indulgence by those of Hke 
 leisure. 
 
 He had a skilled sense of the mediaeval love 
 ballade, such as the following :
 
 1 84 Ati Evening in My Library 
 
 H.EC 
 
 In the white flowered hawthorn brake, 
 Love, be merry for my sake ; 
 Twine the blossoms in my hair, 
 Kiss me where I am most fair — 
 Kiss me, love ! for who knoweth 
 What thing cometh after death. 
 
 ILLE 
 
 Nay, the garlanded gold hair 
 Hides thee where thou art most fair ; 
 Hides the rose-tinged hills of snow — 
 Ah ! sweet love, I have thee now ! 
 Kiss me, love ! for who knoweth 
 What thing cometh after death ? 
 
 B.MC 
 
 Shall we weep for a dead day 
 
 Or set Sorrow in our way ? 
 
 Hidden by my golden hair 
 
 Wilt thou weep that sweet days wear ? 
 
 Kiss me, love ! for who knoweth 
 
 What thing cometh after death ? 
 
 ILLE 
 
 Weep, O Love, the days that flit 
 Now while I can feel thy breath ; 
 Then may I remember it 
 Sad and old, and near my death. 
 Kiss me, love ! for who knoweth 
 What thing cometh after death ?
 
 Among the English Poets 1 8 5 
 
 I suppose here the dehberate clumsiness of 
 forcing the accent on to the second syllable of 
 " knoweth " in each verse is intended to give the 
 desired archaic flavour. But it seems a pity to 
 be inharmonious of set purpose for any reason 
 whatever. 
 
 Lord Lytton, the first earl, enjoyed as " Ow^en 
 Meredith " the attention of a wide public in 
 the sixties of the last century. There is a fine 
 romantic flavour in much of his verse, and it may 
 very well happen that " Owen Meredith " will 
 be remembered when the Viceroy of India and 
 the Ambassador at Paris has long been forgotten. 
 His " Good-night in the Porch " is tender and 
 distinguished, and among the shorter poems I 
 here cite " The Chess-board " as a characteristic 
 example of his work : 
 
 Irene, do you yet remember 
 
 Ere we were grown so sadly wise, 
 Those evenings in the bleak December, 
 Curtained warm from the snowy weather 
 When you and I played chess together 
 
 Checkmated by each other's eyes ? 
 
 Ah ! still I see your soft white hand 
 Hovering warm o'er Queen and Knight, 
 
 Brave Pawns in valiant battle stand : 
 The double Castles guard the wings : 
 The Bishop, bent on distant things,
 
 1 86 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Moves sidling through the fight. 
 
 Our fingers touch : our glances meet 
 
 And falter ; falls your golden hair 
 
 Against my cheek ; your bosom sweet 
 Is heaving. Down the field, your Queen 
 Rides slow, her soldiery all between, 
 
 And checks me unaware. 
 
 Ah me ! the little battle's done. 
 Dispersed is all its chivalry ; 
 Full many a move, since then have we 
 'Mid Life's perplexing chequers made. 
 And many a game with Fortune played. 
 
 What is it we have won ? 
 
 This, this at least — if this alone : — 
 That never, never, never more 
 As in those old still nights of yore. 
 
 Ere we were grown so sadly wise, 
 
 Can you and I shut out the skies, 
 Shut out the world, and wintry weather. 
 
 And eyes exchanging warmth with eyes 
 Play chess as then we played together ! 
 
 And here is another poem of a different kind 
 
 I dreamed that I walked in Italy, 
 
 When the day was going down. 
 By a water that silently wandered by 
 
 Through an old dim-lighted town, 
 
 Till I came to a palace fair to see, 
 Wide open the windows were ; 
 
 t
 
 Among the English Poets 1 87 
 
 My love at a window sat ; and she 
 Beckoned me up the stair. 
 
 I roamed through many a corridor 
 
 And many a chamber of state : 
 Dim and silent was every floor 
 
 And the day was growing late. 
 
 When I came to a little rose-coloured room 
 
 From the curtains out flew a bat. 
 The window was open ; and in the gloom 
 
 My love at the window sat. 
 
 She sat with her guitar on her knee 
 
 But she was not singing a note, 
 For someone had drawn — ah ! who could it be ? — 
 
 A knife across her throat. 
 
 Sir Lewis Morris suffers from having been 
 heralded in the early seventies by the chorus of 
 " irresponsible indolent reviewers " with ex- 
 travagant ecstasy. 
 
 The public, however, have kept their heads 
 in the matter, and have not placed him beside 
 Milion and Tennyson. He was an accomplished 
 writer of verse which neither sinks below a pleasing 
 scholarly level, nor rises to anything remarkable 
 or memorable. He followed poetry as a pro- 
 fession, and experienced no compelling desire to 
 be original.
 
