124 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



tracery ; but alas for us, and alas for him, if bronze and 

 marble shall know him no more. Is it the beo:inninof of the 

 end ? Are the voices but singing on, when the spontaneity, 

 the heart-throbs, have gone out of the song, and the wings 

 of genius have flagged 1 or is it but a pause of midsummer 

 twilight, the falling of shadow that shall quickly be 

 scattered by a new dawn ? Who shall say ? Ever and 

 anon a brief outburst reveals that this singer and that can 

 still put forth the old soaring power, the old fire, and we 

 wonder whether it is weakness or wilfulness which makes 

 these nobler notes so short and so far between. This 

 interval wliich we seem to have reached suggests this as a 

 favourable time for a review of the present aspect of English 

 poetry as represented by our chief living singers. 



The roll of the leading poets of to-day is one tlu'ong of 

 splendid memories, it means to us thirty years of unsurpassed 

 achievement, years resonant with melod}^, and rich with 

 romance, thrilling with liigh-wrought passion, and rapt in 

 noble visions and deep heart-searchings ; years in which 

 poets' dreams were as the dreams of seers, and their speech 

 like the crying of prophets. Noble themes and earnestness 

 of utterance were the key-notes of those years, and it is just 

 because these characteristics can never seem to be lost beyond 

 recall, but to be resumable at the choice of the poet who has 

 yet the power to sing, that we hope on against hope, that 

 each next volume may herald the flowing of the tide once 

 more. 



From the time when Tennyson stormed the hearts of men 

 with " In Memoriam," and wrought the world to "sj'mpathy 

 with hopes and fears it heeded not," his muse has always 

 trod the mountain heio-hts, as thouo-h conscious of a crreat 

 mission, of ])owers consecrated to the help of brother men. 

 We have stood with him beside the tomb, and seen the 

 angel of consolation reach a hand through time to catch the 

 far off" interest of tears ; we have watched with him the sun of 

 a noble purpose set in a stormy sea, and have learnt that 

 defeat is not failure, nor any striving against evil vain. 

 With him we have found love in huts where poor men lie ; 

 we have from him learnt sympathy with the egotism of 

 man's passion, with the fever of woman's unrest, with the 

 despair of unfaith, and the night of hopeless anguish ; little 

 children that lie on beds of pain are nearer to our hearts 

 through him ; and England is stronger to-day for the battle 

 songs that remind us that we are of kin to heroes. 



