And if I love not now, while woman is
All bosom to the young, when shall I love?
Who ever paused on passion's fiery wheel?
Or, trembling by the side of her he loved,
Whose lightest touch brought all but madness, ever
coldly short to reckon up his pulse?
The car comes and we lie and let it come:
It crushes kills what then ? It is joy to die.
These ecstasies and others even more pronounced did not prevent Bailey from regarding with something like dismay the subtler and even more fervent utterances of Mr. Swinburne, Rossetti, and younger poets of their schools. The reputation he had won as an amourist faded in later days, and it is as a didactic poet that he has of late been most worshipped. In his gnomical utterances he has much in common with Walter Savage Landor, whom in single line and distich he occasionally recalls. There is little conscious imitation, the only poet whose method he directly follows being Milton. Where he talks of men
Huger than those our childhood's chap-books brand;
Or all whose deeds till now defile romance;
Albadan and those monstrous, sire and son,
Whom Amadis, the flower of knights, o'erthrew,
.......so to win
His Oriana bright as Miréfleur,
it is impossible not to recall the lines in 'Paradise Lost' concerning
. .all who since, baptized or infidel,
Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban,
Damasco or Marocco or Trebisond;
and 'Paradise Regained,' when Agrican besieged Albracca,
thence to win
The fairest of her sex, Angelica.
Short passages of signal beauty and Landor-like grace of utterance are numerous. A few must suffice:—
Just when the stars falter forth, one by one,
Like the first words of love from a maiden's lips.
There was no discord—it was music ceased.
Locks which have
The golden embrownment of a lion's eye,
a simile alike bold and happy.
Mountain-tops, where only snow
Dwells and the sunshine hurries coldly by.
The grand old legend of humanity.
"We are not now dwelling on the claims of 'Festus,' tempting as is the task in the case of a work which is slipping from the ken of modern readers, and for which is reserved a glorious revival.
