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DOLCINO TO MARGARET.

The world goes up and the world goes down,
And the sunshine follows the rain;

And yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown
Can never come over again,

Sweet wife;

No, never come over again.

For woman is warm though man be cold,
And the night will hallow the day!

Till the heart which at even was weary and cold
Can rise in the morning gay,

Sweet wife;

To its work in the morning gay.

AIRLY BEACON.

Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon;

O the pleasant sight to see
Shires and towns from Airly Beacon,
While my love climbed up to me!

Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon;

O the happy hours we lay

Deep in fern on Airly Beacon,
Courting through the summer's day!

Airly Beacon, Airly Beacon;

O the weary haunt for me,

All alone on Airly Beacon
With his baby on my knee!

A BOAT-SONG.

[From Hypatia.]

Loose the sail, rest the oar, float away down,
Fleeting and gliding by tower and town.

Life is so short at best! snatch, while tho canst, thy rest,
Sleeping by me.

[From The Water-Babies.]

THE SONG OF MADAME DO-AS-YOU-WOULD-BE-DONE-EY.

I once had a sweet little doll, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world;

Her cheeks were so red and so white, dears,
And her hair was so charmingly curled.
But I lost my poor little doll, dears,

As I played in the heath one day;

And I cried for her more than a week, dears,
But I never could find where she lay.

I found my poor little doll, dears,

As I played in the heath one day:
Folks say she is terribly changed, dears,
For her paint is all washed away,

And her arm trodden off by the cows, dears,
And her hair not the least bit curled :
Yet, for old sake's sake, she is still, dears,
The prettiest doll in the world.

THE 'OLD, OLD SONG.'

When all the world is young, lad,

And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,

And every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad,

And round the world away;

Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,

And all the trees are brown;

And all the sport is stale, lad,

And all the wheels run down:

Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among :
God grant you find one face there

You loved when all was young.

SYDNEY DOBELL.

[SYDNEY DOBELL was born at Cranbrook in Kent in 1824, was educated at home, and for the greater part of his life was engaged in business ir. Gloucestershire. His first published poem The Roman, inspired by his lifelong enthusiasm for the Italian cause, appeared in 1850; his next, Balder, was finished in 1853. In 1855 he wrote in conjunction with Alexander Smith a series of sonnets, suggested by the Crimean struggle. This volume was followed by another, of descriptive and lyrical verses, on the same theme, England in Time of War. Subsequently his health gave way, and after living for several years, the winters of which he passed abroad, more or less in the condition of an invalid, he died at Barton End House near Nailsworth, in 1874. A complete edition of his poems was published in 1875.]

The above outline in great measure accounts for the fact that most of Dobell's poetry was the product of his earlier yearsthe last eighteen of his life having been spent in forced abstinence from literary labour. The success of his first considerable work, The Roman, was rapid and unmistakable. The theme and its treatment, in accord with popular sentiment, in no less degree the flow of the lyrics, the strong sweep of the graver verse, the frequent richness of the imagery, enlisted the favour alike of the general public and of discerning critics. With defects readily condoned to the writer's youth, and many minor merits, its main charm lay in the novelty of its aim. It was hailed as the product of a man of refined culture, whose sympathies went beyond the mere love of 'harmony in tones and numbers' lisp,' and crossed the 'silver streak' to welcome the wider movements of his age. The Roman was continental in a sense that the work of none of our poets, since Byron, had been. Balder, the embodiment of the author's deepest though still somewhat chaotic thought, was less fortunate. The incomplete and painful plot was felt to be unnatural, and many of the details were disagreeable. The luxuriance of its imagery was like cloth of gold thrown over the limbs of a Frank. enstein. But few contemporary English poets had scaled the

heights of its finest passages. Every chapter bore witness to the author's analytic subtlety and passionate power. Few descriptions of external nature surpass the master sketches of Balder: they are drawn by the eye and pencil of one who, from a watch-tower on the hills, outgazed the stars and paid homage, like the Persian, to a hundred dawns, and

hung his room with thought

Morning and noon, and eve, and night, and all

The changing seasons.'

Dobell's Chamouni almost rivals that of Coleridge. His springs are redolent of Shelley. The pastoral of the summer day on the hills (Scene 24) recalls the Bohemia of The Winter's Tale. The music of Amy's songs ripples by the terror and tumult of the tragedy with a dying fall like the sweet south.' Balder is not likely to become popular in our generation: but, for defects, it will keep its place as a mine for poets.

all its flagrant

In spite of manifest faults, on the side of violence or of occasional obscurity, Dobell seems to us to claim a permanent place among the English poets of this century. He belonged to the so-called Spasmodic school, with which he was especially during his residence in Edinburgh often associated, in virtue of defects shared with men otherwise indefinitely his inferiors. Of these the chief were involutions of style, recalling the conceits of Donne and others of the absurdly named 'Metaphysical' school of the seventeenth century, a provoking excess of metaphor, and a weakness, latterly outgrown, for outré 'fine things.' But from the graver intellectual offences of the galvanic and merely sentimental schools he was wholly free. Though unequal, his verse at its best is both strong and delicate; his imagery, though redundant, original and incisive. But the great merit of his work is that it is steeped in that higher atmosphere in which all enduring literature breathes and moves. In our age his most distinctive quality is the intensity of thought, the freshness, depth and width of sympathy only possible to 'the breed of noble bloods,' and which endeared him to all who were privileged to enjoy the 'liberal education of his society.'

JOHN NICHOL

MONK'S SONG.

[From The Roman.]

There went an incense through the land one night,
Through the hushed holy land, when tired men slept.
[Interlude of music.

The haughty sun of June had walked, long days,
Through the tall pastures which, like mendicants,
Hung their sere heads and sued for rain: and he
Had thrown them none. And now it was high hay-time,
Through the sweet valley all the flowery wealth

At once lay low, at once ambrosial blood

Cried to the moonlight from a thousand fields.

And through the land the incense went that night,
Through the hushed holy land when tired men slept.
It fell upon the sage; who with his lamp
Put out the light of heaven. He felt it come
Sweetening the musty tomes, like the fair shape
Of that one blighted love, which from the past
Steals oft among his mouldering thoughts of wisdom.
And SHE came with it, borne on airs of youth;

Old days sang round her, old memorial days;

She crowned with tears, they dressed in flowers, all faded-
And the night-fragrance is a harmony

All through the old man's soul. Voices of eld,
The home, the church upon the village green,

Old thoughts that circle like the birds of Even

Round the grey spire. Soft sweet regrets, like sunset
Lighting old windows with gleams day had not.
Ghosts of dead years, whispering old silent names
Through grass-grown pathways, by halls mouldering now.
Childhood-the fragrance of forgotten fields;
Manhood-the un.orgotten fields whose fragrance
Passed like a breath; the time of buttercups,
The fluttering time of sweet forget-me-nots;
The time of passion and the rose-the hay-time
Of that last summer of hope! The old man weeps,

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