By the canvas may be seen

How she look'd at seventeen,

As a Bride.

Beneath a summer tree
Her maiden reverie

Has a charm ;

Her ringlets are in taste;

What an arm! and what a waist

For an arm!

With her bridal-wreath, bouquet, Lace farthingale, and gay

Falbala

If Romney's touch be true,
What a lucky dog were you,
Grandpapa!

Her lips are sweet as love;
They are parting! Do they move?
Are they dumb?

Her eyes are blue, and beam
Beseechingly, and seem

To say, 'Come!'

What funny fancy slips

From atween these cherry lips?

Whisper me,

Fair Sorceress in paint,
What canon says I mayn't
Marry thee?

That good-for-nothing Time
Has a confidence sublime!

When I first

Saw this Lady, in my youth,
Her winters had, forsooth,

Done their worst.

Her locks, as white as snow, Once shamed the swarthy crow;

By-and-by

That fowl's avenging sprite Set his cruel foot for spite

Near her eye.

Her rounded form was lean, And her silk was bombazine;

Well I wot

With her needles would she sit, And for hours would she knitWould she not?

Ah perishable clay !

Her charms had dropt away
One by one:

But if she heaved a sigh
With a burthen, it was, 'Thy
Will be done.'

In travail, as in tears,
With the fardel of her years
Overprest,

In mercy she was borne
Where the weary and the worn
Are at rest.

O if you now are there,
And sweet as once you were,
Grandmamma,

This nether world agrees
You'll all the better please
Grandpapa.

At her Window.

Ah, minstrel, how strange is
The carol you sing!

Let Psyche who ranges

The garden of spring,

Remember the changes

December will bring.

Beating Heart! we come again
Where my Love reposes:
This is Mabel's window-pane;
These are Mabel's roses.

Is she nested? Does she kneel
In the twilight stilly,
Lily clad from throat to heel,
She, my virgin Lily?

Soon the wan, the wistful stars,
Fading, will forsake her;
Elves of light, on beamy bars,
Whisper then, and wake her.
Let this friendly pebble plead
At her flowery grating;

If she hear me will she heed?
Mabel, I am waiting.
Mabel will be deck'd anon,

Zoned in bride's apparel;
Happy zone! Oh hark to yon
Passion-shaken carol!

Sing thy song thou tranced thrush, Pipe thy best, thy clearest ;Hush, her lattice moves, O hushDearest Mabel!— dearest . . .

See Locker-Lampson's My Confidences (1896), edited by his sonin-law, Mr Augustine Birrell, who married his daughter by the first marriage, Lionel Tennyson's widow; and the article by Mr Austin Dobson in the supplement to the Dictionary of National Biography (1901).

Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (1823-96) was born at Woodford in Essex, the son of Peter George Patmore, who edited the Court Journal, 'read' for a publisher, contributed largely to the magazines, and wrote, besides other books, My Friends and Acquaintances (1854), three volumes of literary reminiscences. The boy, educated privately, had thoughts of taking orders, but naturally drifted into literary work, and in his twenty-first year published a volume of narrative poems (1844) which were not too kindly received. Though bought up and destroyed ere a hundred and fifty copies had been sold, this publication secured for him the acquaintance of Rossetti, Woolner, and the pre-Raphaelites. In 1846, through the friendly offices of Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton), he obtained an appointment as an assistant librarian in the British Museum; and when he retired from the Museum in 1865, was within measurable distance of the headship in his department. He wrote for the Edinburgh Review, the North British, and other serials; contributed in 1850 two poems and a prose essay to the pre-Raphaelite Germ; and in 1853 ventured once more to publish a volume of poems, Tamerton Church Tower, which contained revised versions of some of those that had

first appeared in 1844, and shows traces of the mysticism which bulked so largely in his later work. The acceptance this volume met with encouraged him to publish, but anonymously, in 1854 and 1856 (as The Bethrothal and The Espousals), the first two sections of what is, under the name of The Angel in the House, by far his best-known poem, to which were added in 1860 and 1863 Faithful for Ever and The Victories of Love. In virtue of its sincere, tender, and exquisite presentation of holy domestic love, the Angel in the House was greeted with enthusiasm by the poet's friends, Tennyson, Ruskin, Browning, and

COVENTRY KERSEY DIGHTON PATMORE. From a Photograph by Barrauds.

