TEST of the poet is knowledge of love,
For Eros is older than Saturn or Jove;
Never was poet, of late or of yore,
Who was not tremulous with love-lore.

1 This quatrain was chosen by James Russell Lowell to be inscribed on the simple monument at Soldiers' Field in Cambridge, which was given as an athletic ground by Col. Henry Lee Higginson, in memory of his classmates and friends, Charles Russell Lowell, James Jackson Lowell, Robert Gould Shaw, James Savage, Jr., Edward Barry Dalton, and Stephen George Perkins, who died in the war or soon after.

Compare Emerson's two addresses referred to in the note on Voluntaries.' The best commentary, however, is Colonel Higginson's story of the lives and deaths of his comrades, in his addresses on the presentation of Soldiers' Field, 1890, and on Robert Gould Shaw, 1897 (Four Addresses, Boston, 1902.)

A famous singer of Florence. Dante tells of meeting him (Purgatory, Cauto II, lines 76-133) and begging him to sing: If a new law take not from thee memory or practice of the song of love which was wont to quiet all my longings, may it please thee therewith somewhat to comfort my soul.' (Norton's Translation.) Casella then sings Dante's Amor che nella mente mi ragiona (Love, that within my mind discourses with me'), so sweetly, that the sweetness still within me sounds. My Master, and I, and the folk who were with

SHAKSPEARE

I SEE all human wits

Are measured but a few;

Unmeasured still my Shakspeare sits. Lone as the blessed Jew.

HAFIZ

HER passions the shy violet
From Hafiz never hides;
Love-longings of the raptured bird
The bird to him confides.

AAAKPTN NEMONTAI AIONA

'A NEW Commandment,' said the smiling Muse,

'I give my darling son, Thou shalt not preach';

Luther, Fox, Behmen, Swedenborg, grew pale,

And, on the instant, rosier clouds upbore Hafiz and Shakspeare with their shining choirs.

FRIENDSHIP

THOU foolish Hafiz! Say, do churls Know the worth of Oman's pearls? Give the gem which dims the moon To the noblest, or to none.

ON prince or bride no diamond stone
Half so gracious ever shone,
As the light of enterprise

Beaming from a young man's eyes.

Touches a cheek with colors of romance, And crowds a history into a glance;

1 Compare the essay on Plato' Plato apprehended the cardinal facts. He could prostrate himself on the earth and cover his eyes whilst he adored that which cannot be numbered, or gauged, or known, or named... He even stood ready, as in the Parmenides, to demonstrate . . . that this Being exceeded the limits of intellect. No man ever more fully acknowledged the Ineffable.'

2 Compare Bryant's Flood of Years.'