 1 88 An Evening in My hibniry 
 
 Lately W. B. Yeats has claimed a following 
 among a youthful generation who have decided 
 that there is an intimate connexion between 
 beauty and vagueness, and who enjoy any new 
 and seemingly original idea, irrespective of its 
 truth or natural justification, such as is conveyed 
 by the Hne : 
 
 And evening full of the linnet's wings. 
 
 Linnets, as a matter of fact, go to roost no 
 later than any other birds, and no very definite 
 experience of nature can be summoned to the 
 support of this line, but that does not seem to 
 preclude it from communicating pleasure to 
 certain minds. 
 
 The line immediately preceding this one runs 
 thus : 
 
 There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow. 
 
 Of course noon is not purple any more than it 
 is vermilion, in Ireland or elsewhere, but if it 
 pleases Yeats to call it purple, and if it gives 
 pleasure to his band of followers to hear it so 
 described, a blameless happiness is given and 
 received. 
 
 But I select for quotation here a ballad that is 
 free from these peculiarities which appeal only to 
 a few :
 
 Among the English Poets 189 
 
 The old priest Peter Gilligan 
 Was weary night and day ; 
 For half his flock were in their beds 
 Or under green sods lay. 
 
 Once, while he nodded on a chair 
 At the moth-hour of eve, 
 Another poor man sent for him. 
 And he began to grieve. 
 
 " I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace^ 
 For people die and die " ; 
 And after cried he, " God forgive ! 
 My body spake, not I ! " 
 
 He knelt and leaning on the chair 
 
 He prayed and fell asleep ; 
 
 And the moth-hour went from the fields, 
 
 And stars began to peep ; 
 
 They slowly into millions grew. 
 
 And leaves shook in the wind ; 
 
 And God covered the world with :;hade 
 
 And whispered to mankind. 
 
 Upon the time of sparrow chirp 
 When the moths came once more. 
 The old priest Peter Gilligan 
 Stood upright on the floor.
 
 190 An Evening in My Library 
 
 " Mavrone, mavrone ! the man has died, 
 While I slept on the chair " ; 
 He roused his horse out of its sleep 
 And rode with little care. 
 
 He rode now as he never rode, 
 
 By rocky lane and fen ; 
 
 The sick man's wife opened the door ; 
 
 " Father, you come again ! " 
 
 " And is the poor man dead ? " he cried. 
 " He died an hour ago." 
 The old priest Peter Gilligan 
 In grief swayed to and fro. 
 
 " When you were gone, he turned and died 
 
 As moovy as a bird." 
 
 The old Priest Peter Gilligan 
 
 He knelt him at that word. 
 
 " He Who hath made the night of stars 
 
 For souls who tire and bleed. 
 
 Sent one of His great angels down 
 
 To help me in my need. k 
 
 N 
 
 He Who is wrapped in purple robes 
 With planets in His care 
 Had pity on the least of things 
 Asleep upon a chair.
 
 Among the English Poets 1 9 i 
 
 Alfred Noyes has written a little poem to " The 
 Skylark Caged," of which I will here cite the first 
 and last verses, which is very beautiful : 
 
 Beat, little breast, against the wires. 
 
 Strive, little wings and misted eyes 
 Which one wild gleam of memory fires, 
 
 Beseeching still the unfettered skies, 
 Whither at dewy dawn, you sprang 
 
 Quivering with joy from this dark earth and sang. 
 
 Beat, little breast, still beat, still beat. 
 Strive, misted eyes and tremulous wings. 
 
 Swell, little throat, your Sweet ! Sweet ! Sweet ! 
 Through which such deathless memory rings : 
 
 Better to break your heart and die 
 Than, like your gaolers, to forget your sky, 
 
 I think it is exceeding the licence extended to 
 poets for Noyes, in a poem on the death of 
 Francis Thompson, to speak of him as though 
 he were Christ ; and to allude in his regard to the 
 " rich thorns " with which he is crowned ; to 
 his feet " beautiful pierced with pain," to the 
 nails driven through his palms, and to his " seam- 
 less robe." 
 
 Francis Thompson may have had a sad life, 
 and the neglect of him by the public may have 
 exceeded that accorded to poets of equal merit,
 
 192 An Evening in My Library 
 
 but to use this hyperbolical language about him 
 is to transgress the bounds of good taste. 
 
 And after all John Davidson also suffered 
 neglect, and in despair took his own life without 
 anyone writing of him as of Christ. 
 
 In his poem " Thirty Bob a Week " it is not 
 impossible that there is a note of personal 
 experience : 
 
 My weakness and my strength without a doubt 
 Are mine alone for ever from the first ; 
 
 It's just the very same 
 
 With a difference in the name 
 
 As " Thy will be done " — you say it if you durst ! 
 
 They say it daily up and down the land 
 
 As easy as you take a drink, it's true ; 
 But the difficultest go to understand, 
 
 And the difficultest job a man can do. 
 Is to come it brave and meek 
 With thirty bob a week 
 
 And feel that that's the proper thing for you. 
 
