last House of Poetry, for it stands there like an alabaster Venus awakening to warm life in the portico of a Temple of the Muses. Indeed, Mrs. Moulton has unusual qualifications for the labour of love which she has undertaken. Her own high place as a poet, and her excellent judgment as a literary critic, are too well known to need comment; and her long and intimate friendship with the blind poet gives exceptional interest to the tender and pathetic little sketch with which she prefixes the volume. The poems are divided into three sections, "Lyrics," "Last Garden Secrets," and "Sonnets." "Love's Lady," the second "lyric " in the volume, is written in quatrains, which recall Omar Khayyám. It is a fine poem, and contains some beautiful lines, but is unequal, and too long to quote in full. Here are the last six verses, in which Marston sings the love

That would have saved me from despair and doom

Had Destiny but been compassionate :-

As high as Heaven it was, deep as the sea,
And mystical and pure as lilies be,

And glowing with the glory of the June,
When birds and flowers and light make revelry.

Steadfast it was, as stars whereby men steer-
Tender as twilight, when the moon is near

And all the gentle air is warm with hope,
And we the Summer's hastening feet can hear.
How can my single, singing strength suffice
To worship thee, my Love, my Paradise?

My song falls weak before thee, and abashed,
Nor ever to thy spirit's height may rise;

Yet even by its failure men shall see
How more than all loves was my love of thee-
Thou, who didst overflow my life with Heaven,
Making that life Love's miracle to be!

And though my little note of music pass
As barren breath one breathes upon a glass,

And I be numbered with the numberless throng
Of whom men say not, even, "This man was,"

O yet, from thee, in whom all beauty blent,
My Rose of women, from thy heart there went-

From thy deep, splendid, perfect, passionate heart-
A love to be, in death, my monument !

"Tender as twilight when the moon is near," is a beautiful line, as Marston himself was aware, for he repeats it, word for word, on page 106, in the sonnet, "Her Atmosphere." Whether this is due to

accident or to design is an open question; but it is certain that the defects of monotony of theme, diffuseness, and repetition, which were apparent in his earlier work, are not altogether absent in "A Last Harvest." For instance, the volume contains no less than five references to the clash and clamour of bells (pages 72, 104, 110, 113, and 135); and there are poems in which an idea which has been used in earlier work is made-very effectively, it must be admitted-to do duty again.

This, however, is only what was to be expected in the work of one as heavily handicapped as Philip Marston, and, in view of the great disadvantages under which he laboured, such criticism seems small and ungracious. The only wonder is that Marston should have achieved as much as he did, and that the poems of a blind man should exhibit such delicate effects of light and shade and colour and tone. Grace, music, and sweetness-the qualities which are characteristic of all his work-are especially noticeable in the volume before us. Here is a love-lyric which would have delighted the heart of Rossetti :

GO, SONGS OF MINE.

Go, songs of mine to bring her on her way

With whisperings of love :

'Tis bleak March now, but then it shall be May,

With gentle skies above

And gentle seas below, what time she hears

Your little music chiming in her ears.

Cold, cold this day, and white the air with snow,
And dark this place wherefrom

My hastening music ever loves to go

To find its natural home

Its home with her to whom all charms belong;

Who is both Queen of Love and Queen of Song.

Shall glad spring come? Shall May come with warm hours

And laughter of clear light,

And blossoming trees, and festivals of flowers,

And nightingales by night,

That pour their shuddering sweetness on the air

The music of an exquisite despair?

And shall she come, who is my Spring of springs

Herself than May more fair?

Sweet is the song the Night's sad songster sings,

But her tones are more rare

Ah, shall she come, who is Spring and Summer in one-
To my sad life its star, its moon, its sun?

The "Last Garden Secrets," which one naturally turns to first, are somewhat disappointing, partly, perhaps, because one expects too much, partly because there is nothing to bear comparison with that lovely and perfect lyric, "The Rose and the Wind," and partly because some of them have already appeared in a previous volume. Here, however, is a hitherto unpublished "Secret," which puts my grudging words to shame :

A RUINED GARDEN.

All my roses are dead in my Garden-
What shall I do?

Winds in the night, without pity or pardon,
Came there and slew.

All my song-birds are dead in their bushes-
Woe for such things!

Robins and linnets and blackbirds and thrushes
Dead, with stiff wings.

Oh, my Garden! rifled and flowerless,
Waste now and drear;

Oh, my Garden! barren and bowerless,
Through all the year.

Oh, my dead birds! each in his nest there,
So cold and stark ;

What was the horrible death that pressed there
When skies were dark?

What shall I do for my roses' sweetness,
The summer round-

For all my Garden's divine completeness
Of scent and sound?

