of God to man.

And sometimes, about two o'clock of an afternoon (these spells come most
often about half an hour after lunch), the old angel of peregrination
lifts himself up in me, and I yearn and wamble for a season afoot. When
a blue air is moving keenly through bare boughs this angel is most
vociferous. I gape wanly round the lofty citadel where I am pretending
to earn the Monday afternoon envelope. The filing case, thermostat, card
index, typewriter, automatic telephone: these ingenious anodynes avail
me not. Even the visits of golden nymphs, sweet ambassadors of commerce,
who rustle in and out of my room with memoranda, mail, manuscripts, aye,
even these lightfoot figures fail to charm. And the mind goes out to the
endless vistas of streets, roads, fields, and rivers that summon the
wanderer with laughing voice. Somewhere a great wind is scouring the
hillsides; and once upon a time a man set out along the Great North Road
to walk to Royston in the rain....

Grant us, O Zeus! the tingling tremour of thigh and shank that comes of
a dozen sturdy miles laid underheel. Grant us "fine walking on the hills
in the direction of the sea"; or a winding road that tumbles down to
some Cotswold village. Let an inn parlour lie behind red curtains, and a
table be drawn toward the fire. Let there be a loin of cold beef, an
elbow of yellow cheese, a tankard of dog's nose. Then may we prop our
Bacon's Essays against the pewter and study those mellow words:
"Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity,
rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth." _Haec studio,
pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur_.

RUPERT BROOKE

Rupert Brooke had the oldest pith of England in his fibre. He was born
of East Anglia, the original vein of English blood. Ruddy skin,
golden-brown hair, blue eyes, are the stamp of the Angles. Walsingham,
in Norfolk, was the home of the family. His father was a master at
Rugby; his grandfather a canon in the church.

In 1913 Heffer, the well-known bookseller and publisher of Cambridge,
England, issued a little anthology called _Cambridge Poems 1900-1913_.
This volume was my first introduction to Brooke. As an undergraduate at
Oxford during the years 1910-13 I had heard of his work from time to
time; but I think we youngsters at Oxford were too absorbed in our own
small versemakings to watch very carefully what the "Tabs" were doing.
His poem _The Old Vicarage,