 It's a naked child against a hungry wolf ; 
 
 It's playing bowls upon a splitting wreck ; 
 It's walking on a string across a gulf 
 
 With milestones fore-and-aft about your neck ; 
 But the thing is daily done 
 By many and many one ; 
 
 And we fall face forward, fighting, on the deck.
 
 Aj7iong the English Poets 193 
 
 The world has Httle mercy on poets who think 
 to Hve by the writing of their verses. Tennyson 
 no doubt had no need of other source of income, 
 but then Tennyson was dowered with im- 
 mortahty from the day that " In Memoriam " 
 arose upon the hterary horizon. 
 
 Stephen PhiUips has been well-nigh smothered 
 by the extravagance of the critics who have 
 ranked him with Marlowe, Webster, Milton, 
 Tennyson, Dante and Sophocles, and have asserted 
 that he is " the greatest poetic dramatist we have 
 had since Elizabethan times." The world of 
 letters is never stormed in this way by newspaper 
 critics ; work is considered and judged with 
 mature deliberation, and has to stand the test 
 of time before it is finally and securely acclaimed 
 as in the first rank. 
 
 His " Paolo and Francesca " treats the old story 
 reverently and with cultivation, and in the last 
 lines spoken by Paolo the sense of doom over- 
 mastered by love is beautifully conveyed : 
 
 What can we fear, we two ? 
 O God, TTiou seest us Thy creatures bound 
 Together by that law which holds the stars 
 In palpitating cosmic passion bright ; 
 By which the very Sun enthrals the earth 
 And all the waves of the world faint to the moon.* 
 Even by such attraction we two rush 
 o
 
 194 ^^ Evening in My Library 
 
 Together through the everlasting years — 
 Us, then, whose only pain can be to part, 
 How wilt Thou punish ? For what ecstasy 
 Together to be blown about the globe ! 
 What rapture in perpetual fire to burn 
 Together ! — Where we are is endless fire — 
 Three centuries shall in a moment pass 
 And all the cycles in one hour elapse ! 
 Still, still together, even when faints Thy Sun 
 And past our souls Thy stars like ashes fall, 
 How wilt Thou punish us who cannot part ? 
 
 Of course it may be objected that this is written 
 with Dante, and perhaps even Watts' picture, in 
 the author's vision, and that the Hving Paolo 
 would never have so accurately foreseen the fate 
 that awaited him and Francesca ; also the law 
 of gravitation and the consequent mutual at- 
 traction of the earth and the moon by which 
 the tides are caused was not discovered for some 
 four hundred years after the time of Paolo and 
 Francesca, but the frank defiance of these ob- 
 jections is itself winning ; and anyway poets are 
 held to be exempt from the necessity of knowing 
 anything about astronomy. Coleridge writes of 
 
 The horned moon, with one bright star 
 Within the nether tip, 
 
 which is a position where the star would neces- 
 sarily be occulted by the dark body of the moon.
 
 Among the 'English Poets 195 
 
 Stephen Phillips certainly coins fine phrases 
 as in Herod : 
 
 The red gold cataract of her streaming hair 
 Is tumbled o'er the boundaries of the world, 
 
 which is splendid in its extravagance. 
 
 In " Lawrence Hope " India and the East 
 has found a true and sweet interpreter. 
 
 Her passionate heart went out to all the mystery 
 and love of those old and weary lands where the 
 burning sun is the ever puissant Lord of hfe, 
 and even on a rare visit to England our gracious 
 summer served but to kindle in her a yearning 
 for the far orient : 
 
 Though I, impatient of the heat, 
 
 Forth from the window lean 
 To cool my sight across the street 
 
 Amidst your shaded green, 
 Your leaves, refreshed by summer showers, 
 
 Are naught to me, who feast 
 My fancy on those other flowers 
 
 That burn about the East. 
 
 For I have seen the lotus bloom 
 
 On lakes like inland seas. 
 And white magnolias, through the gloom 
 
 Moonlike among the trees.
 
 196 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Have watched the pale Tuberose, aglow 
 
 \^'ith phosphorescent light, 
 And Water lilies lying low 
 
 On sacred tanks at night. 
 
 By night my fancy spreads his wings 
 
 In visions that console, 
 But all day long, remembered things 
 
 Are dragging at my soul. 
 I want the silver on the sea, 
 
 The surf along the shore. 
 The ruined Mosque, whose weeds grow free 
 
 Where Princes prayed of yore. 
 
 I want the lonely, level sands 
 
 Stretched out beneath the sun. 
 The sadness of the old, old lands, 
 
 Whose destiny is done ; 
 The glory and the grace, that cling 
 
 About the mountain crest 
 Where tombs of many a faithless King 
 
 Guard faithfully their rest. 
 
 Love, Eastern love, all conquering, passionate, 
 throbbing from the depths of some divine despair, 
 fills her verse quivering with ecstasy under the 
 blazing sun, or wailing its sorrow by solitary 
 shores beneath the heartless moon. 
 