Carlyle, and secured immediate and unusual popularity with the great public. It was largely inspired by Patmore's beautiful and accomplished first wife, daughter of a Congregational minister, whom he married in 1847, and who died in 1862. Two years later Patmore entered the Roman Catholic communion, and was followed by his three sons and three daughters; in 1865 he married a second time, and erelong bought an estate near Uckfield in Sussex, which he so improved as to be able to sell it for £27,000. Then he settled at Hastings, where, after the death of his second wife in 1880, he built a splendid Roman Catholic church. The home of his last years was at Lymington. He had married a third time in 1881.

The Unknown Eros, and other Odes (1877), was a collection of upwards of forty odes combining Catholic mysticism and fervent devotion, which in their elaborate rhythms sharply contrasted with the

simple verse of the Angel. With Amelia (1878), a perfect little idyl, was published a profound and suggestive 'Study of English Metrical Law.' Principle in Art (1889) and Religio Poeta (1893) are collections of essays and other contributions to journals and reviews; The Rod, the Root, and the Flower (1895) contains apophthegms and meditations, many of them exceptionally profound and searching, all of them admirably worded, on the religious truths nearest the poet's heart. Patmore's work, at once powerful and graceful, suffered from his inability to criticise and prune what he had written. The narrative poems are, as narratives, tedious; the Angel in the House would have had more vitality but for its longueurs. But there and in all his work there are subtle and suggestive thoughts exquisitely uttered, pictures of wonderful fascination, emotions in words perfectly framed and fitted to touch the deepest chords of human hearts. In his character Patmore was neither the merely amiable paterfamilias of the Angel nor the meek mystic of the Unknown Eros, but an energetic, masterful, self-assertive, and combative personality, cherishing and defending many strong prejudices, and as a Roman Catholic by no means disposed to unhesitating obedience. His interests were many, but his sympathies, literary and other, far from wide.

In a Wood.

'Twas when the spousal time of May

Hangs all the hedge with bridal wreaths, And air's so sweet the bosom gay

Gives thanks for every breath it breathes,

When like to like is gladly moved,

And each thing joins in Spring's refrain, 'Let those love now who never loved;

Let those who have loved love again;' That I, in whom the sweet time wrought, Lay stretch'd within a lonely glade, Abandon'd to delicious thought

Beneath the softly twinkling shade. The leaves, all stirring, mimick'd well A neighbouring rush of rivers cold, And, as the sun or shadow fell,

So these were green and those were gold; In dim recesses hyacinths droop'd,

And breadths of primrose lit the air,
Which, wandering through the woodland, stoop'd
And gather'd perfumes here and there;
Upon the spray the squirrel swung,

And careless songsters, six or seven,
Sang lofty songs the leaves among
Fit for their only listener, Heaven.

(From The Angel in the House.)

Wind and Wave.
The wedded light and heat,
Winnowing the witless space,
Without a let,

What are they till they beat
Against the sleepy sod, and there beget
Perchance the violet !

Is the One found,

Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace,

The Winter falls; the frozen rut
Is bound with silver bars;

The snow-drift heaps against the hut,

And night is pierc'd with stars.

In 1862 Patmore edited, with his first wife's help, the anthology called The Children's Garland; in 1877 he edited and largely supplemented his friend B. W. Procter's Autobiography (page 227), and in 1884 edited the poems of his own son, Henry John Patmore (1860-83). Florilegium Amantis (1888) was a selection from his poems by Dr R. Garnett; Poems of Pathos and Delight was another (1895), by Mrs Meynell. In 1900 Mr Basil Champneys, who designed the memorial church at Brighton, published a Life of Patmore in two volumes.

