udelaire, "the illustrious poet,
the faultless critic," as Swinburne calls him, went still further. He
said: "Tous les grands poetes deviennent naturellement, fatalement,
critiques. Je plains les poetes que guide le seul instinct; je les crois
incomplets. Il serait prodigieux qu'un critique devint poete, et il est
impossible qu'un poete ne contienne pas un critique." Yet a man cannot
serve two masters, and Art is a jealous mistress who will not brook a
rival. Even Beddoes found that his ideal of the physiologist-poet was
fast slipping through his fingers, and confessed at last that were he
"soberly and mathematically convinced" of his own inspiration, he would
give himself up to the cultivation of literature. But he died at the
early age of forty-six, from the effects of a wound received in the
cause of Science. A singular retribution befell him, a truly poetic
justice: all his scientific writings have disappeared--were either
stolen before his executors had time to examine his papers, or had been
destroyed by his own ruthless hand--and all that was left to keep his
memory alive were the two tragedies and the few scattered fragments of
verse of which he had made so little account during his lifetime. Their
circle of readers has necessarily been small, but choice. There are few
left, besides Browning and Proctor and John Forster, of his original
admirers, and his name seems to be another on the long list of those who
have failed, as the world counts failure. But the poets know better, and
among their undying brotherhood space will always be kept for this
strayed singer.

KATE HILLARD.

HARVEST.

Gray orchards starred with fruitage gold and red,
Field beyond field of yellow-tasseled corn,
Rippling responsive to each breath of morn.
Along the Southern wall the dark vines shed
Their splendid clusters, blue-black and pale green,
With liquid sunshine through their thin films seen.
In yonder mead the haymakers at work
With lusty sounds the clear tense air fulfill,
Rearing the shapely hayrick's mimic hill,
The dried grass tossing with light-wielded fork.

Daylong the reapers glean the bladed gold;
High to the topmost orchard branches climb
The apple-gatherers, and from each limb
Shake the ripe globes of sweetness, downward rolled
Upon the leaf-strewn ground; and all day long
From the near vineyard comes the merry song
Of tho