en Samarcand.'
Now, the Laureate's _St. Agnes' Eve_ is an ecstasy of colourless
perfection. The snows sparkle on the convent roof; the 'first snowdrop'
vies with St. Agnes' virgin bosom; the moon shines an 'argent round' in
the 'frosty skies'; and in a transport of purity the lady prays:

'Break up thy heavens, O Lord! and far,
Through all the starlight keen,
Draw me thy bride, a glittering star,
In raiment white and clean.'

It is all coldly, miraculously stainless: as somebody has said, 'la vraie
_Symphonie en Blanc Majeur_.'

Indian Summer.

And at four-score the poet of _St. Agnes' Eve_ is still our greatest
since the Wordsworth of certain sonnets and the two immortal odes: is
still the one Englishman of whom it can be stated and believed that
Elisha is not less than Elijah. His verse is far less smooth and less
lustrous than in the well-filed times of _In Memoriam_ and the Arthurian
idylls. But it is also far more plangent and affecting; it shows a
larger and more liberal mastery of form and therewith a finer, stronger,
saner sentiment of material; in its display of breadth and freedom in
union with particularity, of suggestiveness with precision, of swiftness
of handling with completeness of effect, it reminds you of the later
magic of Rembrandt and the looser and richer, the less artful-seeming but
more ample and sumptuous, of the styles of Shakespeare. And the matter
is worthy of the manner. Everywhere are greatness and a high imagination
moving at ease in the gold armour of an heroic style. There are passages
in _Demeter and Persephone_ that will vie with the best in _Lucretius_;
_Miriam_ is worth a wilderness of _Aylmer's Fields_; _Owd Roa_ is one of
the best of the studies in dialect; in _Happy_ there are stanzas that
recall the passion of _Rizpah_; nothing in modern English so thrills and
vibrates with the prophetic inspiration, the fury of the seer, as
_Vastness_; the verses _To Mary Boyle_--(in the same stanza as Musset's
_le Mie Prigioni_)--are marked by such a natural grace of form and such a
winning 'affectionateness,' to coin a word, of intention and
accomplishment as Lord Tennyson has never surpassed nor very often
equalled. In _Vastness_ the insight into essentials, the command of
primordial matter, the capacity of vital suggestion, are gloriously in
evidence from the first line to the last. Here is no touch of ingenuity,
no trace of 'originality,' no single sign