(John of Salisbury):
His Master! Ay, his Master! Still as such
He thought of God; he loved Him; in himself
Saw nothing great or wise—simply a servant.
Ere yet his earliest troubles had begun
I heard him say, "A bishop should protect
That holy thing, God's Church, to him committed,
Not only from the world but from himself,
Loving, not hers, but her, with reverent love,
A servant's love that, gazing, fears to touch her."
······
Peace, peace! O God, we make our tale of him
As men that praise the dead!
Becket enters in procession from the cloister, and, while in a near-by chapel the monks are chanting, those four traitor-knights steal in. There is a brief colloquy, a briefer prayer—and St. Thomas falls dead beneath their swords.
The lyrics scattered in Elizabethan manner through both dramas claim a mention as graceful and in entire sympathy with the action. Perhaps most charming of all is that little Trouvère serenade in St. Thomas, beginning
I make not songs, but only find;
Love following still the circling sun
His carol casts on every wind,
And other singer is there none.
This is one of the instances in which de Vere's verse rings with the true lyric quality. His early lines "To Keats" flash back a gleam of that singer's own "white fire" of beauty; there is a delightful play of fancy throughout his Greek Idyls and through that gracious and delicate masque, "The Search after Proserpine." But in the marvellous felicity of epithet, in the winged
