pins a-row
Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned,
Demure, inviting--even so,
When merry maids in Miyako
To feel the sweet o' the year began,
And green gardens to overflow,
I loved you once in old Japan.

Clear shine the hills; the rice-fields round
Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow,
A blue canal the lake's blue bound
Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo!
Touched with the sundown's spirit and glow,
I see you turn, with flirted fan,
Against the plum-tree's bloomy snow . . .
I loved you once in old Japan!

ENVOY.

Dear, 'twas a dozen lives ago
But that I was a lucky man
The Toyokuni here will show:
I loved you--once--in old Japan!

This rondel, too--how light it is, and graceful!--

We'll to the woods and gather may
Fresh from the footprints of the rain.
We'll to the woods, at every vein
To drink the spirit of the day.

The winds of spring are out at play,
The needs of spring in heart and brain.
We'll to the woods and gather may
Fresh from the footprints of the rain.

The world's too near her end, you say?
Hark to the blackbird's mad refrain!
It waits for her, the vast Inane?
Then, girls, to help her on the way
We'll to the woods and gather may.

There are fine verses, also, scattered through this little book; some of
them very strong, as--

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Others with a true touch of romance, as--

Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a king in Babylon,
And you were a Christian slave.

And here and there we come across such felicitous phrases as--

In the sand
The gold prow-griffin claws a hold,

or--

The spires
Shine and are changed,

and many other graceful or fanciful lines, even 'the green sky's minor
thirds' being perfectly right in its place, and a very refreshing bit of
affectation in a volume where there is so much that is natural.

However, Mr. Henley is not to be judged by samples. Indeed, the most
attractive thing in the boo