112 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



and the echoes that are still reverberating in Europe, that 

 we found our belief that he is a great man. Without them 

 he would be an interesting rhetorician, perhaps little more. 

 There are finer poems than his " Mazeppa," but the poet 

 is the equal of that wild lover and of the great King who 

 slept while the tale was told. 



And Shelley, too, is an immortal sentiment. Men may- 

 forget to repeat his verses; they can never be as if Shelley 

 had never been. He is present wherever love and rapture 

 are. He is a part of all high-spirited and pure audacity of 

 the intellect and imagination, of all clean-handed rebel- 

 lion, of all infinite endeavour and hope. The remembered 

 splendour of his face is more to us than Parliaments; one 

 strophe of his odes is more nourishing than a rich man's 

 gold. . . . 



Under those oaks in May I could wish to see these 

 men walking together, to see their gestures and brave 

 ways. It is the poet there who all but creates them for 

 me. But only one can I fairly see because I have seen 

 him alive and speaking. Others have sent up their 

 branches higher among the stars and plunged their roots 

 deeper among the rocks and waters. But he and Chaucer 

 and Jonson and Byron have obviously much plain 

 humanity in their composition. They have a brawn and 

 friendliness not necessarily connected with poetry. We 

 use no ceremony — as we do with some other poets — with 

 Morris when we read — 



The days have slain the days, and the seasons liave gone by, 

 And brought me the summer again ; and here on the grass I lie, 

 As erst I lay and was glad ere I meddled with right and with 

 wrong. 



Or the end of " Thunder in the Garden " — 



