rtunate in his love; and he wrote his poems, now famous, out
of the pain and regret that was in his heart, much as singing birds born
in cages are said to sing better when their eyes are put out. Here is one
example:

Along the garden ways just now
I heard the flowers speak;
The white rose told me of your brow,
The red rose of your cheek;
The lily of your bended head,
The bindweed of your hair:
Each looked its loveliest and said
You were more fair.

I went into the woods anon,
And heard the wild birds sing
How sweet you were; they warbled on,
Piped, trill'd the self-same thing.
Thrush, blackbird, linnet, without pause
The burden did repeat,
And still began again because
You were more sweet.

And then I went down to the sea,
And heard it murmuring too,
Part of an ancient mystery,
All made of me and you:
How many a thousand years ago
I loved, and you were sweet--
Longer I could not stay, and so
I fled back to your feet.

The last stanza especially expresses the idea that I have been telling you
about; but in a poem entitled "Greater Memory" the idea is much more fully
expressed. By "greater memory" you must understand the memory beyond this
life into past stages of existence. This piece has become a part of the
nineteenth century poetry that will live; and a few of the best stanzas
deserve to be quoted,

In the heart there lay buried for years
Love's story of passion and tears;
Of the heaven that two had begun
And the horror that tore them apart;
When one was love's slayer, but one
Made a grave for the love in his heart.

The long years pass'd weary and lone
And it lay there and changed there unknown;
Then one day from its innermost place,
In the shamed and ruin'd love's stead,
Love arose with a glorified face,
Like an angel that comes from the dead.

It uplifted the stone that was set
On that tomb which the heart held yet;
But the sorrow had moulder'd within
And there came from the long closed door
A dear image, that was not the sin
Or the grief that lay buried before.

* * * * *

There was never the stain of a tear
On the face that was ever so dear;
'Twas the same in each lovelier way;
'Twas old love's holier part,
And the dream of the earliest day
Brought back to the desolate heart.

It was knowledge of all that had been