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volume of 1876 (a volume I refer to specially because in it he speaks more in his own person than he permitted himself to do in any preceding book):—

"Have you found your life distasteful?
 My life did and does smack sweet.
Was your youth of pleasure wasteful?
 Mine I saved, and hold complete.
Do your joys with age diminish?
 When mine fail me, I'll complain.
Must in death your daylight finish?
 My sun sets to rise again.

"I find earth not gray but rosy,
 Heaven not grim but fair of hue.
Do I stoop? I pluck a posy.
 Do I stand and stare? All's blue."

And more recently still, in "The Two Poets of Croisic," 1878:—

"Dear, shall I tell you? There's a simple test
 Would serve when people take on them to weigh
The worth of poets, 'Who was better, best,
 This, that, the other bard?' (bards none gainsay
As good, observe! no matter for the rest)
 'What quality preponderating may
Turn the scale as it trembles?' End the strife
By asking 'Which one led a happy life?'

"If one did, over his antagonist
 That yelled or shrieked or sobbed or wept or wailed
Or simply had the dumps,—dispute who list,—
 I count him victor."

A test fatal to the supremacy of not a few of the very greatest, as Jesus, Dante, Shakespeare, Pascal, Burns, Shelley, Keats, Leopardi, but which certainly reveals the nature of the poet who chooses it.