These are the strings of the Aegean lyre
Across the sky and sea in glory hung:

Columns of white thro' which the wind has flung
The clouds and stars and drawn the rain and fire.
Their flutings now to fill the notes' desire

Are strained and dubious, yet in music young
They cast their full-blown answer far along
To where in sea the island hills expire.
How bravely from the quarry's earthen gloom
In snow they rose amid the blue to stand
Melodious and alone on Sunium!

They shall not wither back into the land.
The sun that harps them with his golden hand
Doth slowly with his hand of gold consume.

MT. LYKAION

Alone on Lykaion since man hath been
Stand on the height two columns, where at rest
Two eagles hewn of gold sit looking East
Forever; and the sun goes up between.
Far down around the mountain's oval green
An order keeps the falling stones abreast.

Below within the chaos last and least
A river like a curl of light is seen.
Beyond the river lies the even sea,
Beyond the sea another ghost of sky.-
O God, support the sickness of my eye
Lest the far space and long antiquity

Suck out my heart and on this awful ground
The great wind kill my little shell with sound.

NEAR HELIKON

By such an all-embalming summer day
As sweetens now among the mountain pines
Down to the cornland yonder and the vines
To where the sky and sea are mixed in gray,
How do all things together take their way
Harmonious to the harvest, bringing wines
And bread and light and whatsoe'er combines
In the large wreath to make it round and gay.
To me my troubled life doth now appear
Like scarce distinguishable summits hung
Around the blue horizon: places where
Not even a traveller purposeth to steer,-
Whereof a migrant bird in passing sung,
And the girl closed her window not to hear.

ELEUSIS

Here for a thousand years processional

Winding around the Eleusinian bay,

The world with drooping eyes has made her way By stair and portal to the sombre Hall.

As then the litanies antiphenal

Obscurely through the pillars sang away,
It dawned, and in a shaft of sudden day
Demeter smiling gave her bread to all.
They drew as waves out of a twilight main,
Long genuflecting multitudes, to feed
With God upon the sacramental grain.
And lo, the temple veil was rent in twain;
But thro' the rift their choirs in silver train
Still passing out rehearsed the human creed.

MT. IDA
I

I long desired to see, I now have seen.
Yonder the heavenly everlasting bride
Draws the white shadows to her virgin side,
Ida, whom long ago God made his Queen.
The daylight weakens to a fearful sheen;
The mountains slumber seaward sanctified,
And cloudy shafts of bluish vapour hide
The places where a sky and world have been.
O Ida, snowy bride that God espoused

Unto that day that never wholly is,
Whiten thou the horizon of my eyes,

That when the momentary sea aroused

Flows up in earthquake, still thou mayest rise Sacred above the quivering Cyclades.

II

Art thou still veiled and ne'er before my sight At sunset, as I yearn to see thee most,

Wilt thou appear in crimson robes and lost
Aloft the crystal vapours of the night?
Is it the rule of all things infinite
To trail across remoteness and in clouds
The glory of their sacerdotal shrouds
And shade with evening their eternal light?

O travellers abroad the mortal plain
On weary beasts of burden overta'en

By the unspeakable hours, I say: Press on.
For tho' a little part be hardly seen,

Hope spangles out the rest and while ye strain.
Another cloud already, look, is gone.

JII

As now my ship at midday passes out
Into the lonely circles of the sea,
Thou o'er thy Southern island loftily
Vague in the light appearest like a thought.
Over the blazing waves my vessel caught
Continues more into infinity;

And, as adoring I look after thee,

My eyes see white and in thy place is nought.

In the decline and speed of human things
When Time drags on the dreamer by the hand
Like an unwilling child and reprobate,

It is enough if on the parting sings

The certain voice he could not understand—

It is enough, it is not yet too late.

Trumbull Stickney.

THE POETRY OF WILLIAM WATSON.

Mr. Watson's position as a poet is, at present, rather unique. This will be seen if we take as typical of the time the three English poets who are probably best known—Mr. Kipling, Mr. Stephen Phillips and Mr. Watson. Each of these represents a particular kind of poetry: Mr. Kipling gives us life with primal strong emotions; Mr. Phillips romantic life with sensuous, more refined emotions; Mr. Watson, quite differently, gives us not life, but a commentary on life, finely critical and sophisticated. Of these three kinds of poetry, by far the most usually attempted is the second; the first few try, and none but Mr. Kipling does well; the third, represented by Mr. Watson, is also rare. To subdivide this third class, let us assume that the commentary on life touches first life as reflected in the actions of men, and, secondly, as reflected in the written thoughts of men. In this second division of the third class I place the greater and better part of Mr. Watson's poetry. Of course so finite a classification is dogmatic, but it best explains my assertion that Mr. Watson occupies rather a unique place.

Supposing then that this classification is just, we should expect to find that Mr. Watson's work makes its appeal, not emotionally, but to the intellectual and æsthetic sense. This is true. Supposing again that the appeal is rarely emotional, we should expect to find, since life consists mainly of emotions, great and small, that when Mr. Watson attempts to deal with life direct, he is not over-successful. This is also, in the main, true. We may then disregard that small part of his verse which thus concerns itself, and consider only that larger amount which is a commentary on life reflected through the written thoughts of men.

The analogy is directly apparent, therefore, between the poetry of Mr. Watson and that of his immediate predecessor, Matthew Arnold. Arnold, in his day, occupied a unique place very similar to Mr. Watson's; his temperament was likewise finely critical and sophisticated; his poetry took its inspiration from much the same kind of theme. Each owns as his master Words