Sydney Thompson Dobell (1824-74) was born at Cranford in Kent, whence his father, a wine-merchant, removed that same year to London, and in 1835 to Cheltenham; with Gloucestershire and with his father's business Sydney's whole after-life was connected. Under the influence of a sect of 'Freethinking Christians' founded by Samuel Thompson, his maternal grandfather, he developed a hothouse precocity, and at fifteen became engaged to the girl whom he married at twenty. He never quite recovered from a severe illness (1847); and the chief events

of his life were visits to Switzerland, Scotland, Cannes, Spain, and Italy, in quest of health for himself or his wife. He died at Barton End House, among the Cotswold Hills. His principal works are The Roman, a dramatic poem by 'Sydney Yendys' (1850); Balder, Part the First (1854); Sonnets on the War, written in conjunction with Alexander Smith (1855); and England in Time of War (1856). The first and the last had a success to wonder at. For though some of his lyrics are pretty, though his fancy is sparkling and exuberant, his poems are often superfine, grandiose, transcendental; and save to unusually sympathetic readers, it seems that 'spasmodic' or some equivalent epithet does hit them off better than comparison either with Shelley or with Donne.

The Ruins of Ancient Rome.

Upstood

The hoar unconscious walls, bisson and bare,
Like an old man deaf, blind, and gray, in whom
The years of old stand in the sun, and murmur
Of childhood and the dead.
From parapets
Where the sky rests, from broken niches-each
More than Olympus-for gods dwelt in them-
Below from senatorial haunts and seats

Imperial, where the ever-passing fates

Wore out the stone, strange hermit birds croaked forth
Sorrowful sounds, like watchers on the height
Crying the hours of ruin. When the clouds
Dressed every myrtle on the walls in mourning,
With calm prerogative the eternal pile
Impassive shone with the unearthly light
Of immortality. When conquering suns
Triumphed in jubilant earth, it stood out dark
With thoughts of ages like some mighty captive
Upon his death-bed in a Christian land,

And lying, through the chant of psalm and creed,
Unshriven and stern, with peace upon his brow,
And on his lips strange gods.

Rank weeds and grasses,
Careless and nodding, grew, and asked no leave,
Where Romans trembled. Where the wreck was saddest,
Sweet pensive herbs, that had been gay elsewhere,
With conscious mien of place rose tall and still,
And bent with duty. Like some village children
Who found a dead king on a battlefield,
And with decorous care and reverent pity
Composed the lordly ruin, and sat down
Grave without tears. At length the giant lay,
And everywhere he was begirt with years,
And everywhere the torn and mouldering Past
Hung with the ivy. For Time, smit with honour
Of what he slew, cast his own mantle on him,
That none should mock the dead.

(From The Roman.)

The Mystery of Beauty.
Loveliness

Is precious for its essence; time and space
Make it not near nor far nor old nor new,
Celestial nor terrestrial. Seven snowdrops
Sister the Pleiads, the primrose is kin
To Hesper, Hesper to the world to come!
For sovereign Beauty as divine is free ;
Herself perfection, in herself complete,

Or in the flowers of earth or stars of heaven;
Merely contained in the seven-coloured bow
Circling the globe, and still contained in each
Of all its raindrops. . .

Love strong as death
Measures eternity and fills a tear;
And beauty universal may be touched
As at the lips in any single rose.

See how I turn toward the turf, as he
Who after a long pilgrimage once more
Beholds the face that was his dearest dream,
Turning from heaven and earth bends over it,
And parts the happy tresses from her brow,
Counting her ringlets, and discoursing bliss
On every hint of beauty in the dear
Regained possession, oft and oft retraced,
So could I lie down in the summer grass
Content, and in the round of my fond arm
Enclose enough dominion, and all day
Do tender descant, owning one by one
Floweret and flower, and telling o'er and o'er
The changing sum of beauty, still repaid
In the unending task for ever new,

And in a love which first sees but the whole,
But when the whole is partially beloved
Doth feast the multitude upon the bread
Of one, endow the units with no less
Than all, and make each meanest integer
The total of my joy.

(From Balder, Scene xxiv.)

'Keith of Ravelston.

The murmur of the mourning ghost

That keeps the shadowy kine,

'Oh, Keith of Ravelston,

The sorrows of thy line!'

