led "Old Ireland:"--

"Far hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
Once a queen, now lean and tatter'd, seated on the ground,
Her old white hair drooping, dishevel'd, round her shoulders,
At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
Long silent, she, too, long silent, mourning her shrouded hope and heir,
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most full of love.

"Yet a word, ancient mother,
You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with forehead between
your knees,
Oh, you need not sit there veil'd in your old white hair so dishevel'd,
For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave,
It was an illusion; the son you loved was not really dead,
The Lord is not dead, he is risen again young and strong in another
country.
Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
What you wept for was translated, pass'd from the grave,
The winds favor'd and the sea sail'd it,
And now with rosy and new blood,
Moves to-day in a new country."

Or take these lines from "Children of Adam:"--

"I heard you solemn-sweet pipes of the organ as last Sunday morn I
pass'd the church,
Winds of autumn, as I walk'd the woods at dusk I heard your
long-stretch'd sighs up above so mournful,
I heard the perfect Italian tenor singing at the opera, I heard the
soprano in the midst of the quartet singing;
Heart of my love! you, too, I heard murmuring low through one of the
wrists around my head,
Heard the pulse of you, when all was still, ringing little bells last
night under my ear."

Put such things as these, or in fact any of the poems, in rhymed and
measured verse, and you heighten a certain effect, the effect of the
highly wrought, the cunningly devised; but we lose just what the poet
wanted to preserve at all hazards,--vista, unconstraint, the effect of the
free-careering forces of nature.

I always think of a regulation verse-form as a kind of corset which does
not much disguise a good figure, though it certainly hampers it, and which
is a great help to a poor figure. It covers up deficiencies, and it
restrains exuberances. A personality like Whitman can wear it with ease
and grace, as may be seen in a few of his minor poems, but for my part I
like him best without it.

XVII

How well we know the language of the conventional poetic! In