wisp imitation of Love. I wonder if
many people in this world are not equally deceived with myself in their
conceptions of this divine passion? All the poets and romancists may be
wrong,--and Lucy Sorrel, with her hard materialism encasing her youth
like a suit of steel armour, may be right. Boys and girls 'love,' so
they say,--men and women 'love' and marry--and with marriage, the
wondrous light that led them on and dazzled them, seems, in nine cases
out of ten, to suddenly expire! Taking myself as an example, I cannot
say that actual marriage made me happy. It was a great disillusion; a
keen disappointment. The birth of my sons certainly gave me some
pleasure as well as latent hope, for as little children they were
lovable and lovely; but as boys--as men--what bitterness they brought
me! Were they the heirs of Love? Nay!--surely Love never generated such
callous hearts! They were the double reflex of their mother's nature,
grasping all and giving nothing. Is there no such virtue on earth as
pure unselfish Love?--love that gives itself freely, unasked, without
hope of advantage or reward--and without any personal motive lurking
behind its offered tenderness?"

He turned over the pages of the book he held, with a vague idea that
some consoling answer to his thoughts would flash out in a stray line or
stanza, like a beacon lighting up the darkness of a troubled sea. But no
such cheering word met his eyes. Keats is essentially the poet of the
young, and for the old he has no comfort. Sensuous, passionate, and
almost cloying in the excessive sweetness of his amorous muse, he offers
no support to the wearied spirit,--no sense of strength or renewal to
the fagged brain. He does not grapple with the hard problems of life;
and his mellifluous murmurings of delicious fantasies have no place in
the poignant griefs and keen regrets of those who have passed the
meridian of earthly hopes, and who see the shadows of the long night
closing in. And David Helmsley realised this all suddenly, with
something of a pang.

"I am too old for Keats," he said in a half-whisper to the leafy
branches that bowed their weight of soft green shelteringly over him.
"Too old! Too old for a poet in whose imaginative work I vised to take
such deep delight. There is something strange in this, for I cherished a
belief that fine poetry would fit every time and every age, and that no
matter how heavy the burden of years might be, I should always be able
t