e round their friend.

One day he meets on the river a lovely girl who is angling, and helps her
to land

A gallant fish, all flashing in the sun
In silver mail inlaid with scarlet gems,
His back thick-sprinkled as a leopard's hide
With rich brown spots, and belly of bright gold.

They naturally fall in love with each other and marry, and for many years
David Westren leads a perfectly happy life. Suddenly calamity comes upon
him, his wife and children die and he finds himself alone and desolate.
Then begins his struggle. Like Job, he cries out against the injustice
of things, and his own personal sorrow makes him realise the sorrow and
misery of the world. But the answer that satisfied Job does not satisfy
him. He finds no comfort in contemplating Leviathan:

As if we lacked reminding of brute force,
As if we never felt the clumsy hoof,
As if the bulk of twenty million whales
Were worth one pleading soul, or all the laws
That rule the lifeless suns could soothe the sense
Of outrage in a loving human heart!
Sublime? majestic? Ay, but when our trust
Totters, and faith is shattered to the base,
Grand words will not uprear it.

Mr. Hayes states the problem of life extremely well, but his solution is
sadly inadequate both from a psychological and from a dramatic point of
view. David Westren ultimately becomes a mild Unitarian, a sort of
pastoral Stopford Brooke with leanings towards Positivism, and we leave
him preaching platitudes to a village congregation. However, in spite of
this commonplace conclusion there is a great deal in Mr. Hayes's poem
that is strong and fine, and he undoubtedly possesses a fair ear for
music and a remarkable faculty of poetical expression. Some of his
descriptive touches of nature, such as

In meeting woods, whereon a film of mist
Slept like the bloom upon the purple grape,

are very graceful and suggestive, and he will probably make his mark in
literature.

There is much that is fascinating in Mr. Rennell Rodd's last volume, The
Unknown Madonna and Other Poems. Mr. Rodd looks at life with all the
charming optimism of a young man, though he is quite conscious of the
fact that a stray note of melancholy, here and there, has an artistic as
well as a popular value; he has a keen sense of the pleasurableness of
colour, and his verse is distinguished by a certain refinement and purity
of outline; though not passionate he can play very