trikes a note of deep and poignant pathos, all the
more poignant from the absolute simplicity with which the tales are
told. Nekrasov towers among the Parnassians of the time and has only
one rival, whom we shall describe presently.

The Parnassians are represented by three poets, MAIKOV (1821-97), FET
(1820-98), and POLONSKY (1820-98), all three of whom began to write
about the same time, in 1840; none of these three poets was didactic,
and all three remained aloof from political or social questions.

Maikov is attracted by classical themes, by Italy and also by old
ballads, but his strength lies in his plastic form, his colour, and
his pictures of Russian landscape; he writes, for instance, an
exquisite reminiscence of a day's fishing when he was a boy.

The quality of Fet's muse, in contrast to Maikov's concrete
plasticity, is illusiveness; his lyrics express intangible dreams and
impressions; delicate tints and shadows tremble and flit across his
verse, which is soft as the orient of a pearl; and his fancy is as
delicate as a thread of gossamer: he lives in the borderland between
words and music, and catches the vague echoes of that limbo.

"The world in shadow slipped away
And, like a silent dream took flight,
Like Adam, I in Eden lay
Alone, and face to face with night."

He sings about the southern night amidst the hay; or again about the
dawn--

"A whisper, a breath, a shiver,
The trills of the nightingale,
A silver light and a quiver
And a sunlit trail.
The glimmer of night and the shadows of night
In an endless race,
Enchanted changes, flight after flight,
On the loved one's face.
The blood of the roses tingling
In the clouds, and a gleam in the grey,
And tears and kisses commingling--
The Dawn, the Dawn, the Day!"

Polonsky's verse, in contrast to Fet's gentle epicurean temperament,
his delicate half-tones and illusive whispers, is made of sterner
stuff; and, in contrast to Maikov's sculptural lines, it is
pre-eminently musical, and reflects a fine and charming personality.
His area of subjects is wide; he can write a child's poem as
transparent and simple as Hans Andersen--as in his conversation
between the sun and the moon--or call up the "glory that was Greece,"
as in the poem when his "Aspasia" listens to the crowds acclaiming
Pericles, and waits in rapturous suspense for his return--an evocation
that Browning wo