his inexhaustible splendours, or the majestic moon ride in her
mysterious silence between the everchanging isles of cloud; so long as
innumerable starry worlds shine down their unspeakable peace into human
hearts; so long as the flower shall open out its loveliness, dance in
the breeze, shed its perfumes, and then close its petals in sleep and
drink in the refreshment of the unfailing dew; so long as the tree shall
put forth its tender greenery of leaf in the spring, blossom into gold
and fire in summer and in the autumn bow down with fruits; so long as
water shall leap and foam and thunder in cataracts down the
mountain-side, or ripple and smile over the pebble or under the fern--so
long shall the heart of man respond to sun and moon and stars, to flower
and tree and stream, and there shall be poetry.

And as man's vision, intensified by the lens of science, pierces deeper
and deeper into the universe of the ineffably great and the illimitably
small, and as his wonder and awe increase with what they feed upon, so
will the finer souls of humankind be thrilled and thrilled again with
rich new suggestions and exquisite emotions, and they shall express them
in poetry.

The poetry of man will not fail us. So long as man has a heart wherewith
to love another better than himself, to feel the joy of possession or
the pang of loss, to glow with pride at a nation's glories or mourn in
its dejection, so long shall the lyric and the elegy, in whatsoever
shape, create themselves ever afresh.

Till all our life, its institutions, and its beliefs are perfect: till
man has no doubts, no fears, no hopes: till he has analysed all his
emotions and despises them: till the heavens above and the earth beneath
can be read like a printed scroll: till nature has yielded up her last
mystery: till that day poetry will exist among men.

And we may dare to assert that the future of poetry is destined to be
greater than its past, that Tennyson's prayer will be fulfilled--

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell,
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before
But vaster,

And the expression of that music will be poetry.

* * * * *

A SELECTION FROM THE
CATALOGUE OF BOOKS

PUBLISHED BY

Thomas C. Lothian,

100, FLINDERS STREET,

MELBOURNE.

INDEX OF TITLES.