 " Droit du Seigneur " is perhaps one of the 
 most original of her poems, throwing a glamour
 
 Among the English Poets 197 
 
 over a custom that our modern conventions 
 have covered with execration, and with courage, 
 indicating another and altogether different point 
 of view. 
 
 A sombre glow is thrown backward upon these 
 beautiful poems by the tragic end of their author, 
 who not long after her husband, Colonel Nicol- 
 son's death, took her own life. 
 
 Her last volume " Indian Love," published 
 after her husband's death, is prefaced with a 
 dedication to him, of which this is the last most 
 touching verse : 
 
 Small joy was I to thee ; before we met 
 Sorrow had left thee all too sad to save. 
 
 Useless my love — as vain as this regret 
 
 That pours my hopeless life across thy grave. 
 
 Ella Wheeler Wilcox has written some love 
 poems of the New West which have attracted 
 much attention here as well as in America. 
 
 They form a notable contrast with those of 
 Lawrence Hope. 
 
 Give me new love, warm, palpitating, sweet, 
 When all the grace and beauty leaves the old ; 
 When like a rose it withers at my feet 
 Or like a hearth grows cold. 
 
 Twice she uses a line and daring image, once 
 in " Ad Fincm " thus :
 
 198 An Evening in My Library 
 
 I know, in the way that sins are reckoned 
 This thought is a sin of the deepest dye ; 
 But I know, too, if an angel beckoned, 
 Standing close by the Throne on High, 
 And you, adown by the gates infernal. 
 Should open your loving arms and smile, 
 I would turn my back on things supernal 
 To lie on your breast a little while. 
 
 And again in " Delilah " : 
 
 O ghost of dead sin unrelenting. 
 Go back to the dust and the sod ! 
 Too dear and too sweet for repenting, 
 Ye stand between me and my God. 
 If I, by the Throne, should behold you, 
 Smiling up with those eyes loved so well. 
 Close, close in my arms I would fold you 
 And drop with you down to sweet Hell ! 
 
 I suppose the most widely known poem by 
 Ella Wilcox, and justly so, is the following : 
 
 Laugh and the world laughs with you ; 
 
 Weep and you weep alone ; 
 For the sad old earth 
 Must borrow its mirth 
 
 But has trouble enough of its own. 
 Sing and the hills will answer : 
 
 Sigh, it is lost in the air ; 
 The echoes bound 
 To a joyful sound. 
 
 But shrink from voicing care.
 
 Among the English Poets 199 
 
 Rejoice, and men will seek you ; 
 
 Grieve, and they turn and go ; 
 They want full measure 
 Of all your pleasure 
 
 But they do not need your woe. 
 Be glad, and your friends are many, 
 
 Be sad, and you lose them all ; 
 There are none to decline 
 Your nectared wine. 
 
 But alone you must drink life's gall. 
 
 Feast, and your halls are crowded ; 
 
 Fast, and the world goes by ; 
 Succeed and give. 
 And it helps you live. 
 
 But no man can help you die. 
 There is room in the halls of pleasure 
 
 For a large and lordly train ; 
 But one by one 
 We must all file on 
 
 Through the narrow aisles of pain. 
 
 To Rudyard Kipling belongs the fame of 
 having given to the Enghsh race the most 
 splendid National Hymn in the world, which as 
 long as we are truly a great people, and no longer, 
 will worthily and truly express our best emotions. 
 
 God of our fathers, known of old. 
 Lord of our far-flung battle line, 
 Beneath Whoso awful Hand we hold
 
 200 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Dominion over palm and pine ; 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget ! 
 
 The tumult and the shouting dies, 
 The Captains and the Kings depart ; 
 Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, 
 An humble and a contrite heart. 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget ! 
 
 Far-called our navies melt away, 
 On dune and headland sinks the fire, 
 Lo, all our pomp of yesterday 
 Is one with Nineveh and Tyre ! 
 Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget ! 
 
 \i drunk with sight of power, we loose 
 Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe. 
 Such boasting as the Gentiles use. 
 Or lesser breeds without the law. 
 Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet. 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget ! 
 
 For heathen heart that puts her trust 
 In reeking tube and iron shard. 
 All valiant dust that builds on dust 
 And, guarding, calls not Thee to guard ; 
 For frantic boast and foolish word, 
 Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord ! 
 
 I
 
 Among the English Poets 201 
 
 He has an intimate knowledge of the magic 
 of the deep sea, and a good ship heaving along 
 alone over the infinite wastes of water : 
 
 Then home, get her home, where the drunken rollers comb. 
 
 And the shouting seas drive by, 
 And the engines stamp and ring, and the wet bows reel and 
 swing. 
 And the Southern Cross rides high ! 
 Yes, the old lost stars wheel back, dear Lass, 
 That blaze in the velvet blue. 
 They're all old friends on the old trail, our own trail, the out 
 
 trail, 
 They're God's own guides on the Long Trail — the trail that 
 is always new. 
 
 Rupert Brooke, who fell ill and died in the 
 great war, might have given us fine work had he 
 lived till his taste had matured. 
 
