rhymed eight-syllable lines which he had already
used in part of his _Song on May Morning_. Like that beautiful little
poem, they represent him in his simplest mood, the mood of the quiet
years at Horton, spent, more than any other part of his life, in the
open air, and among plain folk unlettered and unpolitical. It is
natural enough, therefore, that they are the most popular as they are
the easiest of all his poems. Their two titles, which mean The
Cheerful Man and The Thoughtful or Meditative Man, point to the two
moods from which they regard life. Both moods are, of course,
described as they might actually be experienced by a highly cultivated
and serious man like Milton himself. The gravity is the gravity of a
man of thought, not of a man of affairs; the pleasures are those of a
scholar and a poet, not those of a trifler, a sportsman, or a
sensualist. Like all Milton's works they borrow freely from earlier
poets, remain entirely original and Miltonic, and are imitated only at
the peril of the imitator. Any one who looks at the parallel passages
in Marlowe and Fletcher will see how very like they are and how very
little the likeness matters. The poems stand alone; there is nothing
of quite the same kind in English. {108} The least unlike pair of
poems is perhaps the two Spring Odes of the present Poet Laureate, than
whom no one has owed more to Milton or repaid the debt with more verse
which Milton would have been glad to inspire. But Mr. Bridges has, of
course, avoided anything approaching a direct imitation; he has merely
used the hint of two contrasted poems on one subject, touching
inevitably, as Milton had touched, upon some of the opposite pleasures
of town and country, and bringing Milton's mood of cheerful gravity to
bear upon them both.

It is unnecessary to discuss in detail poems so well known. But a few
words may be said. Milton was never again to be so genial as he is
here. Never again does he place himself so sympathetically close to
the daily tasks and pleasures of ordinary unimportant men and women.
After characteristically choosing the West Wind and the Dawn as
likelier parents of true mirth than any god of wine or sensual
pleasure, he will go on for once to call for the company of--

"Sport that wrinkled Care derides,
And Laughter holding both his sides";

he will cast a pleased eye on the birds and flowers and the
sunrise--the latter moving {109} him to the characteristic magni