the horizon runs, field by
field and holt by holt, to meet the soft verge of encircling sky.

XXI

HOPE

The other day I took up idly some magazine or other, one of those
great lemon-coloured, salmon-hued, slaty paper volumes which lie in
rows on the tables of my club. I will not stop now to enquire why
English taste demands covers which show every mean stain, every soiled
finger-print; but these volumes are always a reproach to me, because
they show me, alas! how many subjects, how many methods of presenting
subjects, are wholly uninteresting and unattractive to my trivial
mind. This time, however, my eye fell upon a poem full of light and
beauty, and of that subtle grace which seems so incomprehensible, so
uncreated--a lyric by Mr. Alfred Noyes. It was like a spell which
banished for an instant the weariness born of a long, hot, tedious
committee, the oppression which always falls on me at the sight and
sound of the cataract of human beings and vehicles, running so
fiercely in the paved channels of London. A beautiful poem, but how
immeasurably sad, an invocation to the memory and to the spirit of
Robert Browning, not speaking of him in an elegiac strain as of a
great poet who had lived his life to the full and struck his
clear-toned harp, solemnly, sweetly, and whimsically too, year after
year; but as of something great and noble wholly lost and separated
from the living world.

This was a little part of it:

Singer of hope for all the world,
Is it still morning where thou art,
Or are the clouds that hide thee furled
Around a dark and silent heart?

The sacred chords thy hand could wake
Are fallen on utter silence here,
And hearts too little even to break
Have made an idol of despair.

* * * * *

Come back to England, where thy May
Returns, but not that rapturous light;
God is not in His heaven to-day,
And with thy country nought is right.

I think that almost magically beautiful! But is it true? I hope not
and I think not. The poet went on to say that Paradox had destroyed
the sanctity of Truth, and that Science had done nothing more than
strip the skeleton of the flesh and blood that vested it, and crown
the anatomy with glory. One cannot speak more severely, more gloomily,
of an age than to say that it is deceived by analysis and paradox, and
cares nothing for nobler and finer things. It seems to me t