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 Sounding 'To 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
Life which is Life indeed.

succeed

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 hamber of his heart. What sits there upon he throne, what has always sat thereon? It is e undying longing and search after the ideal ht, the mother - passion of all the supreme ists 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!
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 an

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.
To 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

I dream'd last night of that clear sum

mer noon,

When seated on a rock, and foot to foot With your own shadow in the placid lake, You claspt our infant daughter, heart to heart.

I had been among the hills, and brought you down

A length of staghorn-moss, and this you twined

About her cap. I see the picture yet,
Mother and child. A sound from far away,
No louder than a bee among the flowers,
A fall of water lull'd the noon asleep.
You still'd it for the moment with a song
Which often echo'd in me, while I stood
Before the great Madonna-masterpieces
Of ancient Art in Paris, or in Rome.

Mary, my crayons! if I can, I will. You should have been-I might have made you once,

Had I but known you as I know you now
The true Alcestis of the time. Your song -
Sit, listen! I remember it, a proof
That I-

you.

even I at times remember'd

Stampt into dust - tremulous, all awry, Blurr'd like a landskip in a ruffled pool, Not one stroke firm. This Art, that harlotlike

Seduced me from you, leaves me harlotlike,

Who love her still, and whimper, impotent To win her back before I die—and thenThen, in the loud world's bastard judgment-day,

One truth will damn me with the mindless mob,

Who feel no touch of my temptation, more Than all the myriad lies that blacken round The corpse of every man that gains a name; 'This model husband, this fine artist!' Fool,

What matters? Six foot deep of burial mould

WHAT be those crown'd forms high over the sacred fountain?

Bards, that the mighty Muses have raised to the heights of the mountain, And over the flight of the Ages! O Goddesses, help me up thither! Lightning may shrivel the laurel of Cæsar, but mine would not wither. Steep is the mountain, but you, you will help me to overcome it,

And stand with my head in the zenith, and

roll my voice from the summit, Sounding for ever and ever thro' Earth and her listening nations, And mixt with the great sphere-music of stars and of constellations.

II

What be those two shapes high over the sacred fountain,

Taller than all the Muses, and huger than all the mountain?

On those two known peaks they stand ever spreading and heightening; Poet, that evergreen laurel is blasted by more than lightning!

BY AN EVOLUTIONIST

THE Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man,

And the man said, ' Am I your debtor ?' And the Lord-Not yet; but make it as clean as you can,

And then I will let you a better.'

I

If my body come from brutes, my soul uncertain or a fable,

Why not bask amid the senses while the sun of morning shines,

I, the finer brute rejoicing in my hounds, and in my stable,

Youth and health, and birth and wealth, and choice of women and of wines?

II

What hast thou done for me, grim Old Age, save breaking my bones on the rack?

Would I had past in the morning that looks so bright from afar !

OLD AGE

Done for thee? starved the wild beast that was linkt with thee eighty years back.

Less weight now for the ladder-of-heaven that hangs on a star.