Ravelston, Ravelston,

The merry path that leads Down the golden morning hill, And thro' the silver meads;

Ravelston, Ravelston,

The stile beneath the tree, The maid that kept her mother's kine, The she! song that sang

She sang her song, she kept her kine,
She sat beneath the thorn
When Andrew Keith of Ravelston
Rode thro' the Monday morn.

His henchmen sing, his hawk-bells ring,
His belted jewels shine!

Oh, Keith of Ravelston,

The sorrows of thy line!

Year after year, where Andrew came, Comes evening down the glade, And still there sits a moonshine ghost Where sat the sunshine maid.

Her misty hair is faint and fair,

She keeps the shadowy kine;

Oh, Keith of Ravelston,

The sorrows of thy line!

I lay my hand upon the stile,
The stile is lone and cold,
The burnie that goes babbling by
Says nought that can be told.

Yet, stranger! here, from year to year,

She keeps her shadowy kine; Oh, Keith of Ravelston,

The sorrows of thy line!

Step out three steps, where Andrew stood-
Why blanch thy cheeks for fear?
The ancient stile is not alone,

'Tis not the burn I hear!

She makes her immemorial moan,

She keeps her shadowy kine;

Oh, Keith of Ravelston,

The sorrows of thy line!

(From 'A Nuptial Eve,' in England in Time of War.) Professor Nichol edited Dobell's collected poems in 1873, and his prose works in 1876 as Thoughts on Art, Philosophy, and Religion. The Life and Letters of Sydney Dobell appeared in 1878; and there is a Memoir by W. Sharp prefixed to his selected poems (1887).

Alexander Smith (1830–67), born at Kilmarnock, but brought up at Paisley and Glasgow, became, like his father, a pattern-designer, and sent occasional poems to the Glasgow Citizen. His Life Drama appeared in the London Critic (1851, and in 1853 was reprinted in a volume of which ten thousand copies were sold. A reaction soon set in, and the poet had scarcely found himself famous when he began to be fiercely assailed. The faults of his book were obvious enough; every page bore tokens of immaturity and extravagance; while a somewhat narrow reading having passionately attached him to Keats and Tennyson, their turns of expression reappeared here and there in his verse, and the cry of plagiarism was of course raised. With all his defects, Alexander Smith has always a richness and originality of imagery that more than atone for them; and few poets since Shakespeare's day have written occasional lines with a more Shakespearian ring. In one of Miss Mitford's letters we read: 'Mr Kingsley says that Alfred Tennyson says that Alexander Smith's poems show fancy, but not imagination; and on my repeating this to Mrs Browning, she said it was exactly her impression.' In 1854 Smith was appointed Secretary to Edinburgh University. and continued his literary pursuits. He joined with Sydney Dobell in writing a series of War Sonnets; he contributed prose essays to some of the periodicals; and in 1857 he published City Poems, in 1861 Edwin of Deira. His prose works, which show poetic feeling and have not a little poetic charm, include Dreamthorp, a volume of essays (1863); A Summer in Skye (1865); and Alfred Hagart's Household (1866), a semi-autobiographical story of Scottish life. He edited, with a good Memoir, Burns's Poems (1865), and Howe's Golden Leaves from the American Poets (1866).

Autumn.

The lark is singing in the blinding sky,

Hedges are white with May. The bridegroom sea
Is toying with the shore, his wedded bride,
And, in the fullness of his marriage joy,
He decorates her tawny brow with shells,
Retires a space, to see how fair she looks,

Then proud, runs up to kiss her. All is fair—
All glad, from grass to sun! Yet more I love
Than this, the shrinking day, that sometimes comes
In Winter's front, so fair 'mong its dark peers,
It seems a straggler from the files of June,
Which in its wanderings had lost its wits,
And half its beauty; and, when it returned,
Finding its old companions gone away,

It joined November's troop, then marching past;
And so the frail thing comes, and greets the world
With a thin crazy smile, then bursts in tears,
And all the while it holds within its hand

The Canker in the Rose.

A little footpath quivers up the height,
And what a vision for a townsman's sight!
A village, peeping from its orchard bloom,
With lowly roofs of thatch, blue threads of smoke,
O'erlooking all, a parsonage of white.

