Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm
Like the wild bees heard in the tree-tops, or the gusts of a gather-

ing storm;

In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen, Yet we all say, 'Whence is the message, and what may the wonders mean?'

A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings,

As they bow to a mystic symbol, or the figures of ancient kings;
And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless cry

Of those who are heavy laden, and of cowards loth to die.
For the Destiny drives us together, like deer in a pass of the hills,
Above is the sky, and around us the sound of the shot that kills;
Pushed by a Power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown,
We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to a stone.
The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns hollow
and grim,

And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the twilight

dim;

And we look to the sunlight falling afar on the mountain crest,
Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge there and a rest?
The path, ah! who has shown it, and which is the faithful guide?
The haven, ah! who has known it? for steep is the mountain-
side,

Forever the shot strikes surely, and ever the wasted breath
Of the praying multitude rises, whose answer is only death.

Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the fruit of an ancient name,
Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who died in

They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are spirits who

guard our race,

Ever I watch and worship; they sit with a marble face.

And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering priests,

The revels and rites unholy, the dark unspeakable feasts!
What have they wrung from the Silence? Hath even a whisper

come

Of the secret, Whence and Whither? Alas! for the gods are dumb.

Shall I list to the word of the English, who come from the uttermost sea?

'The Secret, hath it been told you, and what is you message to me?'

It is nought but the wide-world story how the earth and the heavens began,

How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity once was man.

I had thought, 'Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell,

Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell,

They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main '—

Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain.

Is life, then, a dream and delusion, and where shall the dreamer awake?

Is the world seen like shadows on water, and what if the mirror break?

Shall it pass as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered

and gone

From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and lone?

Is there nought in the heaven above, whence the hail and the levin are hurled,

But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world?

The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep

With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and voices of women

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS

[BORN at Bristol, 1840, of a family which had been distinguished in medicine for five generations. After a brilliant career at Oxford, he developed lung delicacy, which compelled him to live much in Italy and Switzerland, especially (after 1878) at Davos, in the company of R. L. Stevenson and other invalids of mark. For years he devoted his main studies to Italian history, and produced not only The Renaissance of Italy in many volumes but a number of shorter books and essays in prose. On these his reputation will chiefly rest; but in and after 1878 he also published, in addition to translations of Latin students' songs and Michael Angelo's sonnets, four books of original verse: Many Moods, 1878; New and Old, 1880; Animi Figura, 1882; and Vagabunduli Libelius, 1884. He died in Rome on April 19, 1893.]

To read much of Symonds's verse at a sitting is to be oppressed by a luxuriance that often runs to seed. His very facility, indeed, while it always gives his verse remarkable accomplishment, frequently leads him astray from the fine purposes of poetry, when he is content to describe the externalities of things, without exploring their sources. His work then, dazzling as it often is, becomes hard and slippery on the surface, and barren of the intimacy and precision which are the blood of poetry. In these moods-and they were not rare in his experience—he was the prey and not the master of words, and the seductiveness of a merely gorgeous verbal array confused his perception of the real nature of an image; as, for example

Upon the pictured walls amid the blaze
Of carbuncle and turquoise, solid bosses
Of diamonds, pearl engirt, shot fiery rays:

Swan's down beneath, with parrot plumage, glosses
Cedar-carved couches on the dais deep

In bloom of asphodel and meadow mosses.

Here languid men with pleasure tired may sleep:
Here revellers may banquet in the sheen

Of silver cressets: gourds and peaches heap

The citron tables; and a leafy screen,
This way and that with blossoms interlaced,
Winds through the hall in mazed alleys green.

This is striking virtuosity, but it is not the disciplined manner of poetry; it produces not an image in the mind, but a glittering confusion. It is, perhaps, in the shorter lyric, that searching test of a poet's quality, that Symonds most suffered from his lack of strict poetic control; in this manner the large and impressive if florid gesture of his more elaborate work is of little use to him, and he finds himself untutored to stricter economy of the imagination, and the result is that his short lyrics, with very few exceptions, lack all the sudden and glowing presentation of words that means distinction. His really imposing accomplishment, too, was subject to startling lapses, such as

Splits the throat

Of maenad multitudes with shrill sharp shrieks,

and his literary scholarship should have saved him from such an indiscretion as

Pestilence-smitten multitudes, sere leaves

Driven by the dull remorseless autumn breath.

And yet, in spite of his verbal ceremoniousness, and a habit of mind that too often led him from simple and stirring imaginative thought into every deft kind of fancy, he is justly allowed the honour of representation among his country's poets. Not only had he great richness in description, which could be arresting when it was not unbridled, but there were moments when he wrote simply and with his eye on his object, as in Harvest, and the result gives him a place that we can only wish he had earned by a greater body of work of his best quality. There were other times when his very virtuosity reached such a pitch as to force something more than astonishment, as in Le Jeune Homme caressant sa Chimère, where he achieves a brilliance equalled by very few of his contemporaries. Yet better, he could now and again subject himself to real emotional truth, and express it with sustained if unequal directness, as in Stella Maris. This sonnet sequence is, I think, his best achievement as a poet. The pyschology may be a little uncertain, and the lover's attitude is sometimes (e. g. Sonnets 52 and 53) intolerable, but the sequence as a whole does give real and often beautiful expression to a profound and passionate experience. There is here a spiritual intensity which Symonds

generally missed, but by virtue of his having achieved it here and in one or two other places, he claims his place in the company of genuine poets.

JOHN DRINKWATER.

THE SHEPHERD TO THE EVENING STAR.

Star of my soul, arise;

Show forth thy silver shining!

For thee the sunset skies

With love and light are pining:

The tents of evening spread for thee
Their rich and radiant canopy.

All day the tender lemon trees

Above the pathway bending

Drooped their still boughs in odorous ease,
Thine advent cool attending:

But now the little winds that blow
Sway their faint petals to and fro.

The dim mysterious avenues
Of olives interwoven

Respire again, and drink the dews;
And where their skirts are cloven,
Black funeral flames of cypresses
Shoot skyward from the purple seas.

My sheep and goats are housed: their bells
Keep silence on the meadow;

And solitude hath spread the fells

With her aërial shadow;

I scarce can hear a sound, or see

A single thing to hinder thee.

Come, star! Come, lover! Let me feel

The wonder of thy kisses:

Breathe in my brain the thoughts that steal
Through heaven's blue wildernesses:

But when the maiden moon is free,
Leave me to sleep and dream of thee!

T