harmony to be matched with any later. There is not a more delicate note of magic nature in these poems. The tremulous ardour of "Penumbra" is another witness to the artist's mastery of hand; the finest nerves of life are finely touched; the quiver and ache of soul and senses to which all things are kindled and discoloured by half* morbid lights of emotion give a burning pulse of melody to the verses. The same fear or doubt which here is attired in fancies of feverish beauty finds gentler utterance, again outside this circle, in "A New Year's Burden;" the tone and colour have always a fresh and sure harmony. Four poems in a different key from such songs are "The Sea-Limits," "A Young Fir-Wood," "The Honeysuckle," "The Woodspurge;" not songs, but studies of spirit and thought, concrete and perfect. The first of these has the solemn weight and depth in it of living water, and a sound like the speech of the sea when the wind is silent. The very note of that world-old harmony is caught and cast into words.
"Consider the sea's listless chime:
Time's self it is, made audible:
The murmur of the earth's own shell."
This little verse also has the
"Secret continuance sublime"
which "is the sea's end;" it too is a living thing with an echo beyond reach of the sense, its chord of sound one part of the multiform unity of mutual inclusion in which all things rest and mix; like the sigh of the shaken shell, it utters "the same desire and mystery" as earth through its woods, and water through its waves, and man through his multitudes; it too has in it a breath of the life im-
