e plunging rocks, whose ravenous throats
The sea in wrath and mockery fills,
The smoke that up the valley floats,
The girlhood of the growing hills;

The thunderings from the miners' ledge,
The wild assaults on nature's hoard,
The peak that stormward bares an edge
Ground sharp in days when Titans warred;

Grim heights, by wandering clouds embraced
Where lightning's ministers conspire,
Grey glens, with tarns and streamlet laced,
Stark forgeries of primeval fire.

These scenes may gladden many a mind
Awhile from homelier thoughts released,
And here my fellow men may find
A Sabbath and a vision-feast.

_I bless them in the good they feel;
And yet I bless them with a sigh;
On me this grandeur stamps the seal
Of tyrannous mortality._

_The pitiless mountain stands so sure.
The human breast so weakly heaves,
That brains decay while rocks endure.
At this the insatiate spirit grieves._

But hither, oh ideal bride!
For whom this heart in silence aches,
Love is unwearied as the tide,
Love is perennial as the lakes.

Come thou. The spiky crags will seem
One harvest of one heavenly year,
And fear of death, like childish dream,
Will pass and flee, when thou art here.

Very possibly this charming meditation was written on the Welsh coast;
there is just such scenery as the poem describes, and the grand peak of
Snowdon would well realize the imagination of the line about the girlhood
of the growing hills. The melancholy of the latter part of the composition
is the same melancholy to be found in "Mimnermus in Church," the first of
Cory's poems which we read together. It is the Greek teaching that there
is nothing to console us for the great doubt and mystery of existence
except unselfish affection. All through the book we find the same
philosophy, even in the beautiful studies of student life and the memories
of childhood. So it is quite a melancholy book, though the sadness be
beautiful. I have given you examples of the sadness of doubt and of the
sadness of love; but there is yet a third kind of sadness--the sadness of
a childless man, wishing that he could have a child of his own. It is a
very pretty thing, simply entitled "Scheveningen Avenue"--probably the
name of the avenue where the incident occurred. The poet does not tell us
how it occurred, but we can very well guess. He was riding in a street
car, probably, and a l