"He clasped his withered hands

Fondly upon her head, and bent it back,

As one might bend a downward-looking flower . .

"Are farewells said in heaven? and has each bright
And young divinity a sunset hour?"

might in many ears miss anything characteristic of Tennyson, but they would hardly be challenged anywhere if they were set down as coming from Stephen Phillips. So obscurely do great influences assert themselves.

JOHN DRINKWATER.

FROM "A LIFE DRAMA" (SCENE VII)

I'll show you one who might have been an abbot
In the old time; a large and portly man,
With merry eyes, and crown that shines like glass.
No thin-smiled April he, bedript with tears,
But appled-Autumn, golden-cheeked and tan;
A jest in his mouth feels sweet as crusted wine.
As if all eager for a merry thought,
The pits of laughter dimple in his cheeks.
His speech is flavourous, evermore he talks
In a warm, brown, autumnal sort of style.

A worthy man, Sir! who shall stand at compt
With conscience white, save some few stains of wine.

SONNET

Like clouds or streams we wandered on at will,
Three glorious days, till, near our journey's end,
As down the moorland road we straight did wend,
To Wordsworth's "Inversneyd," talking to kill
The cold and cheerless drizzle in the air,
'Bove me I saw, at pointing of my friend,
An old Fort like a ghost upon the hill,

Stare in blank misery through the blinding rain,
So human-like it seemed in its despair-

So stunned with grief-long gazed at it we twain.
Weary and damp we reached our poor abode,
I, warmly seated in the chimney-nook,

Still saw that old Fort o'er the moorland road
Stare through the rain with strange woe-wildered look.

FROM "EDWIN OF DEIRA" (Book I)

Then at his wish, the haggard Prince was led
To the great hall wherein was set the feast;
And at his step, from out the smoky glare
And gloom of guttering torches, weeping pitch,
A hundred bearded faces were upraised,

Flaming with mead: and from their masters' stools
Great dogs upstarting snarled; and from the dais,
The King, while wonder raised the eyebrow, asked
What man he was? what business brought him there?

When Edwin thus, the target of all eyes:

"One who has brothered with the ghostly bats,
That skim the twilight on their leathern wings,
And with the rooks that caw in airy towns;
One intimate with misery: who has known
The fiend that in the hind's pinched entrail sits
Devising treason, and the death of kings— . .

FROM "HORTON"

Can pensive Spring, a snowdrop in his hand,
A solitary lark above his head,

Laugh like the jovial sinner in his cups?

I vote for Winter! Why, you know the "Crown,"
The rows of pewter winking in the light,
The mighty egg-flip at the sanded bar,
The nine-pins, skittles, silent dominoes,

The bellied landlord with his purple head,
Like a red cabbage on December morn

Crusted with snow. His buxom daughter, Bess—
A dahlia, not a rosebud-she who bears

The foaming porter to the guests, and laughs
The loudest at their wit. Can any Summer
Build you a nest like that?

FROM "SQUIRE MAURICE"

Inland I wander slow,

Mute with the power the earth and heaven wield:
A black spot sails across the golden field,

And through the air a crow.

Before me wavers spring's first butterfly;

From out the sunny noon there starts the cuckoo's cry;
The daisied meads are musical with lambs;

Some play, some feed, some, white as snow-flakes, lie
In the deep sunshine, by their silent dams.
The road grows wide and level to the feet;

The wandering woodbine through the hedge is drawn
Unblown its streaky bugles dim and sweet;
Knee-deep in fern stand startled doe and fawn,
And lo! there gleams upon a spacious lawn
An Earl's marine retreat.

A little footpath quivers up the height,
And what a vision for a townsman's sight!
A village, peeping from its orchard bloom,
With lowly roofs of thatch, blue threads of smoke,
O'erlooking all, a parsonage of white.

I hear the smithy's hammer, stroke on stroke,
A steed is at the door; the rustics talk,
Proud of the notice of the gaitered groom;

A shallow river breaks o'er shallow falls.
Beside the ancient sluice that turns the mill
The lusty miller bawls;

The parson listens in his garden-walk,
The red-cloaked woman pauses on the hill,
This is a place, you say, exempt from ill,
A paradise, where, all the loitering day,

Enamoured pigeons coo upon the roof,
Where children ever play.—

Alas! Time's webs are rotten, warp and woof;
Rotten his cloth of gold, his coarsest wear:
Here, black-eyed Richard ruins red-cheeked Moll,
Indifferent as a lord to her despair.

The broken barrow hates the prosperous dray;
And, for a padded pew in which to pray,
The grocer sells his soul.

JEAN INGELOW

[BORN 1820 at Boston, Lincolnshire, of an English father and a Scottish mother. She spent her youth in the Fen country which she so often describes in her verses, and soon after 1860 fixed her home in London, where she died in 1897. In 1850 she published a volume of small importance; this was followed in 1863 by the Poems which made her reputation. This book ran through many editions, and four years later was issued in a volume illustrated by many of the best artists, which had so much success that twelve years later the 23rd edition was announced, while in America it is said that over 200,000 copies of her works were sold. After 1864 she wrote many novels and was particularly happy in her various stories for children.]

When Jean Ingelow published her first book, A Rhyming Chronicle, in 1849 or 1850, a relative of hers sent it to Tennyson and he acknowledged it saying: "Your cousin must be worth knowing; there are some very charming things in her book." Then followed some rather sharp criticisms, and it may have been in part owing to them that the young lady hesitated for a dozen years before issuing another volume. That however, the Poems of 1863, had great and immediate success, for although it failed to satisfy readers in search of profound thought or exceptional technique, it appealed to that wide public which seeks for common themes intelligibly treated, tender feeling, and melodious verse. Nobody, not even the schoolgirls who adored her, ever claimed for Miss Ingelow a place among the great poets, but thousands of quiet folk enjoyed her ballads, her narratives, and her songs, because they expressed in a charming way the thoughts of which they themselves had been vaguely conscious and described in clear language situations and characters that they could understand and appreciate. The poems which we have selected, and which will be well known to the older generation of readers, will explain and justify this success, and those who read them, whether for the first time or as pieces with which they were once familiar, will admit that a poem so true and so tragic as The High Tide, or such a song as When Sparrows Build, are worth preserving and that their author ought not to be forgotten.

EDITOR.