Ionica. William Johnson Cory

but, as it was, he gathered in, like the old warrior, a hundred spears; like Shelley he might have said—

      "I fall upon the thorns of life; I bleed."

      His is thus a unique personality, in its blending of intense mental energy with almost passionate emotions. Few natures can stand the strain of the excessive development of even a single faculty; and with William Cory the qualities of both heart and head were over-developed. There resulted a want of balance, of moral force; he was impetuous where he should have been calm, impulsive where he should have been discreet. But on the other hand he was possessed of an almost Spartan courage; and through sorrow and suffering, through disappointment and failure, he bore himself with a high and stately tenderness, without a touch of acrimony or peevishness. He never questioned the love or justice of God; he never raged against fate, or railed at circumstance. He gathered up the fragments with a quiet hand; he never betrayed envy or jealousy; he never deplored the fact that he had not realised his own possibilities; he suffered silently, he endured patiently.

      And thus he is a deeply pathetic figure, because his great gifts and high qualities never had full scope. He might have been a great jurist, a great lawyer, a great professor, a great writer, a great administrator; and he ended as a man of erratic genius, as a teacher in a restricted sphere, though sowing, generously and prodigally, rich and fruitful seed. With great poetical force of conception, and a style both resonant and suggestive, he left a single essay of high genius, a fantastic historical work, a few books of school exercises. A privately printed volume of Letters and Journals reveals the extraordinary quality of his mind, its delicacy, its beauty, its wistfulness, its charm. There remains but the little volume of verse which is here presented, which stands apart from the poetical literature of the age. We see in these poems a singular and original contribution to the poetry of the century. The verse is in its general characteristics of the school of Tennyson, with its equable progression, its honied epithets, its soft cadences, its gentle melody. But the poems are deeply original, because they, combine a peculiar classical quality, with a frank delight in the spirit of generous boyhood. For all their wealth of idealised sentiment, they never lose sight of the fuller life of the world that waits beyond the threshold of youth, the wider issues, the glory of the battle, the hopes of the patriot, the generous visions of manhood. They are full of the romance of boyish friendships, the echoes of the river and the cricket field, the ingenuous ambitions, the chivalry, the courage of youth and health, the brilliant charm of the opening world. These things are but the prelude to, the presage of, the energies of the larger stage; his young heroes are to learn the lessons of patriotism, of manliness, of activity, of generosity, that they may display them in a wider field. Thus he wrote in "A Retrospect of School Life":—

      "Much lost I; something stayed behind,

       A snatch, maybe, of ancient song.

       Some breathings of a deathless mind,

       Some love of truth, some hate of wrong.

       And to myself in games I said,

       'What mean the books? can I win fame

       I would be like the faithful dead,

       A fearless man, and pure of blame.'"

      Then, too, there are poems of a sombre yet tender philosophy, of an Epicureanism that is seldom languid, of a Stoicism that is never hard. In this world, where so much is dark, he seems to say, we must all clasp hands and move forwards, shoulder to shoulder, never forgetting the warm companionship in the presence of the blind chaotic forces that wave their shadowy wings about us. We must love what is near and dear, we must be courageous and tender-hearted in the difficult valley. The book is full of the passionate sadness of one who feels alike the intensity and the brevity of life, and who cannot conjecture why fair things must fade as surely as they bloom.

      The poems then reflect a kind of Platonic agnosticism; they offer no solution of the formless mystery; but they seem rather to indicate the hope that, in the multiplying of human relationship, in devotion to all we hold dear, in the enkindling of the soul by all that is generous and noble and unselfish, lies the best hope of the individual and of the race. Uncheered by Christian hopefulness, and yet strong in their belief in the ardours and passions of humanity, these poems may help us to remember and love the best of life, its days of sunshine and youth, its generous companionships, its sweet ties of loyalty and love, its brave hopes and ardent impulses, which may be ours, if we are only loving and generous and high-hearted, to the threshold of the dark, and perhaps beyond.

      ARTHUR C. BENSON.

DESIDERATO

       Table of Contents

      Oh, lost and unforgotten friend,

       Whose presence change and chance deny;

       If angels turn your soft proud eye

       To lines your cynic playmate penned,

       Look on them, as you looked on me,

       When both were young; when, as we went

       Through crowds or forest ferns, you leant

       On him who loved your staff to be;

       And slouch your lazy length again

       On cushions fit for aching brow

       (Yours always ached, you know), and now

       As dainty languishing as then,

       Give them but one fastidious look,

       And if you see a trace of him

       Who humoured you in every whim,

       Seek for his heart within his book:

       For though there be enough to mark

       The man's divergence from the boy,

       Yet shines my faith without alloy

       For him who led me through that park;

       And though a stranger throw aside

       Such grains of common sentiment,

       Yet let your haughty head be bent

       To take the jetsom of the tide;

       Because this brackish turbid sea

       Throws toward thee things that pleased of yore,

       And though it wash thy feet no more,

       Its murmurs mean: "I yearn for thee."

       The world may like, for all I care,

       The gentler voice, the cooler head,

       That bows a rival to despair,

       And cheaply compliments the dead;

       That smiles at all that's coarse and rash,

       Yet wins the trophies of the fight,

       Unscathed, in honour's wreck and crash,

       Heartless, but always in the right;.

       Thanked for good counsel by the judge

       Who tramples on the bleeding brave,

       Thanked too by him who will not budge

       From claims thrice hallowed by the grave.

       Thanked, and self-pleased: ay, let him wear

       What to that noble breast was due;

       And I, dear passionate Teucer, dare

       Go through the homeless world with you.