 It is unfortunate he had no literary friend 
 whose opinion he respected who could have pre- 
 vented the publication of such things as these : 
 
 The damned ship lurched and slithered. Quiet and quick 
 
 My cold gorge rose ; the long sea rolled. . . . 
 Do I forget you ? Retchings twist and tie mc, 
 
 Old meat, good meals, brown gobbets, up I throw, 
 Do I remember ? .Acrid return and slimy. 
 
 The sobs and slobber of a last year's woe. 
 And still the sick ship rolls. 'Tis hard, I icU ye, 
 
 To choose 'twixt love and nausea, heart and belly, 
 o 2
 
 202 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Or the description of the rival in " Jealousy " : 
 
 Day after day you'll sit with him and note 
 
 The greasier tie, the dingy wrinkling coat ; 
 
 As prettiness turns to pomp, and strength to fat, 
 
 And love, love, love to habit ! And after that 
 
 When all that's fine in man is at an end, 
 
 And you, that loved young life and clean, must tend 
 
 A foul sick fumbling dribbling body and old 
 
 When his rare lips hang flabby and can't hold 
 
 Slobber, and you're enduring that worst thing, 
 
 Senility's greasy furtive love-making, 
 
 et cetera ! 
 
 A literary friend of mine* defends this last passage 
 as an example of " force," which he thinks redeems 
 its coarseness. I am afraid I cannot feel that 
 there is any particular " force " here manifested, 
 while I am sure there is present a beastliness that 
 is quite unpardonable. I suppose that the young 
 poet with Locksley Hall in his mind : 
 
 As the husband is, the wife is, thou art mated with a clown, 
 And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee 
 down, 
 
 felt impelled to do something better than that 
 if he could ; but fine hterature has nothing to do 
 with such a thought or phrase 'as that of lips 
 
 • A. C. T
 
 Among the English Poets 203 
 
 " that can't hold slobber." I think Rupert 
 Brooke would have realised this had he lived 
 longer and would have turned his back on gross- 
 ness and have given us more of such sweet and 
 wholesome verse as the following : 
 
 Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill. 
 
 Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass. 
 You said, " Through glory and ecstasy we pass ; 
 
 Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still, • 
 
 When we are old, are old . . ." " And when we die 
 All's over that is ours ; and life burns on 
 
 Through other lovers, other lips," said I, 
 
 — " Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won ! " 
 
 " We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here. 
 Life is our cry. We have kept the faith ! " we said ; 
 
 " We shall go down with unreluctant tread 
 Rose-crowned into the darkness ! " Proud we were, 
 And laughed, that had such brave true things to say, 
 
 — And then you suddenly cried, and turned away. 
 
 It may be that in the floods of publications 
 that flow from the modern printing presses, a 
 young writer believes that he will be submerged 
 if he docs not write something that will startle 
 or shock the world, and impelled by this fear he 
 throws mud at us which will at any rate secure 
 for him our Attention though it may yield him 
 notliing but our protests.
 
 204 AfJ Evening in My Library 
 
 Whether the great war, that has overwhelmed 
 with speechless anguish so many stricken mothers, 
 wives, fathers, and lovers, will ultimately raise 
 up among us such singers as followed the French 
 Revolution, time alone will show, in the mean- 
 while one young songstress has made articulate 
 the poignant strokes of intimate grief that beat 
 upon the hearts of those made presently desolate. 
 I was privileged to see in manuscript before it was 
 published a volume of Miss Jenkins's poems.* 
 They seem to me to show not only promise but 
 a high measure of performance. 
 
 Without quite achieving the lilt and music 
 of true lyrics, and suffering from occasional 
 imperfections of prosody, they possess a mastery 
 of phrase and directness in the expression of 
 high emotion that are entirely beautiful. 
 
 The limbs she bore and cherished tenderly 
 And rocked against her heart, with loving fears, 
 Through helpless infancy that all endears 
 Unto the verge of manhood's empery, 
 Were fostered for this cruel end, and she 
 Kneeling beside him, looks through blinding tears 
 Down the long vista of the lonely years, 
 Void of all light, drear as eternity. 
 But her young son, who knows not that he dies, 
 Gives good-night lightly on the utmost brink ; 
 
 * Published by Messrs. Sidgwick and Jackson.
 
 Among the English Poets 205 
 
 And, anguish overmastered for her sake, 
 Says, smiUng with stiff lips and death-dimmed eyes, 
 " Why, mother, if you kiss me so, I'll think 
 You'll not be here to-morrow, when I wake." 
 
 Of another poem on the grave of some beloved 
 youth fallen so pitifully yet so glorious at the 
 front I quote the first and last stanzas : 
 
 We buried of our dead the dearest one. 
 Said each to other, " Here then let him lie. 
 And they may find his place, when all is done 
 From the old May tree standing guard near by." 
 
