And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,
And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along
'Twixt villages, and think how we shall take
Our own calm journey on for human sake.

ON A LOCK OF MILTON'S HAIR.

It lies before me there, and my own breath
Stirs its thin outer threads, as though beside
The living head I stood in honored pride,
Talking of lovely things that conquer death.
Perhaps he pressed it once, or underneath
Ran his fine fingers, when he leant, blank-eyed,
And saw,
in fancy, Adam and his bride
With their rich locks, or his own Delphic wreath.
There seems a love in hair, though it be dead.
It is the gentlest, yet the strongest thread
Of our frail plant, a blossom from the tree
Surviving the proud trunk; as though it said,
Patience and Gentleness is Power.
In me
Behold affectionate eternity.

In spite of the fact that John Keats (17951821) left comparatively few sonnets which are wholly admirable, it is not to be denied that he showed a fine facility with the form. Perhaps he wrote it too easily, for in classic form and symmetry his sonnets fall below those of Milton, Wordsworth, and Mrs. Browning. However, he was familiar with the sonnet and loved it, the only key to success in its use. He counts time by sonnets, as in "I stood tiptoe" he says: "Why, one might read two sonnets," etc. He engages in sonnet contests, now writing about the Nile with Hunt and Shelley, in which Hunt easily won the wreath, next championing blue eyes against his

friend Reynolds, who advocated brown ones. He leaves a sonnet on Homer on the table after sitting up all night with Chapman's translation; he sends sonnets to ladies; and otherwise makes sonnets his currency, minting his own coin. When he had become independent of the influence of Shakespeare, Spenser, Chaucer, Leigh Hunt, and all others whom he so generously admired, what sonnets he might have written! As it is, there is most excellent work in "O Solitude," his first printed "Give me verse, a Golden Pen," "Glory and Loveliness," "This Pleasant Tale," "On the Sea," "To Sleep," "The Day is gone," etc. One loves to remember such lines as

or,

O what a power hath white simplicity,

The poetry of earth is never dead.

In selecting his best two, one cannot go outside of the "Homer" and his last sonnet. Of the first, no one would say a better sonnet could be written on the subject. It is, like Homer, unique; a wide vista, a revelation and a surprise. As for the last sonnet, it seems the passionate longing of the sick, weary poet for rest; yet he would have rest blended with love, would breast the unknown sea on undulations of bliss:

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S "HOMER."

MUCH have I traveled in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many Western islands have I been,

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne ;

Yet did I never breath to enrich

Till I heard Chapman speak 2 of love, and witch

strong,

BRIGHT Star! would I were steadfast as thou art!

Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of

pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:

No! yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever, or else swoon to death.

As we near our own times, the sonnet claims an increasing number of votaries in England, and we pass by the interesting work of Mrs. Hemans, Hartley Coleridge, Thomas Hood, Lord Houghton (see his sonnets on "Happiness" and "The Forest "), and others, to pay tribute to the queen of sonnet-writers, Mrs. Browning (1809-1861). Italy might well claim an interest in her genius; for in her sonnets, especially, it seems as if a more flex

friend Reynolds, who advocnded with her thought, leaves a sonnet on Houidity of expression. She up all night sonnet, as a swallow in a gale, and the harder the rhymes, or the more elusive the thought, the more deftly she turns her wings and beats to heavenward. The "Sonnets from the Portuguese" have had many imitators, and this is high praise, but one must go to the first hands for the ductile, gold continuity of thought, the threaded phrase-jewels. In her we find the sonnet sufficing for a woman's heart, as it did for a man's in Shakespeare. These two sonnets are perhaps no better than many others of Mrs. Browning's. They are both "Miltonic" in treatment:

FOR LOVE'S SAKE ONLY.

If thou must love me, let it be for nought
Except for love's sake only. Do not say

"I love her for her smile... her look . . . her
Of speaking gently, . . . for a trick of thought
That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day;

way

For these things in themselves, Beloved, may Be changed, or change for thee, and love so wrought May be unwrought so. Neither love me for

Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry, A creature might forget to weep who bore

Thy comfort long, and lose thy love thereby! But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayest love on, through love's eternity.

BROKEN IDOLS.

AND, O beloved voices, upon which

Ours passionately call, because erelong
Ye brake off in the middle of that song

We sang together softly, to enrich

The poor world with the sense of love, and witch
The heart out of things evil, — I am strong,
Knowing ye are not lost for aye among

The hills with last year's thrush. God keeps a niche In Heaven to hold our idols; and albeit

He brake them to our faces, and denied

That our close kisses should impair their white, I know we shall behold them raised, complete, The dust shook off their beauty, glorified,

New Memnons singing in the great God-light.

From so well-known a poet we turn to one little read on this side of the water, Alexander Smith (1830-1867). His sonnets on Christmas are full of the season's feeling, and the following seems a pleasant echo of Keats :

BEAUTY.

BEAUTY still walketh on the earth and air:
Our present sunsets are as rich in gold
As ere the Iliad's music was out-rolled,
The roses of the Spring are ever fair,

'Mong branches green still ring-doves coo and pair,

And the deep sea still foams its music old;

So if we are at all divinely souled,

This beauty will unloose our bonds of care.

"T is pleasant when blue skies are o'er us bending Within old starry-gated Poesy,

To meet a soul set to no worldly tune,

Like thine, sweet friend! Ah! dearer this to me Than are the dewy trees, the sun, the moon, Or noble music with a golden ending.

A few examples must suffice to represent those English poets who have so recently stopped sing