paratively young, to seven, which is positively old), Chant sur le berceau, the song for a round dance of children, Le pot cassé, La mise en liberté, Jeanne endormie, the delicious Chanson de grand-père, the glorious Chanson d'ancêtre, or the third of the divine and triune poems on the sleep of a little child; that after reading these—to say nothing of the rest—it seems natural to feel as though no other poet had ever known so fully or enjoyed so wisely or spoken so sweetly and so well the most precious of truths, the loveliest of loves, the sweetest and the best of doctrines.
The first of all to see the light appeared in a magazine which has long ago collapsed under the influence of far other writers than the greatest of the century. Every word of the thirty-eight lines which compose La Sieste de Jeanne—if any speech or memory of man endure so long—will be treasured as tenderly by generations as remote from the writer's as now treasure up with thankful wonder and reverence every golden fragment and jewelled spar from the wreck of Simonides or of Sappho. It has all the subtle tenderness which invests the immortal song of Danaë; and the union of perfect grace with living passion, as it were the suffusion of human flesh and blood with heavenly breath and fire, brings back once again upon our thoughts the name which is above every name in lyric song. There is not one line which could have been written and set where it stands by the hand of any lesser than the greatest among poets. For once even the high priest and even the high priestess of baby-worship who have made their names immortal among our own by this especial and most gracious attribute—even William Blake and Christina Rossetti for once are distanced in the race of song, on their own sweet ground,