 Oh Lord of Hosts, no hallowed prayer we bring. 
 Here for Thy grace is no importuning. 
 No room for those that will not strive nor cry 
 When loving kindness with our dead lies slain. 
 Give us our father's heathen hearts again, 
 Valour to dare, and fortitude to die. 
 
 And finally I will cite an epitaph on a child left 
 buried abroad : 
 
 Father, forget not, now that we must go, 
 A Httlc one in alien earth low laid ; 
 Send some kind angel when thy trumpets blow 
 Lest he should wake alone, and be afraid. 
 
 Sir Henry Ncwbolt has written some gallant 
 verse and has approached nearer to Thomas
 
 2o6 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Campbell than any other writer of patriotic 
 ballads. This sort of poetry needs to be quite 
 first-rate. It requires dignity and restraint, and 
 perhaps even a certain sense of reverence to 
 preserve it from bathos. 
 
 To an Englishman nothing is so shocking to his 
 taste as the bombast that passes for patriotism 
 at the music-hall in war-time. To be present 
 when some unfortunate singer is sent on to the 
 stage to bawl about England being " top dog yet " 
 or some such cock-a-doodle, makes him hot with 
 discomfort. Only great masters of letters can 
 handle patriotism worthily. 
 
 Sir Henry Newbolt has ventured upon this 
 dangerous enterprise with success. I select his 
 " Northumberland " : 
 
 When England sets her banner forth 
 
 And bids her armour shine, 
 She'll not forget the famous North, 
 
 The lads of Moor and Tyne. 
 And when the loving cup's in hand 
 
 And Honour leads the cry 
 They know not old Northumberland 
 
 Who'll pass her memory by. 
 
 When Nelson sailed for Trafalgar 
 
 With all his country's best. 
 He held them dear as brothers are, 
 
 But one beyond the rest,
 
 Among the English Poets 207 
 
 For when the fleet with heroes manned 
 
 To clear the decks began 
 The boast of old Northumberland 
 
 He sent to lead the van. 
 
 Himself by " Victory's " bulwarks stood 
 
 And cheered to see the sight ; 
 " That noble fellow Collingwood 
 
 How bold he goes to fight ! " 
 Love, that the league of ocean spanned, 
 
 Heard him as face to face ; 
 " What would he give, Northumberland, 
 
 To share our pride of place ? " 
 
 The flag that goes the world around 
 
 And flaps on every breeze, 
 Has never gladdened fairer ground 
 
 Or kinder hearts than these. 
 So when the loving cup's in hand 
 
 And Honour leads the cry, 
 They know not old Northumberland 
 
 Who'll pass her memory by. 
 
 This fine writer has interpreted in eight 
 splendid hnes the true spirit in which the EngHsh- 
 man goes forth to fight his country's battles : 
 
 To set the cause above renown, 
 To love the game beyond the prize, 
 To honour, while you strike him down. 
 The foe that comes with fearless eyes ;
 
 2o8 An Evening in My Library 
 
 To count the life of battle good, 
 And dear the land that gave you birth, 
 And dearer yet the brotherhood 
 That binds the brave of all the earth. 
 
 A gentle and beautiful patriotism finds its 
 expression in " Homeward Bound " : 
 
 After long labouring in the windy ways. 
 
 On smooth and shining tides, 
 
 Swiftly the great ship glides. 
 Her storm forgot, her weary watches past ; 
 Northward she glides, and through the enchanted haze 
 Faint on the verge her far hope dawns at last. 
 
 The phantom sky-line of a shadowy dawn, 
 
 Whose pale white cliffs below 
 
 Through sunny mist aglow 
 Like noon-day ghosts of summer moonshine gleam 
 Soft as old sorrow, bright as old renown, 
 There lies the home of all our mortal dream. 
 
 Sir Henry Newbolt has not yielded weakly to 
 the silly clamour against the use of the glorious 
 name of England, in his national verse. 
 
 To speak in poetry, or indeed in prose, of " Great 
 Britain and Ireland and the British Dominions 
 beyond the seas " (which is the only alternative 
 to " England " that does not leave some English 
 subjects out), whenever an allusion is to be made 
 to our Empire and race is manifestly ridiculous ;
 
 A??io}ig the Efiglish Poets 209 
 
 and even if this omnibus description is used, a 
 grievance is left to the Isle of Man and the 
 Channel Islands. 
 
 It is Scotland for the Scotch, and Wales for 
 the Welsh, whenever posts of profit are toward, 
 but all are welcome in England ; never has been 
 heard the mean cry of " England for the Enghsh." 
 Local patriotism is a fine emotion, but narrow 
 provincialism is a poor-spirited affair, and let us 
 be grateful to Sir Henry Newbolt for standing 
 firm for 
 
 The great name of England round and round. 
 
 And that line brings mc to the towering 
 genius of Tennyson, the brightest star of the 
 blazing Victorian constellation. 
 
 " In Memoriam," had he written nothing 
 else, would have placed him beside the first poets 
 of the world. 
 
 Of " Maud " the same may be said, and of 
 " Enoch Ardcn," and all three strike a totally 
 different note and lead us into fields of widely 
 various loveliness. 
 
