here and
there a poignant note of passion flashes across the song, as a scarlet
thread flashes through the shuttlerace of a loom, giving a new value to
the delicate tints, and bringing the scheme of colour to a higher and
more perfect key. In Miss Nesbit's earlier volume, the Lays and Legends,
as it was called, there was an attempt to give poetic form to
humanitarian dreams and socialistic aspirations; but the poems that dealt
with these subjects were, on the whole, the least successful of the
collection; and with the quick, critical instinct of an artist, Miss
Nesbit seems to have recognised this. In the present volume, at any
rate, such poems are rare, and these few felicitous verses give us the
poet's defence:

A singer sings of rights and wrongs,
Of world's ideals vast and bright,
And feels the impotence of songs
To scourge the wrong or help the right;
And only writhes to feel how vain
Are songs as weapons for his fight;
And so he turns to love again,
And sings of love for heart's delight.

For heart's delight the singers bind
The wreath of roses round the head,
And will not loose it lest they find
Time victor, and the roses dead.
'Man can but sing of what he knows--
I saw the roses fresh and red!'
And so they sing the deathless rose,
With withered roses garlanded.

And some within their bosom hide
Their rose of love still fresh and fair,
And walk in silence, satisfied
To keep its folded fragrance rare.
And some--who bear a flag unfurled--
Wreathe with their rose the flag they bear,
And sing their banner for the world,
And for their heart the roses there.

Yet thus much choice in singing is;
We sing the good, the true, the just,
Passionate duty turned to bliss,
And honour growing out of trust.
Freedom we sing, and would not lose
Her lightest footprint in life's dust.
We sing of her because we choose,
We sing of love because we must.

Certainly Miss Nesbit is at her best when she sings of love and nature.
Here she is close to her subject, and her temperament gives colour and
form to the various dramatic moods that are either suggested by Nature
herself or brought to Nature for interpretation. This, for instance, is
very sweet and graceful:

When all the skies with snow were grey,
And all the earth with snow was white,
I wandered down a stil