the poet declares, in one of that series which Patmore has said "St. John of the Cross might have addressed to St. Theresa." In all truth, one must search Jerusalem with many a candle before coming upon anything more ethereally yet poignantly beautiful in its own field than "Her Por-trait" or "Manus Animam Pinxit." They are not in any sense the usual style of erotic poetry, these poems which see the body but as veil and vesture of the spirit within, and which make their most piercing cry:
Oh he true
To your soul, dearest, as my life to you!
But, even aside from their poetic excellence, there is that in them for which Francis Thompson has taken all true womanhood into his debt; as did long ago that brave Cavalier lyrist who laid his tribute at the feet of "Lucasta."
Through the love poems of the later and final volume there vibrates a new note of passionate pain, and the pathos of the series entitled "Ultima" is scarcely exceeded, save by its dig-nity. "No man ever attained supreme knowledge unless his heart had been torn up by the roots": these are the words chosen by Thompson as text for his "Holocaust." And verily hand in hand the joy and the pain of love are seen treading the winepress of the succeeding lyrics, until the vintage of "Ultimum" is reached:
Now in these last spent drops, slow, slower shed,
Love dies, Love dies, Love dies—ah, Love is dead!
······
The days draw on too dark for Song or Love:
O peace, my songs, nor stir ye any wing!
For lo, the thunder hushing all the grove,
