l possession, keen to quaff
The wine of one new soul not weak with tears,
Pealing like ruinous thunder in mine ears)
I fell, and heard no more. The pale day broke
Through lazar-windows, when once more I woke,
Remembering I might no more dare to pray.

Venetia Victrix is followed by Ophelion, a curious lyrical play whose
dramatis personae consist of Night, Death, Dawn and a Scholar. It is
intricate rather than musical, but some of the songs are graceful--notably
one beginning

Lady of heaven most pure and holy,
Artemis, fleet as the flying deer,
Glide through the dusk like a silver shadow,
Mirror thy brow in the lonely mere.

Miss Fitz Gerald's volume is certainly worth reading.

Mr. Richard Le Gallienne's little book, Volumes in Folio as he quaintly
calls it, is full of dainty verse and delicate fancy. Lines such as

And lo! the white face of the dawn
Yearned like a ghost's against the pane,
A sobbing ghost amid the rain;
Or like a chill and pallid rose
Slowly upclimbing from the lawn,

strike, with their fantastic choice of metaphors, a pleasing note. At
present Mr. Le Gallienne's muse seems to devote herself entirely to the
worship of books, and Mr. Le Gallienne himself is steeped in literary
traditions, making Keats his model and seeking to reproduce something of
Keats's richness and affluence of imagery. He is keenly conscious how
derivative his inspiration is:

Verse of my own! why ask so poor a thing,
When I might gather from the garden-ways
Of sunny memory fragrant offering
Of deathless blooms and white unwithering sprays?

Shakspeare had given me an English rose,
And honeysuckle Spenser sweet as dew,
Or I had brought you from that dreamy close
Keats' passion-blossom, or the mystic blue

Star-flower of Shelley's song, or shaken gold
From lilies of the Blessed Damosel,
Or stolen fire from out the scarlet fold
Of Swinburne's poppies. . . .

Yet now that he has played his prelude with so sensitive and so graceful
a touch, we have no doubt that he will pass to larger themes and nobler
subject-matter, and fulfil the hope he expresses in this sextet:

For if perchance some music should be mine,
I would fling forth its notes like a fierce sea,
To wash away the piles of tyranny,
To make love free and faith unbound of creed.
O for some power to fill my shrunken line,