I will leave my Garden for winds to harry;
Where once was peace,

Let the bramble-vine and the wild brier marry,
And greatly increase.

But I will go to a land men know not

A far, still land,

Where no birds come, and where roses blow not
And no trees stand-

Where no fruit grows, where no spring makes riot,
But, row on row,

Heavy, and red, and pregnant with quiet
The poppies blow.

And there shall I be made whole of sorrow,
Have no more care--

No bitter thought of the coming morrow,
Or days that were.

The most remarkable feature in "A Last Harvest " is the high average excellence of the sonnet-work. It is true that the series,

1

taken as a whole, is somewhat subdued in tone, and that the book contains nothing with the sombre strength of "No Death," of "Wind Voices," or with the simple pathos of "Not Thou, but I," which was printed in "All in All"; but, on the other hand, the sonnets in "A Last Harvest" have a chastened mellowness and maturity which indicate a distinct advance in artistic workmanship. Here is one which, if somewhat conventional in conception, is very finely expressed :—

TO-MORROW.

I said "To-morrow!" one bleak, winter day-
"To-morrow I will live my life anew,'

And still "To-morrow!" while the winter grew

To spring, and yet I dallied by the way,

And sweet, dear Sins still held me in their sway:

"To-morrow! I said, while summer days wore through ; "To-morrow!" while chill autumn round me drew;

And so my soul remained the sweet Sins' prey.

So pass the years, and still, perpetually,

I cry, "To-morrow will I flee each wile-
To-morrow, surely, shall my soul stand free,

Safe from the syren voices that beguile!"

But Death waits by me, with a mocking smile,
And whispers"Yea! To-morrow, verily!"

The one defect in this sonnet is, of course, the rhyming of "verily" and "perpetually" in the sestette. Where the constant repetition of perfect rhymes tends, in a degree, to become monotonous and to weary the ear, a skilful variation enhances rather than lessens the beauty of a poem. This must be done, however, with a very dexterous hand, for any careless rhyming in so delicate a piece of workmanship as a sonnet, not only breaks the measured "marking time" (like the marching of a multitude), which is the result of the recurrence of the rhyme at regular intervals, but is a distinct defect. Strangely enough-for an unerring ear is the one thing we might have expected in a blind man-Marston is occasionally at fault in this respect, not only in his earlier work, but in his latest volume. He uses "place" and "place" as rhymes in "A Last Harvest" (page 144) just as he had used "hear" and "here" in "Wind Voices" ("Haunted Rooms "), "audible" and terrible " (page 139), and "touched " and " brushed," in the following exquisite

sonnet :

'London: Elliot Stock

2 London; Chatto & Windus,

Those people who are dear to her at all
Are for her sweet sake very dear to me-

All places known of her divinity

Are loved by me, and hold my heart in thrall:
These flowers, that felt her pure breast rise and fall,
Laid here apart where all her love-gifts be,
Are fragrant with the passionate memory

Of a dear day now lost past Love's recall :

Books she has read; least thing her hands have touched,
The very floor her garment's hem has brushed

Being loved of me, shall I not love as well

What she loved most--to climb the upward way;

No longer in this poppied vale to dwell,

But scale the heights where shines the perfect day?

Here is another very beautiful love sonnet :

The breadth and beauty of the spacious night

Brimmed with white moonlight, swept by winds that blew
The flying sea-spray up to where we two

Sat all alone, made one in Love's delight

The sanctity of sunsets palely bright,

Autumnal woods, seen 'neath meek skies of blue,
Old cities that God's silent peace stole through—

These of our love were very sound and sight:

The strain of labour; the bewildering din

Of thundering wheels; the bells' discordant chime ;
The sacredness of art, the spell of rhyme-

These, too, with our dear love were woven in,

That so, when parted, all things might recall
The sacred love that had its part in all.

The use of the rhymed couplet with which Marston, as in this instance, so frequently concludes his sonnets, is strictly legitimate, and, indeed, is often desirable, for the sake of variety and convenience, but in sonnets not formed upon the Shakespearian model, the more delicate and distant decline of the rhyme (like the indistinguishable dying away of sweet music) is, I think, more harmonious.

There are many other sonnets- "Not only rooms wherein thy Love has been," the second and third of the "Four Parables," and "When in the darkness I wake up alone," which I should like to quote, but which, as my aim is to stimulate, not to satisfy the reader's interest in "A Last Harvest," I must leave him to seek out for himself. Below, however, I give a poem which I venture to predict will find its way into many an anthology :

LOVE ASLEEP.

I found Love sleeping in a place of shade,

And as in some sweet dream the sweet lips smiled;

Yea, seemed he as a lovely, sleeping child