 Then again in the dainty and exquisite lyric 
 none have surpassed him. 
 
 And the stately ships go on 
 
 To their haven under the hill, 
 But O for the touch of a vanislicd hand 
 
 And the sound of a voice tliat is still.
 
 2 I o An Evening in My Library 
 
 What is the magic that makes such Hnes cling m 
 to the mind for ever when once heard ? 
 
 And up at thy vault with roaring sound % 
 
 Climb thy thick noon, disastrous day ; 
 
 Touch thy dull goal of joyless grey 
 And hide thy shame beneath the ground. 
 
 How easy and inevitable it seems and therefore 
 how the more consummate and divine. 
 
 And what a wonder awaits the youth of future 
 days as he grows to manhood, and first opens 
 " Maud " and learns in an hour all the infinite 
 heights and deeps of love ; the fearful raptures 
 and glorious pangs of passion. 
 
 Also, a Laureate indeed ! Who to the " Idylls 
 of the King " could set such a dedication, so sur- 
 passing as to lift its object to a place more royal 
 than was ever before assigned to any monarch 
 by a lord of letters since there have been kings 
 and poets in the world. 
 
 To select extracts from such a work as " In 
 Memoriam " seems to me something in the nature 
 of profanity. 
 
 If having followed me through this volume, 
 the reader has discovered an interest in my 
 opinions, I wish him no better happiness than he 
 may enjoy from reading that perfect poem 
 through at least once a year, perceiving on each
 
 Among the English Poets 2 1 1 
 
 repetition fresh perfections. I count it one 
 of the precious possessions of my Hfe that I once 
 held in mine the hand that gave the world what 
 has made it richer and more splendid for ever. 
 
 I began this book with a perfect unrhymed 
 poem by a poet of whom the world knows 
 nothing, I vdll finish it with a perfect unrhymed 
 poem by a poet the world has acclaimed : 
 
 Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, 
 Tears from the depth of some divine despair 
 Rise in the heart and gather in the eyes 
 In looking on tlie happy Autumn-fields 
 And thinking of the days that are no more. 
 
 Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail 
 That brings our friends up from the under world, 
 Sad as the last which reddens over one 
 That sinks with all we love below the verge. 
 So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 
 
 Ah ! sad and strange as in dark summer dawns 
 
 The earliest pipe of half awakened birds 
 
 To dying ears when unto dying eyes 
 
 The casement slowly grows a glimmering square ; 
 
 So sad, so strange the days that are no more. 
 
 Dear as remembered kisses after death 
 And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned 
 On lips that arc for others ; deep as love, 
 Deep as first love, and wild with all regret, 
 O Death in Life, the days that arc no more.
 
 2 1 2 An Evening in My Library 
 
 Thus then have the great poets of the world 
 manifested the highest exahation of man's being 
 yet achieved. 
 
 No one knows, and it seems probable that no 
 one will ever know, what the human mind is, 
 nor what thought is, nor consciousness, nor joy, 
 nor sorrow, nor any other of the emotions. Still 
 less is it possible for anyone to know what life, 
 the source of them all, is. 
 
 Yet is there Something, not himself, that arises 
 in the heart of the impassioned poet which 
 guides his hand to trace as he writes the station 
 of his mind while he broods on the mystery of 
 his being and of the wonderful order in the 
 midst of which he is placed ? — ^That same Some- 
 thing that directs the bird to create its love-built 
 nest, the bee to form its cells in hexagons, which 
 out of time and place ordains the infinite and 
 glorious processes of the world about us. 
 
 The rapture of the inspired poet is a matter 
 beyond the experience, or even the comprehension 
 of lesser men, and before it we should uncover 
 with becoming: reverence.
 
 / 
 
 INDEX
 
 INDEX 
 
 Abbey, Edwin, 123 
 Agasias of Ephesus, 6 
 Aitkcn, Cora Kennedy, 176, 
 
 177, 178 
 Aldrich, Anne Reeve, 164, 
 
 165, 166 
 Aldrich, Thomas Bailly, 33, 
 
 49. 50 
 Arnold, Sir Edwin, 174, 175 
 Arnold, Matthew, 27, 28 
 
 Barbauld, Mrs., 180 
 
 Blake, 150 
 
 Bowles, 86, 87 
 
 Brady, Dr., 151, 152 
 
 Brooke, Rupert, 201, 202, 203 
 
 Browning, Mrs., 52, 53, 58, 
 
 112 
 Browning, Robert, 155, 156, 
 
 157. 158, 159 
 Bryant, 43, 44, 45 
 Buchanan, Robert, 12, 13, 14^ 
 
 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,20,21 
 Burney, Fanny, 180 
 Burns, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109 
 Byron, 8, 139, 140, 141, 142, 
 
