ANDROMEDA.
NOW over the Mediterranean shore, fronting the sun.
In the great woods where only the peasant comes.
And brings his bottle of wine, and figs, and goat-milk cheese.
The gods yet dwell, but are not seen of men.
Steeply the ground slopes from the chestnut woods above.
Thro' tangles of pine and arbutus, myrtle and rosemary,
Down to the sea.
The tasselled evergreen oak grants densest shade;
the acacia showers its fragrance on the air ;
In open spots the rock-rose blooms.
And the green lizard's little heart beats fast in the sun.
Here all day long, mindful of times gone by,
The sun yet lingers ; from the slumbering sea
(On whose clear sands the yellow and horned poppy loves to stray)
Sometimes fair Aphrodite lifts an arm
Unseen of mortals.
The Dryads in the aspen branches wave
Their trembling fingers, and young Hyacinth
Flies from the fierce embraces of his lover.
But none resume their ancient human form.
He, the great Liberator, with the wand of love so wonderful,
(Who dwelt on eartli, and dwells not, but must dwell again)
He comes not — whom they wait.
The rocks, the trees, the flowers, the loving animals,
The sea, the lieavenly winds,
The human form that chained within them all
Pleads for deliverance —
He comes not whom they wait.
Only the train shrieks by with monkey faces staring out of the windows ;
Hotel and villa desecrate the land;
Wealth trails its slime; the Greek has fled; and
civilisation like a dismal dragon guards its prey.
Edward Carpenter.
BELLES LETTRES IN SCOTLAND.
WHEN it is remarked, as in these pages recently, our inquiry need not be complicated by any such that Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson ranks at aesthetic issue. When we can decide whether the the head of Belles Lettres in Scotland, the assent truly representative Scotch manner and point of instantly given is just as promptly followed by a view are those of Burns, of Hume, of Scott, of musing question as to what it is that Mr. Stevenson Wilson, of Carlyle, of Hugh Miller, or of John is at the head of. The writer of the criticism in Brown, it may be possible to accurately gauge the this Review guarded his proposition with the avowal Scotchness of Mr. Stevenson; in the meantime it that there was nothing specially representative can but be said that if his is a new note, so were of Scotland in Mr. Stevenson's tone and style; but the notes of these others in their day, and so nius
