ment, foreboding, omen become the essential tissue of works
that are lifted by them into the higher realm of imagination. These
supernatural constituents penetrate and pervade _The White Ship_; and
_The King's Tragedy_ is saturated in the spirit of them. We do not speak
of the incidents associated with the wraith that haunts the isles, but
of the less palpable touches which convey the scarce explicable
sense of a change of voice when the king sings of the pit that is under
fortune's wheel:

And under the wheel, beheld I there
An ugly Pit as deep as hell,
That to behold I quaked for fear:
And this I heard, that who therein fell
Came no more up, tidings to tell:
Whereat, astound of the fearful sight,
I wot not what to do for fright.
(The King's Quair.)

It is the shadow of the supernatural that hangs over the king, and very
soon it must enshroud him. One of the most subtle and impressive of the
natural portents is that which presents itself to the eyes of Catherine
when the leaguers have first left the chamber, and the moon goes out and
leaves black the royal armorial shield on the painted window-pane:

And the rain had ceased, and the moonbeams lit
The window high in the wall,--
Bright beams that on the plank that I knew
Through the painted pane did fall
And gleamed with the splendour of Scotland's crown
And shield armorial.

But then a great wind swept up the skies,
And the climbing moon fell back;
And the royal blazon fled from the floor,
And nought remained on its track;
And high in the darkened window-pane
The shield and the crown were black.

It has been said that _Sister Helen_ strikes the keynote of Rossetti's
creative gift; it ought to be added that _The King's Tragedy_ touches
his highest reach of imagination.

Having in the early part of 1881 brought together a sufficient quantity
of fresh poetry to fill a volume, Rossetti began negotiations for
publishing it. Anticipatory announcements were at that time constantly
appearing in many quarters, not rarely accompanied by an outspoken
disbelief in the poet's ability to achieve a second success equal to his
first. In this way it often happens to an author, that, having achieved
a single conspicuous triumph, the public mind, which has spontaneously
offered him the tribute of a generous recognition, forthwith gravitates
tow