 143, '55 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, 128, 129 
 Carman, Bliss, 9, 10, 11, 12, 
 
 lOI 
 
 Cheney, John Vance, 48, 49 
 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 26, 27 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 170, 171 
 Coleridge, Mary E., 176 
 Coleridge, S. T., 83, 84, 85, 
 
 86,87,92, 142, 143, 144 
 Cowper, 138, 139 
 Crabbe, 143 
 
 Dallas, Mary Kyle, 66 
 
 Dante, 194 
 
 Davidson, John, 192 
 
 Disraeli, vii 
 
 Dobson, Austin, 118, 119, 120, 
 
 121, 122, 123 
 Drydcn, 148 
 
 Fitzgerald, Edward, 173 
 
 Ford, 31 
 
 Foster, Stephen Collins, 53, 
 
 54. 55. 56 
 
 Goldsmith, 123 
 Gordon, Lindsay, 67 
 Gray, 12.^, 125 
 
 215
 
 2 l6 
 
 Index 
 
 Hemans, Mrs., 172, 173 
 Henley, W. E., 131, 132 
 Herrick, 102, 103, 104, 105, 
 
 153 
 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 33, 
 
 65,66 
 Hood, Thomas, 74, 75, 76, 77, 
 
 78, 79, 80, 81 
 " Hope, Lawrence," 195, 196, 
 
 197 
 Houghton, Lord, 75, 115 
 Hunt, Leigh, 113 
 
 Jenkins, Miss, 204, 205 
 Johnson, Dr., 3, 138 
 
 Keats, 26, 109, 115, 116 
 Keble, 61 
 
 Kelly, Lawrence, 168 
 Kendall, Henry, 69, 70, 71, 
 
 72, 73, 74 
 
 Kingsley, The Rev, Charles, 
 
 98, 99, 100, 102 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 199, 200, 
 
 201 
 Knutsford, Lord, vii 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 87, 88 
 Landor, Walter Savage, 170 
 Lang, Andrew, 122 
 Larcom, Lucy, 166 
 Lawson, Henry, 67, 68, 69 
 Leyden, John, 135, 136, 137 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 35 
 Longfellow, 33,43, 50, 51, 52 
 Lowell, James Russell, 33, 41, 
 
 42,43 
 Ludcrs, Henry Charles, 4, 67 
 
 Lytton, Lord, 185, 186, 187 
 
 Macdonald, George, 153, 154, 
 
 155 
 Masefield, John, 161, 162, 163 
 
 Merivale, Herman, 25 
 
 Milman, Dean, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12 
 
 Milton, 23, 24 
 
 Morris, Sir Lewis, 187 
 
 Morris, William, 183 
 
 Newbolt, Sir Henry, 205, 206, 
 
 207, 208, 209 
 Newman, Cardinal, 61, 153 
 Noyes, 191 
 
 Parsons, Alfred, r.a., 123 
 Patmore, Coventry, 160, 161 
 Phillips, Stephen, 193 
 Poc, Edgar Allan, 38, 39, 40, 
 
 41,67 
 Pope, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 
 
 148 
 
 Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, 3 
 
 Robinson, Henry Crabbe, 180 
 Rogers, Robert Cameron, 56, 
 
 57
 
 Index 
 
 17 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, 143 
 Rossetti, Christina, 58, 59, 60, 
 
 61,62,63, 153 
 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 63, 
 
 6+ 
 Rossetti, William, 34 
 
 Ruskin, 98, 169, 170 
 
 Sappho, 9 
 
 Scott, 49, 93, 94, 97 
 
 Shakespeare, 116, 126, 127, 
 
 129, 130 
 Shaw, Bernard, 163 
 Shelley, no, in, 112, 113, 
 
 114, 115, 116, 161 
 Southey, 83, 142 
 Swinburne, 181 
 
 Tate, Nahum, 151, 152 
 Tennyson, 26, 117, 193, 209, 
 
 210, 211 
 Thompson, Francis, 133, 134, 
 
 13s. 191 
 Thomson, Jamci, 137, 1 38 
 
 Toole, John L., 82 
 
 Troubetzkoi, Prince, 57 
 Troubetzkoi, Princess, 57, 58 
 
 Waller, 29 
 
 Watson, William, 53, n7, 118 
 Watts, Dr., 150 
 Watts, G. F., 194 
 Weatherly, F. E., 167 
 White, Kirke, 28, 29, 30, 31 
 White, Maud Valerie, 1 1 1 
 Whitman, Walt, 34, 35, iG, 
 
 37> 38, 43 
 Whittier, 43, 46, 47, 48 
 Wilcox, Ella Whcclcr, 197, 
 
 198, 199 
 Wilde, Oscar, 64 
 Willis, Nathaniel, 33, 34 
 Wills, 21, 22, 23 
 Winter, William, 32 
 Wolfe, 176, 177 
 Wordsworth, 8, 23, 88, 89, 90, 
 
 91. 92, 93. 94. 95. 96, 97. 
 98, loi, 142, 143, 172, 180 
 
 Yeats, W. H., 188, 189, 190 
 Young, Dr., 148

 
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