and they do not seem to speak of frigid formalism. Neither do the odes to "Winchester," nor the wonderfully tender poems on friendship to be found in both volumes. The truth of the charge is probably this: all the world loves a lover (at least, theoretically), and Lionel Johnson did not show the usual predilection toward interpreting this master passion. His love poems are few in number. But if any reader be tempted to doubt this poet's capacity for the very white heat of emotion, we would commend to his perusal "The Destroyer of a Soul," or those passionately beautiful lines, "A Proselyte":
O equal of the lordly sun!
Since thou hast cast on me thy fire,
My cloistral peace, so hardly won,
Breaks from its trance:
One glance
From thee hath all its joy undone!
Deeper still may we pierce to the heart-pleading of that early and tragic poem "Darkness"—even to the vehement self-revelation of "The Dark Angel," and its companion-piece, "To Passions":
Easy and simple are to bear:
My hatred of myself is pain
Beyond my tolerable share.
Such lines are more convincing to some of us than the melodramatic outpourings of a Byron. As for "The Dark Angel"—perhaps the most famous of all Lionel Johnson's work—that is a poem of quintessential power, a very flash-light upon the bitter and eternal conflict which had its rise in Eden:
