may both conspire to make you a great figure. ... Let me conjure you, My Dearest, to comply with this kind ambition of a father, whose thoughts are so ingaged in your behalf, that he reckoneth your Happiness to be the greatest part of his own.'

sex, . . . that wit and vertue times it was well to walk warily, for politician or for grande dame, but one cannot help feeling that a leaning towards greater towards greater boldness on occasions would have been an improvement. To throw your friends overboard lest they compromise you, but not to do it too soon lest you may be called a false friend-this is craven counsel. It is a risky thing to defy the world, certainly; but at times the angry beast can be stilled by righteous anger or a brave demeanour, and loves to tear the hand that strokes it over - gently. But with the largest part of the essay one cannot quarrel; it is freshly, vigorously written, and one can only hope that his daughter profited by it, and became all that his heart could have desired.

The advice is obviously that of a man qui connait sa monde, -some of it suggests that he is a little afraid of it. He is not inspired by high principle or religious feeling; the world is master, and his daughter must make the best of it, and not provoke its censure, for it is "an angry beast" when roused, and will tear her in pieces. He was caution itself in his political career, and he wishes to make his daughter as careful in hers. No doubt in those

MOUNT IDA.

[This poem commemorates an event of some years ago, when a young Englishman— still remembered by many of his contemporaries at Oxford-went up into Mount Ida and was never seen again.]

I.

NOT cypress, but this warm pine-plumage now
Fragrant with sap, I pluck; nor bid you weep
Ye Muses that still haunt the heavenly brow

Of Ida, though the ascent is hard and steep:
Weep not for him who left us wrapped in sleep
At dawn beneath the holy mountain's breast
And all alone from Ilion's gleaming shore
Clomb the high sea-ward glens, fain to drink deep
Of earth's old glory from your silent crest,
Take the cloud-conquering throne

Of gods, and gaze alone

Thro' heaven. Darkling we slept who saw his face no more.

II.

Ah yet, in him hath Lycidas a brother,
And Adonaïs will not say him nay,

And Thyrsis to the breast of one sweet Mother
Welcomes him, climbing by the self-same way:
Quietly as a cloud at break of day

Up the long glens of golden dew he stole
(And surely Bion called to him afar!)

The tearful hyacinths, and the green-wood spray
Clinging to keep him from the sapphire goal,
Kept of his path no trace!

Upward the yearning face

Clomb the ethereal height, calm as the morning star.

III.

For thou wast ever alien to our skies,

A wistful stray of radiance on this earth,
A changeling with deep memories in thine eyes
Mistily gazing thro' our loud-voiced mirth

To some fair land beyond the gates of birth;
Yet, as a star thro' clouds, thou still didst shed
Through our dark world thy lovelier, rarer glow;

Time, like a picture of but little worth,

Before thy young hand lifelessly out-spread,
At one light stroke from thee

Gleamed with Eternity;

Thou gav'st the master's touch, and we-we did not know.

IV.

Ah yet, incline, dear Sisters, or my song

That with the light wings of the skimming swallow
Must range the reedy slopes, will work him wrong!
And with some golden shaft do thou, Apollo,
Show the pine-shadowed path that none may follow;
For, as the blue air shuts behind a bird,

Round him closed Ida's cloudy woods and rills!
Day-long, night-long, by echoing height and hollow,
We called him, but our tumult died un-heard:
Down from the scornful sky

Our faint wing-broken cry

Fluttered and perished among the many-folded hills.

V.

Ay, though we clomb each faint-flushed peak of vision,
Nought but our own sad faces we divined:
Thy radiant way still laughed us to derision,
And still revengeful Echo proved unkind;

And oft our faithless hearts half feared to find

Thy cold corse in some dark mist-drenched ravine
Where the white foam flashed head-long to the sea:

How should we find thee, spirits deaf and blind
Even to the things which we had heard and seen?
Eyes that could see no more

The old light on sea and shore,

What should they hope or fear to find? They found not thee;

VI.

Not though we gazed from heaven o'er Ilion
Dreaming on earth below, mistily crowned
With towering memories, and beyond her shone
The wine-dark seas Achilles heard resound!
Only, and after many days, we found

Dabbled with dew, at border of a wood
Bedded in hyacinths, open and a-glow

Thy Homer's Iliad.

Dryad tears had drowned

The rough Greek type and, as with honey or blood,
One crocus with crushed gold

Stained the great page that told

Of gods that sighed their loves on Ida, long ago.

VII.

See for a couch to their ambrosial limbs
Even as their golden load of splendour presses
The fragrant thyme, a billowing cloud up-swims
Of springing flowers beneath their deep caresses,
Hyacinth, lotus, crocus, wildernesses

Of bloom. . . but clouds of sunlight and of dew
Dropping rich balm, round the dark pine-woods curled
That the warm wonder of their in-woven tresses,
And all the secret blisses that they knew,

Where beauty kisses truth

In heaven's deep heart of youth,

Might still be hidden, as thou art, from the heartless world.

VIII.

Even as we found thy book, below these rocks
Perchance that strange great eagle's feather lay,
When Ganymede, from feeding of his flocks

On Ida, vanished thro' the morning gray:
Stranger it seemed, if thou couldst cast away
Those golden musics as a thing of nought,

A dream for which no longer thou hadst need!
Ah, was it here then that the break of day

Brought thee the substance for the shadow, taught
Thy soul a swifter road

To ease it of its load

And watch this world of shadows as a dream recede?

IX.

We slept! Darkling we slept! Our busy schemes,

Our cold mechanic world a-while was still;

But O, their eyes are blinded even in dreams

Who from the heavenlier Powers with-draw their will:

Here did the dawn with purer light fulfil

Thy happier eyes than ours, here didst thou see
The quivering wonder-light in flower and dew,

The quickening glory of the haunted hill,

The Hamadryad beckoning from the tree,
The Naiad from the stream;

While from her long dark dream

Earth woke, trembling with life, light, beauty, through and

through.

X.

And the everlasting miracle of things

Flowed round thee, and this dark earth opposed no bar, And radiant faces from the flowers and springs

Dawned on thee, whispering, Knowest thou whence we are? Faintly thou heardst us calling thee afar

As Hylas heard, swooning beneath the wave,

Girdled with glowing arms, while wood and glen

Echoed his name beneath that rosy star;

And thy farewell came faint as from the grave
For very bliss; but we

Could neither hear nor see;

And all the hill with Hylas! Hylas! rang again.

XI.

But there were deeper love-tales for thine ears
Than mellow-tongued Theocritus could tell :
Over him like a sea two thousand years

Had swept. They solemnized his music well!
Farewell! What word could answer but farewell,
From thee, O happy spirit, that couldst steal

So quietly from this world at break of day? What voice of ours could break the silent spell Beauty had cast upon thee, or reveal

The gates of sun and dew

Which oped and let thee through

And led thee heavenward by that deep enchanted way?

XII.

Yet here thou mad'st thy choice: Love, Wisdom, Power,
As once before young Paris, they stood here!

Beneath them Ida, like one full-blown flower,

Shed her bloom earthward thro' the radiant air
Leaving her rounded fruit, their beauty, bare
To the everlasting dawn; and, in thy palm
The golden apple of the Hesperian isle
Which thou must only yield to the Most Fair;
But not to Juno's great luxurious calm,
Nor Dian's curved white moon,

Gav'st thou the sunset's boon,

Nor to foam-bosomed Aphrodite's rose-lipped smile.