VII.

In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,

And they built their gous a brazen pillar high

As the sky,

Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force

Gold, of course.

Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!

Earth's returns

For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!

Shut them in,

With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.

The supreme value of love is a constantly recurring thought in the poems of our author. We shall meet it in its higher ranges in selections to come. Here we are still in the sphere of the mere earthly affection, with only the suggestion, in contrast with the transitoriness of earthly glory, of its indestructibility.

No explanation seems needed, excepting perhaps to call attention to this, that the "little turret" in stanza 4 is not a bartizan, but a staircase turret, or it could not "mark the basement, whence a tower in ancient time sprang sublime."

Observe, in each stanza, the striking contrast between the former and the latter half, so balanced that the poem might be divided into fourteen single or six double stanzas.

There is not much of the descriptive in the poems of our author; he is the poet, not of Nature, but of Human Nature; but when he does touch landscape, as here, it is with the hand of a master.

ALL that I know

Of a certain star

Is, it can throw

MY STAR.

(Like the angled spar)

Now a dart of red,

Now a dart of blue ;

Till my friends have said

They would fain see, too,

My star that dartles the red and the blue!

Then it stops like a bird; like a flower, hangs furled:

They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it. What matter to me if their star is a world?

Mine has opened its soul to me; therefore I love it.

The following sentence, from Walter Besant, in "All Sorts and Conditions of Men," well expresses the key-thought of this little gem of a poem: "So great is the beauty of human nature, even in its second rate or third rate productions, that love generally follows when one of the two, by confession or unconscious self-betrayal, stands revealed to the other."

Compare also the closing stanzas of "One Word More," especially stanza 18.

RUDEL TO THE LADY OF TRIPOLI.

I.

I KNOW a Mount, the gracious Sun perceives
First, when he visits, last, too, when he leaves
The world; and, vainly favoured, it repays
The day-long glory of his steadfast gaze
By no change of its large calm front of snow.
And, underneath the Mount, a Flower I know,
He cannot have perceived, that changes ever
At his approach; and, in the lost endeavour
To live his life, has parted, one by one,
With all a flower's true graces, for the grace
Of being but a foolish mimic sun,

With ray-like florets round a disk-like face.
Men nobly call by many a name the Mount
As over many a land of theirs its large
Calm front of snow like a triumphal targe

Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie,
Each to its proper praise and own account :
Men call the Flower, the Sunflower, sportively.

II.

Oh, Angel of the East, one, one gold look
Across the waters to this twilight nook,
-The far sad waters, Angel, to this nook!

III.

Dear Pilgrim, art thou for the East indeed?
Go!-saying ever as thou dost proceed,
That I, French Rudel, choose for my device
A sunflower outspread like a sacrifice
Before its idol. See! These inexpert
And hurried fingers could not fail to hurt
The woven picture; 't is a woman's skill
Indeed; but nothing baffled me, so, ill
Or well, the work is finished. Say, men feed
On songs I sing, and therefore bask the bees
On
my flower's breast as on a platform broad :
But, as the flower's concern is not for these
But solely for the sun, so men applaud

In vain this Rudel, he not looking here

But to the East-the East! Go, say this, Pilgrim dear!

This poem was first published in "Bells and Pomegranates" under the head of Queen Worship." How exquisite the plea of the unnoticed Flower, with no pretence to vie with the Mountain in its claim upon the Sun's attention, except this, that the great unchanging Mountain is "vainly favoured," while the Flower yields itself up in ceaseless and selfforgetting devotion to an imitation, however feeble and foolish, of the great Sun Life.

The second stanza is very rich. There is no mention in it of Sun or Mountain or Flower; but as the Flower looks up to the Sun from its nook at the Mountain's base, so Rudel yearns for "one gold look" from his Sun, the "Angel of the East."

The meaning of the third stanza will be apparent when it is remembered that "French Rudel" was a troubadour of the 12th century-the days of the Crusades, and of the romance of chivalry, In those days the best way to communicate with the East would be through some pilgrim passing thither and nothing would be more natural than such a reference to the "device" which he had patiently, and in spite of difficulty, worked so as to wear it as her "favour :" and once more, it is eminently natural to represent the troubadour, not as sending a written message, but as finding a sympathetic pilgrim to burden his memory with it-charging him to keep it fresh by repetition till it had been duly delivered.

NEVER THE TIME AND THE PLACE.

NEVER the time and the place

And the loved one all together!
This path-how soft to pace!

This May-what magic weather!
Where is the loved one's face?

In a dream that loved one's face meets mine,
But the house is narrow, the place is bleak
Where, outside, rain and wind combine

With a furtive ear, if I strive to speak
With a hostile eye at my flushing cheek,
With a malice that marks each word, each sign!
O enemy sly and serpentine

Uncoil thee from the waking man!

Do I hold the Past

Thus firm and fast

Yet doubt if the Future hold I can?
This path so soft to pace shall lead
Through the magic of May to herself indeed!
Or narrow if needs the house must be,
Outside are the storms and strangers: we-
Oh, close, safe, warm sleep I and she,

-I and she!

This poem, published in "Jocoseria" in 1883, has no connection with Rudel," published in "Bells and Pomegranates" in 1842; but it will naturally follow it as "another of the same," only with a happier ending ; for though we learn from history that poor Rudel did one day reach Tripoli, it was only to die there,-let us hope still looking "to the East-the East!"

We get a glimpse here of the shifting moods of a lover's soul. First, there are the thoughts connected with the present experience-time and place all that could be desired, but the loved one, absent, (lines 1-5); next, thoughts arising from a dark dream or foreboding of the future when he and his loved one shall meet, but under circumstances cruelly unpropitious, the house narrow, the weather stormy, unsympathetic strangers by with furtive ears and hostile eyes, and even malice in their hearts (6-11); and last, the man within him rises to shake off the horrid serpent-like dream, and look forward with a healthy hope that time and place and all will be well; or, if the house must be narrow, (compare the Latin, "res angusta domi") it will be a Home, storms and strangers without, peace and rest within!