worn themes in order to make something out of the wrong side of them, there is a touch of strength, a gift for succeeding to-day which will help him when he turns his mind to its true work. But on this theme also Nichols, in spite of his less steady hand, can match them both, perhaps surpass either.
OUR DEAD
They have gone from us. O no! they are
The inmost essence of each thing that is
Perfect for us; they flame in every star;
The trees are emerald with their presences.
They are not gone from us; they do not roam
The flow and turmoil of the lower deep,
But have now made the whole wide world their home,
And in its loveliness themselves they steep.
They fail not ever; theirs is the diurn
Splendour of sunny hill and forest grave;
In every rainbow's glittering drop they burn;
They dazzle in the massed clouds' architrave;
They chant on every wind, and they return
In the long roll of any deep blue wave.
The grief is that a voice like our own, a mind which had communed with ours, has been replaced by a world-wide absence: travel where we will, the well-known hail can never surprise us again. An end has been reached. Rupert Brooke's sonnet gives splendid expression to the strange awe of this silent, empty prospect. Yet all three of these younger poets, in a strain of slightly affected pantheism, console themselves that what they have lost is added to what remains—invisibly present in it; and you are set pondering whether inspiration leavened the literary convention, derived from Shelley's Adonais, sufficiently to give their having done this, force as a hint of some deep human trait. What place do we really think "our dead" should take in our lives? The poet who would convince us of the truth would need to be not