I hear the smithy's hammer, stroke on stroke;
A steed is at the door; the rustics talk,
Proud of the notice of the gaitered groom;
A shallow river breaks o'er shallow falls.
Beside the ancient sluice that turns the mill
The lusty miller bawls;

The parson listens in his garden-walk,
The red-cloaked woman pauses on the hill.
This is a place, you say, exempt from ill,
A paradise, where, all the loitering day,
Enamoured pigeons coo upon the roof,
Where children ever play.-

Alas! Time's webs are rotten, warp and woof;
Rotten his cloth of gold, his coarsest wear:
Here, black-eyed Richard ruins red-cheeked Moll,
Indifferent as a lord to her despair.

The broken barrow hates the prosperous dray;
And, for a padded pew in which to pray,
The grocer sells his soul.

(From 'Squire Maurice' in City Poems.)

The Bonds of Environment.
Afar, the banner of the year
Unfurls but dimly prisoned here,
"Tis only when I greet

A dropt rose lying in my way,
A butterfly that flutters gay

Athwart the noisy street,

I know the happy Summer smiles
Around thy suburbs, miles on miles.
'Twere neither pæan now, nor dirge,
The flash and thunder of the surge
On flat sands wide and bare;
No haunting joy or anguish dwells
In the green light of sunny dells,
Or in the starry air.

Alike to me the desert flower,
The rainbow laughing o'er the shower.
While o'er thy walls the darkness sails,

I lean against the churchyard rails;
Up in the midnight towers

The belfried spire, the street is dead,
I hear in silence overhead

The clang of iron hours:

It moves me not-I know her tomb

Is yonder in the shapeless gloom.

All raptures of this mortal breath,
Solemnities of life and death,

Dwell in thy noise alone :
Of me thou hast become a part—
Some kindred with my human heart
Lives in thy streets of stone;
For we have been familiar more
Than galley-slave and weary oar.

(From 'Glasgow' in City Poems.)

Besides Early Years of Alexander Smith (1869), by the Rev. T. Brisbane, there is a Memoir by Patrick Proctor Alexander prefixed to his Last Leaves (1869).

William Allingham (1824-89) was of English family, but was a native of Ballyshannon in Donegal, where his father managed a bank. There he was educated, and there at an early age he began to contribute to periodical literature. He became supervisor of Customs in his native place

The kindly spot, the friendly town, where every one is known,

And not a face in all the place but partly seems my own; but removed in the same service to England, and settled in London, where in 1874 he succeeded Froude as editor of Fraser's Magazine. His works included Poems (1850); Day and Night Songs (1854); Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland (1864); Fifty Modern Poems (1865); Songs, Poems, and Ballads (1877); Evil May Day and Ashby Manor (1883); Blackberries (1884); and Irish Songs and Poems (1887). His verse is free from obscurity, mysticism, or the 'spasmodic' temper, is fresh and graceful, shows a delicate fancy and, especially in the lyrics, a sweet and varied melody. Some of his best work is descriptive. Laurence Bloomfield, the story of a young Irish landlord who, amidst manifold discouragement, seeks to improve the condition of the people on his property, was by Allingham regarded as his best work, yet by the general reader it was but coldly received. He wrote two plays which were never produced, and a delightful prose record of his walks in various corners of England, The Rambles of Patricius Walker (reprinted from Fraser). In 1874 he had married Helen Paterson, who, born near Burtonon-Trent, entered the schools of the Academy in 1867, and made herself a name as a book-illustrator and painter in water-colours.

An Irishman to the Nightingales.
You sweet fastidious nightingales!
The myrtle blooms in Irish vales,
By Avondhu and rich Lough Lene,
Through many a grove and bowerlet green,
Fair-mirrored round the loitering skiff.
The purple peak, the tinted cliff,
The glen where mountain-torrents rave,
And foliage blinds their leaping wave,
Broad emerald meadows filled with flowers,
Embosomed ocean-bays are ours

With all their isles; and mystic towers
Lonely and gray, deserted long,

Less sad if they might hear that perfect song!