" primum mobile was supposed to impart its motion to the others, while the fixed heaven, or Empyrean, lay outside of them all. The music of the spheres was supposed to have been produced by the vibration arising from the rubbing of the one against the other. This music seems to be alluded to at the end of the stanza. 568.-86. That living mystic tree. The poet may possibly have been led to this conception by the Tree of Life (Gen. ii. 9), or by the tree Yggdrasil of the Scandinavian_mythology, which bound together heaven, earth, and hell. In the latter case it may have been intended to symbolize the mystic union of spiritual existence, every leaf or part of which is said to respond in praise to the breath of the Divine Spirit. In Rossetti's picture founded on this poem, "a glimpse is caught (above the figure of the Blessed Damozel) of the groves of paradise, wherein, beneath the shade of the spreading branches of a vast tree, the newly-met lovers embrace and rejoice with each other, on separation over and union made perfect at last." (See Shairp's description of this picture in his Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 251.) THE SEA LIMITS. 576. This poem appeared in the volume of 1870. The sound within the shell, alluded to in the last stanza, is a favorite illustration with the poets: see the instances given in Stedman's Nature and Elements of Poetry, 255. WILLIAM MORRIS. 573. WILLIAM MORRIS, one of the most perfect representatives of the aesthetic and archaic sympathies which have so largely affected the English art of the last half century, was born at Walthamstow, near London, in 1834. At Oxford, where he was educated, he formed a lasting friendship with Edward Burne-Jones, the painter. After successively attempting and abandoning painting and architecture, his artist-nature found in poetry a medium apparently more suited to his powers, and his first book, Guenevere and Other Poems, appeared in 1858, the year in which Tennyson published the first of his Idylls of the King. Unlike Tennyson, however, Morris, in his treatment of medieval or old-world themes, sought pure delight, as a respite from present problems, in a fair world of the past. The ugliness of modern life jarred on his beautyLoving nature, and in 1863, with Rossetti, Ford Maddox Brown, and Edward Burne-Jones, he founded in London an establishment for household decoration. Morris steadfastly continued in the work of infusing a greater beauty into English life until the last, and his firm became a powerful agency for the spread of Pre-Raphaelite ideas. In spite of this and other interests he found time to produce an astonishing quantity of literary work. Among this we may mention The Earthly Paradise, a series of twenty-four tales, which appeared between 1868 and 1870; his translations of the Eneid and the Odyssey; his version of Icelandic Sagas; his own sagas and mediaæval romances, which may be described as prosepoems; and various works illustrating or expounding his socialistic theories. It was a life of enormous labor, easily and buoyantly done. He died October 3, 1896. RUDYARD KIPLING. 576. RUDYARD KIPLING was born in Bombay, India, in 1865. His first book of verse, Departmental Ditties, was published in 1886, Barrack-Room Ballads in 1891, and his Seven Seas in 1896. RECESSIONAL. This poem was written in 1897, in celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's reign. It appeared in the London Times in a place of honor immediately beneath a letter from the Queen. The Times remarked, in commenting editorially upon the poem: " At this moment of imperial exaltation, Mr. Kipling does well to remind his countrymen that we have something more to do than to build battle-ships and multiply guns." Perhaps no English single poem since Tennyson's Crossing the Bar has won such an instantaneous and wide-spread recognition. "" Ballad, Alice Brand (Lady of the Lake). Banks of Doon, The.. Bard, The... Battle of Blenheim, The. Battle of Ivry.. Battle of the Baltic.. Better Answer, A... Blessed Damozel, The.. Bonnie George Campbell Border Ballad (The Monastery). Break, Break, Break.. Bridge of Sighs, The..... 56 573 .Shakespeare. 76 Herrick. 107 Campion. 60 Moore. 383 Wither. 99 Bruce's Address to his Army at Bannockburn....Burns. 289 Bugle Song (The Princess).. Castaway, The... Character of a Happy Life, The... Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (Selections). .E. B. Browning. 541 1 .Byron. 388 .Kingsley. 547 Cloud, The... Collar, The.. Composed upon the Bridge near Calais. Content. ... ...... Courtier, The (Mother Hubberd's Tale).. Day of Days, The..... Wordsworth. 330 ........ 329 56 ...Greene. .Burns. 272 .Spenser. 53 Death Bed, The. Departed Friends.. Dirge, A (Contention of Ajax and Ulysses). Disdain Returned.. Don Juan (Selections). Dover Beach.. ... Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.....Pope. 184 Epic, The (Introduction to Morte d'Arthur)..Tennyson. 495 PAGE Harold's Song to Rosabelle (Rokeby).. Harp that once through Tara's Halls, The. Hohenlinden.. Home Thoughts, from Abroad. Hymn to God the Father, A.. Il Penseroso.. In Memoriam (Selection). .R. Browning. 518 Introduction to Last Fruit Off an Old Tree. Introduction (Songs of Innocence). .Scott. 372 Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey. Lines written in Kensington Gardens. Locksley Hall.. London, 1802.. Lycidas..... Wordsworth. 293 ..Arnold. 562 Tennyson. 481 Wordsworth. 328 .Milton. 126 Dryden. 137 ..Scott. 374 Mac-Flecknoe... Madge Wildfire's Song (Heart of Midlothian). Mariners of England, Ye...... Maud (Selections). Nymph's Reply to the Passionate Shepherd, The. Raleigh. Ode, On a Distant Prospect of Eton College...... Gray. 214 .Keats. 459 |