ater, divers woes,
Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates;
And hushed seraglios."

It is not necessary to compare these two stanzas. Tennyson's depicts a
confused and moving dream; Mr. Davidson's a wide earthly prospect. The
point to notice in each is the superlative skill with which the poet
chooses the essential points of the picture and presents them so as to
convey their full meaning, appealing at once to the senses and the
intelligence. Tennyson, who is handling a mental condition in which
the sensations are less sharply and logically separated than in a
waking vision, can enforce this second appeal--this appeal to the
intelligence--by introducing the indefinite "divers woes" between the
definite "sheets of water" and the definite "ranges of glimmering
vaults with iron grates": just as Wordsworth, to convey the vague
unanalyzed charm of singing, combines the indefinite "old unhappy
far-off things" with the definite "battles long ago." Mr. Davidson, on
the other hand, is describing what the eye sees, and conveying what
the mind suspects, in their waking hours, and is therefore restricted
in his use of the abstract and indefinite. Notice, therefore, how he
qualifies that which can be seen--the sun, the clouds, the plain, the
cities that "smoulder" and "glitter"--with the epithets "sounding,"
"rich," and "warm," each an inference rather than a direct sensation:
for nobody imagines that the sound of the cities actually rang in the
ear of the Nun who watched them from the mountain-side. The whole
picture has the effect of one of those wide conventional landscapes
which old painters delighted to spread beyond the court-yard of
Nazareth, or behind the pillars of the temple at Jerusalem. My attempt
to analyze it is something of a folly; to understand it is impossible:

"but _if_ I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,"--

I should at length comprehend the divine and inexplicable gift of
song.

The "Ballad of the Making of a Poet."

But beautiful as it is in detail, this poem, and at least one other in
the little volume, have the great merit which has hitherto been
lacking in the best of Mr. Davidson's work. They are thoroughly
considered; seen as solid wholes; seen not only in front but round at
the back. In fact, they are natural growths of Mr. Davidson's
philosophy of life. In his "Ballad of the Making of a Poet" Mr.
Davidson lets us know his conception of