with faintest taint of willow smoke,
and rough-hewn beams of darkened oak,
with unexpected steps and nooks,
and cases full of leather books—
soft water-colours that I love,
and in the bedrooms up above
large four-post beds and lots of air,
where I may lie without a care
and hear the rustle of the leaves
and starlings fighting in the eaves....
In his third poem, 'To My Brother,' he strikes a deeper note and, with the same habit of natural, apparently unpremeditated thought, shows a growth in the easy mastery of expression—
At first, when unaccustomed to death's sting,
I thought that, should you die, each sweetest thing,
each thing of any merit on this earth,
would perish also, beauty, love and mirth:
and that the world, despoiled and God-forsaken,
its glories gone, its greater treasures taken,
would sink into a slough of apathy
and there remain into eternity....
And when one day the aching blow did fall,
for many days I did not live at all....
I prayed that God might give me power to sever
your sad remembrance from my mind for ever.
'Never again shall I have heart to do
the things in which we took delight, we two.
I cannot bear the cross. Oh, to forget
