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.

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

scarce saw her till the end of his life; when old, nearly mad, and quite desolate, he went back to her and she received him and nursed him till he died. This quiet act of hers is worth all Romney's pictures! even as a matter of Art, I am sure. - EDWARD FITZGERALD, Letters and Literary Remains,' vol. i.]

BEAT, little heart-I give you this and this.

Who are you? What the Lady Hamilton ?

Good, I am never weary painting you. fo sit once more? Cassandra, Hebe, Joan, Or spinning at your wheel beside the

vine

Bacchante, what you will; and if I fail
To conjure and concentrate into form
And color all you are, the fault is less
In me than Art. What artist ever yet
Could make pure light live on the canvas?
Art!

Why should I so disrelish that short word? Where am I? snow on all the hills! so hot,

So fever'd never colt would more delight
To roll himself in meadow grass than I
To wallow in that winter of the hills.
Nurse, were you hired? or came of your
own will

To wait on one so broken, so forlorn ?
Have I not met you somewhere long ago?
I am all but sure I have-in Kendal
church

O, yes! I hired you for a season there, And then we parted; but you look so kind That you will not deny my sultry throat One draught of icy water. There — you spill

The drops upon my forehead. Your hand shakes.