ke-believe of a child who is remaking the world, not always
in the same way, but always after its own heart; and so unlike all other
modern writers he makes his poetry out of unending pictures of a happiness
that is often what a child might imagine, and always a happiness that sets
mind and body at ease. Now it is a picture of some great room full of
merriment, now of the wine-press, now of the golden threshing-floor, now
of an old mill among apple-trees, now of cool water after the heat of the
sun, now of some well-sheltered, well-tilled place among woods or
mountains, where men and women live happily, knowing of nothing that is
too far off or too great for the affections. He has but one story to tell
us, how some man or woman lost and found again the happiness that is
always half of the body; and even when they are wandering from it, leaves
must fall over them, and flowers make fragrances about them, and warm
winds fan them, and birds sing to them, for being of Habundia's kin they
must not forget the shadow of her Green Tree even for a moment, and the
waters of her Well must be always wet upon their sandals. His poetry often
wearies us as the unbroken green of July wearies us, for there is
something in us, some bitterness because of the Fall it may be, that takes
a little from the sweetness of Eve's apple after the first mouthful; but
he who did all things gladly and easily, who never knew the curse of
labour, found it always as sweet as it was in Eve's mouth. All kinds of
associations have gathered about the pleasant things of the world and half
taken the pleasure out of them for the greater number of men, but he saw
them as when they came from the Divine Hand. I often see him in my mind as
I saw him once at Hammersmith holding up a glass of claret towards the
light and saying, 'Why do people say it is prosaic to get inspiration out
of wine? Is it not the sunlight and the sap in the leaves? Are not grapes
made by the sunlight and the sap?'

V

In one of his little socialist pamphlets he tells how he sat under an
elm-tree and watched the starlings and thought of an old horse and an old
labourer that had passed him by, and of the men and women he had seen in
towns; and he wondered how all these had come to be as they were. He saw
that the starlings were beautiful and merry and that men and the old
horse they had subdued to their service were ugly and miserable, and yet
the starlings, he thought, were of one kind whet