III

Once more a downy drift against the brakes, Self-darken'd in the sky, descending slow!

But gladly see I thro' the wavering flakes Yon blanching apricot like snow in snow. These will thine eyes not brook in forestpaths,

On their perpetual pine, nor round the beech;

They fuse themselves to little spicy baths, Solved in the tender blushes of the peach;

They lose themselves and die

On that new life that gems the hawthorn line;

Thy gay lent-lilies wave and put them by, And out once more in varnish'd glory shine

Thy stars of celandine.

And new developments, whatever spark Be struck from out the clash of warring wills;

Or whether, since our nature cannot rest, The smoke of war's volcano burst again From hoary deeps that belt the changeful West,

Old Empires, dwellings of the kings of

men;

Or should those fail that hold the helm, While the long day of knowledge grows and warms,

And in the heart of this most ancient realm A hateful voice be utter'd, and alarms SoundingTo arms! to arms!'

IX

A simpler, saner lesson might he learn Who reads thy gradual process, Holy Spring.

Thy leaves possess the season in their turn, And in their time thy warblers rise on wing.

How surely glidest thou from March to

May,

And changest, breathing it, the sullen wind,

Thy scope of operation, day by day,

Larger and fuller, like the human mind! Thy warmths from bud to bud

Accomplish that blind model in the seed, And men have hopes, which race the restless blood,

That after many changes may succeed
Life which is Life indeed.

MERLIN AND THE GLEAM

Compare 'The Voyage;' and see also 'Freedom' (1884):

O follower of the Vision, still

In motion to the distant gleam,' etc.

Stopford Brooke says of this poem: 'It is as lovely in form and rhythm and imagination, as it is noble in thought and emotion. It speaks to all poetic hearts in England; it tells them of his coming death. It then recalls his past, his youth, his manhood; his early poems, his critics, his central labor on Arthur's tale; and we see through its verse clear into the inmost chamber of his heart. What sits there upon the throne, what has always sat thereon? It is the undying longing and search after the ideal light, the mother- passion of all the supreme artists of the world. "I am Merlin, who fol

No longer a shadow,

But clothed with the Gleam.

VIII

And broader and brighter
The Gleam flying onward,
Wed to the melody,
Sang thro' the world;
And slower and fainter,
Old and weary,
But eager to follow,
I saw, whenever

In passing it glanced upon
Hamlet or city,

That under the Crosses
The dead man's garden,
The mortal hillock,
Would break into blossom;
And so to the land's
Last limit I came
And can no longer,
But die rejoicing,
For thro' the Magic
Of Him the Mighty,

Who taught me in childhood,
There on the border

Of boundless Ocean,
And all but in Heaven
Hovers the Gleam.

IX

Not of the sunlight,
Not of the moonlight,
Not of the starlight!
O young Mariner,
Down to the haven,
Call your companions,
Launch your vessel
And crowd your canvas,
And, ere it vanishes

Over the margin,

After it, follow it,
Follow the Gleam.

ROMNEY'S REMORSE

[I read Hayley's Life of Romney the other day - Romney wanted but education and reading to make him a very fine painter: but his ideal was not high nor fixed. How touching is the close of his life! He married at nineteen, and because Sir Joshua and others had said that marriage spoilt an artist' almost immediately left his wife in the North and