We,

The birds and the bright winds know not
Such joys as are ours in the mild
Warm woodland; joys such as grow not
In waste green fields of the wild
Sea.

No;

Long since, in the world's wind veering, Thy heart was estrangèd from me: Sweet Echo shall yield thee not hearing: What have we to do with thee?

Go.

A REIVER'S NECK-VERSE

Some die singing, and some die swinging, And weel mot a' they be:

Some die playing, and some die praying, And I wot sae winna we, my dear, And I wot sae winna we.

Some die sailing, and some die wailing,
And some die fair and free:

Some die flyting, and some die fighting,
But I for a fause love's fee, my dear,
But I for a fause love's fee.

Some die laughing, and some die quaffing, And some die high on tree:

Some die spinning, and some die sinning, But faggot and fire for ye, my dear, Faggot and fire for ye.

Some die weeping, and some die sleeping, And some die under the sea:

Some die ganging, and some die hanging, And a twine of a tow for me, my dear, A twine of a tow for me.

[From Tristram of Lyonesse]

PRELUDE

TRISTRAM AND ISEULT

Love, that is first and last of all things made,
The light that has the living world for shade,
The spirit that for temporal veil has on
The souls of all men woven in unison,

One fiery raiment with all lives inwrought

And lights of sunny and starry deed and thought,
And always through new act and passion new
Shines the divine same body and beauty through,
The body spiritual of fire and light

That is to worldly noon as noon to light;
Love, that is flesh upon the spirit of man

And spirit within the flesh whence breath began;
Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime;
Love, that is blood within the veins of time;

That wrought the whole world without stroke of hand,
Shaping the breadth of sea, the length of land,

And with the pulse and motion of his breath

Through the great heart of the earth strikes life and death, The sweet twain chords that make the sweet tune live

Through day and night of things alternative,

Through silence and through sound of stress and strife,.
And ebb and flow of dying death and life;

Love, that sounds loud or light in all men's ears,
Whence all men's eyes take fire from sparks of tears,
That binds on all men's feet or chains or wings;
Love, that is root and fruit of terrene things;
Love, that the whole world's waters shall not drown,
The whole world's fiery forces not burn down;
Love, that what time his own hands guard his head

The whole world's wrath and strength shall not strike dead;
Love, that if once his own hands make his grave
The whole world's pity and sorrow shall not save;

Love, that for very life shall not be sold,

Nor bought nor bound with iron nor with gold;

So strong that heaven, could love bid heaven farewell,
Would turn to fruitless and unflowering hell;

So sweet that hell, to hell could love be given,
Would turn to splendid and sonorous heaven;
Love that is fire within three and light above,
And lives by grace of nothing but of love;

Through many and lovely thoughts and much desire
Led these twain to the life of tears and fire;
Through many and lovely days and much delight
Led these twain to the lifeless life of night.

A CHILD'S LAUGHTER

All the bells of heaven may ring,
All the birds of heaven may sing,
All the wells on earth may spring,
All the winds on earth may bring
All sweet sounds together;
Sweeter far than all things heard,
Hand of harper, tone of bird,
Sound of woods at sundawn stirred,
Welling water's winsome word,
Wind in warm wan weather.

One thing yet there is, that none
Hearing ere its chime be done
Knows not well the sweetest one
Heard of man beneath the sun,

Hoped in heaven hereafter;
Soft and strong and loud and light,
Very sound of very light

Heard from morning's rosiest height,
When the soul of all delight

Fills a child's clear laughter.

Golden bells of welcome rolled
Never forth such notes, nor told

Hours so blithe in tones so bold,

As the radiant mouth of gold
Here that rings forth heaven.
If the golden-crested wren
Were a nightingale-why, then,
Something seen and heard of men
Might be half as sweet as when
Laughs a child of seven.

THOMAS EDWARD BROWN

[BORN at Douglas in the Isle of Man on May 5, 1830. Took a Double First Class at Oxford, and became Fellow of Oriel. One of the original staff of masters at Clifton (from 1864), and on retiring in 1892 returned to the Isle of Man. Died suddenly at Clifton, October 29, 1897. Poems: Betsy Lee, a Fo'c's'le Yarn, 1873; Fo'c's'le Yarns (including Betsy Lee and others), 1881; The Doctor and other Poems,. 1887; The Manx Witch and other Poems, 1889; Kilty of the Sherragh Vane and The Schoolmasters, 1891; Old John and other Poems, 1893; Collected Poems, 1900; Select Poems (Golden Treasury Series), 1908.]

The volume and range of Brown's poetry is so great that it is hard to do it justice within the limits of such a selection as this. In the illuminating essay prefixed by his friend Mr. H. F. Brown to the selection in the Golden Treasury Series it is well said that "in his spiritual moods Brown is constantly reminding us of George Herbert, Sir Thomas Browne, Wordsworth, Blake, yet it is one of the signatures of his genuineness as a poet that the note is never identical; it is always the note of Brown himself, in harmony—yes, but not in unison." That is eminently true of his lyrical and reflective poems, but these after all are small in bulk compared to the Fo'c's'le Yarns and other narrative poems, mainly in the Manx dialect, with which he first made his reputation. These are entirely his own and give him a distinctive place among our national poets. The narrator in nearly all the tales is a fisherman, Tom Baynes, and many of the same characters recur. Brown used to say that he was himself Tom Baynes, and it is evident enough that through his lips, and in his racy speech, the poet was constantly giving utterance to his own ideas, though we may also detect the same unconsciously self-revealing note in his "Pazon Gale" (partly drawn from his own father) and in Doctor Bell. These two portraits from The Doctor are surely characteristic of Brown himself and of his attitude to his fellow men.

"Man to man-aye, that's your size,
That's the thing that'll make you wise