Or what the sweet-breathing West,

Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat,

Said, and their leafage laughed;

And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain

Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year-
The sting of the stirring sap

Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring,
Their summer amplitudes of pomp,

Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill,
Embittered housewifery

Of the lean Winter: all such things,

And with them all the goodness of the Master,
Whose right hand blesses with increase and life,
Whose left hand honours with decay and death.

Thus under the constraint of Night

These gross and simple creatures,

Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years,
A servant of the Will!

And God, the Craftsman, as He walks

The floor of His workshop; hearkens, full of cheer
In thus accomplishing

The aims of His miraculous artistry.

PRO REGE NOSTRO

What have I done for you,

England, my England?

What is there I would not do,
England, my own?

With your glorious eyes austere,
As the Lord were walking near,
Whispering terrible things and dear

As the Song on your bugles blown,
England-

Round the world on your bugles blown!

Where shall the watchful Sun,

England, my England,

Match the master-work you've done,

England, my own?

When shall he rejoice agen
Such a breed of mighty men
As come forward, one to ten,

To the Song on your bugles blown,
England-

Down the years on your bugles blown?

Ever the faith endures,

England, my England:

"Take and break us: we are yours, "England, my own!

"Life is good, and joy runs high "Between English earth and sky: "Death is death; but we shall die

"To the Song on your bugles blown, "England

"To the stars on your bugles blown!"

They call you proud and hard,

England, my England:

You with worlds to watch and ward,
England, my own!

You whose mailed hand keeps the keys
Of such teeming destinies

You could know nor dread nor ease

Were the Song on your bugles blown,
England-

Round the Pit on your bugles blown!

Mother of Ships whose might,

England, my England,
Is the fierce old Sea's delight,
England, my own,
Chosen daughter of the Lord,
Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient Sword,
There's the menace of the Word

In the Song on your bugles blown,
England-

Out of heaven on your bugles blown!

ANDREW LANG

[BORN at Selkirk, 1844. Educated at the Edinburgh Academy, at St. Andrews, and at Balliol College, Oxford, whence he obtained a first class in the Final Classical Schools and a Fellowship at Merton. Settled in London; married Leonora, youngest daughter of Mr. C. T. Alleyne of Clifton, and sister of Miss S. F. Alleyne, who was associated with Evelyn Abbott in translating Duncker's History of Greece and Zeller's History of Philosophy. About 1875, Lang began a long career as journalist and author, writing "light" leaders for the Daily News and "middles" for the Saturday Review, and producing a multiplicity of excellent books in verse and prose. Among the latter were several Homeric studies and translations, books on Scottish history, and others on Anthropology, including serious matters like the Origins of Religion and lighter departments like Folk-lore and Fairy Tales. His poems began with Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), and after a long interval went on to Ballades in Blue China, Grass of Parnassus, and many others. He died on July 20, 1912, mourned by many friends and regretted by a multitude of readers.]

Andrew Lang was not primarily a poet, but a writer to whom all subjects and many languages seemed to come by nature. He was equally at home in Homer's Greek, in old French romances, and in many phases of modern literature; at once a serious and scientific disputant, a sound critic, a humorist, and both familiar with a score of other men's styles and master of a distinctive style of his own. Here we are only concerned with his verse, which one reads with all the greater pleasure because most of it is evidently the relaxation of a worker, almost too busy a worker, in other fields. A large number of his poems are the direct outcome of his reading and of his prose labours; for example, the volume in which he introduced English readers to the almost forgotten ballads and lyrics in which early French literature abounds, the poems in which he recast thoughts suggested by Homer and Herodotus, such as the fine "Odyssey" sonnet, and those which he consecrated to the heroes of his own time, Gordon above all. Lang was no politician in the party sense; his leading articles had for the most part nothing to do with politics; but he had a profound belief in

national duty, a profound regard for the national honour, and a positive horror of any political faltering or paltering where that honour was at stake. Certain of his poems give an almost fierce expression to that feeling, but the large majority are lighter in subject and in touch. They are the utterances of a man steeped in the best literature of all the ages, and at the same time delighted when he could express his healthy pleasure in nature and physical exercise cricket, golf, fishing and still more when he could play upon the fancies and the foibles of his time with that humorous touch that his readers still find so attractive and so inimitable.

EDITOR.

THE ODYSSEY

As one that for a weary space has lain
Lulled by the song of Circe and her Wine
In gardens near the pale of Proserpine,
Where that Aegaean Isle forgets the main,
And only the low lutes of love complain,

And only shadows of wan lovers pine;
As such an one were glad to know the brine
Salt on his lips, and the large air again.
So gladly, from the songs of modern speech

Men turn, and see the stars, and feel the free
Shrill wind beyond the close of heavy flowers
And through the music of the languid hours,
They hear like ocean on a Western beach
The surge and thunder of the Odyssey.

HERODOTUS IN EGYPT

He left the land of youth, he left the young,
The smiling gods of Greece; he passed the isle
Where Jason loitered, and where Sappho sung;
He sought the secret-founted wave of Nile,
And of their old world, dead a weary while,
Heard the priests murmur in their mystic tongue,
And through the fanes went voyaging, among

Dark tribes that worshipped Cat and Crocodile.

He learned the tales of death Divine and birth, Strange loves of Hawk and Serpent, Sky and Earth, The marriage, and the slaying of the Sun.

The shrines of gods and beasts he wandered through, And mocked not at their godhead, for he knew Behind all creeds the Spirit that is One.

COLINETTE

[For a Sketch by Mr. G. Leslie, R. A.]

France your country, as we know;
Room enough for guessing yet,
What lips now or long ago,

Kissed and named you-Colinette.
In what fields from sea to sea,

By what stream your home was set,

Loire or Seine was glad of thee,
Marne or Rhone, O Colinette?

Did you stand with maidens ten,
Fairer maids were never seen,
When the young king and his men
Passed among the orchards green?
Nay, old ballads have a note

Mournful, we would fain forget;
No such sad old air should float
Round your young brows, Colinette.

Say, did Ronsard sing to you,
Shepherdess, to lull his pain,

When the court went wandering through
Rose pleasances of Touraine?

Ronsard and his favourite Rose

Long are dust the breezes fret;

You, within the garden close,

You are blooming, Colinette.

Have I seen you proud and gay,

With a patched and perfumed beau,

Dancing through the summer day,

Misty summer of Watteau?