ism," the beauty and benignity of nature,
if let alone, in her mechanical round of changes with man and beast and
flower. Her method, however, certainly involves forgetfulness for the
individual; and to this, to the prospect of oblivion, poetry, too, may
help to brace us, if, unlike so genial and cheerful a poet as Mr.
Gosse, we need bracing thereto:--

Now, giant-like, the tall young ploughmen go
Between me and the sunset, footing slow;
My spirit, as an uninvited guest,
Goes with them, wondering what desire, what aim,
May stir their hearts and mine with common flame,
Or, thoughtless, do their hands suffice their soul?

[117]

I know not, care not, for I deem no shame
To hold men, flowers, and trees and stars the same,
Myself, as these, one atom in the whole.

That is from one of those half-Greek, half-English idylls, reminding
one of Frederick Walker's "Ploughman," of Mason's "Evening Hymn," in
which Mr. Gosse is at his best. A favourite motive, he has treated it
even more melodiously in "Lying in the Grass":--

I do not hunger for a well-stored mind,
I only wish to live my life, and find
My heart in unison with all mankind.

My life is like the single dewy star
That trembles on the horizon's primrose-bar,--
A microcosm where all things living are.

And if, among the noiseless grasses, Death
Should come behind and take away my breath,
I should not rise as one who sorroweth;

For I should pass, but all the world would be
Full of desire and young delight and glee,
And why should men be sad through loss of me?

The light is flying; in the silver-blue
The young moon shines from her bright window through:
The mowers are all gone, and I go too.

A vein of thought as modern as it is old! More not less depressing,
certainly, to our over-meditative [118], susceptible, nervous, modern
age, than to that antiquity which was indeed the genial youth of the
world, but, sweetly attuned by his skill of touch, it is the sum of
what Mr. Gosse has to tell us of the experience of life. Or is it,
after all, to quote him once more, that beyond those ever-recurring
pagan misgivings, those pale pagan consolations, our generation feels
yet cannot adequately express--

The passion and the stress
Of thoughts too tender and too sad to be
Enshrined in any melody she knows?

29th October 1890

VIII. FERDINAND FABRE

[NORINE]: AN IDYLL OF THE CEVENNES

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