st me to sing our loves,
And sing them fain would I; but I do fear
To mar so soft a theme; a theme that moves
My heart unto its core. O friend most dear!
No light request is thine; albeit it proves
Thy gentleness and love, that do appear
When absent thus, and in soft looks when near.
Surely, if ever two fond hearts were, twined
In a most holy, mystic knot, so now
Are ours; not common are the ties that bind
My soul to thine; a dear Apostle thou,
I a young Neophyte that yearns to find
The sacred truth, and stamp upon his brow
The Cross, dread sign of his baptismal vow!_

The Apostle was only twelve months older than the Neophyte, who was
in his twenty-third year, but he was a somewhat better as well as
stronger poet. _The Cherwell Water-Lily_ is rather a rare book now,
and I may perhaps be allowed to give an example of Faber's style.
It is from one of many poems in which, with something borrowed too
consciously from Wordsworth, who was the very Apollo of Young England,
there Is yet a rendering of the beauty and mystery of Oxford, and
of the delicate sylvan scenery which surrounds it, which is wholly
original;

_There is a well, a willow-shaded spot.
Cool in the noon-tide gleam,
With rushes nodding in the little stream,
And blue forget-me-not.

Set in thick tufts along the bushy marge
With big bright eyes of gold;
And glorious water-plants, like fans, unfold
Their blossoms strange and large.

That wandering boy, young Hylas, did not find
Beauties so rich and rare,
Where swallow-wort and pale-bright maiden's hair
And dog-grass richly twined.

A sloping bank ran round it like a crown,
Whereon a purple cloud
Of dark wild hyacinths, a fairy crowd,
Had settled softly down.

And dreamy sounds of never-ending bells
From Oxford's holy towers
Came down the stream, and went among the flowers,
And died in little swells_.

These two extracts give a fair notion of the Tractarian poetry, with
its purity, its idealism, its love of Nature and its unreal conception
of life, Faber also wrote an _England's Trust_, before Lord John
Manners published his; and in this he rejoices in the passing away
of all the old sensual confidence, and in the coming of a new age of
humility and spirituality. Alas! it never came! There was a roll in
the wave of thought, a few beautiful shells were thrown up on the
shore of literature, and t