III.

'Tis April, but the drought of March

Is not yet pierced by sweet showers;

The unsheathed sunbeams smite and parch The springing grass, the o'erhasting flowers.

Our lily of the valley, see,

That hardly ripens for Mid-May,

My love's first pledge and annual fee,

Is blown a month before the day.

The lawn grows rusty, dusty red,

For tho' all night the gracious dew Bathes each wan blade, that else were dead, It cannot their dried sap renew.

But in the orchard is a place

Where we may lie, and feel the fall Of apple-petals on our face,

And drowsing hear the cuckoo's call,

The ring-dove's melancholy note,

The blackbird's fluting, and the hum Of bees above us, more remote,

As slumber steals our senses. Come.

ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON

MR. A. C. BENSON'S grave and graceful talent has found expression in three substantial books of verse, Poems (1893), Lyrics (1895), and Lord Vyet and Other Poems (1897). He has tried, as he says in the preface to his first published book, "to present certain aspects of men and nature that have come home to him with force in an uneventful and sheltered existence." Nature he has studied to some purpose. He might be called a naturalist-poet-or perhaps a poetnaturalist-so lovingly does he describe and dwell upon the flora and fauna of an English country-side. A glance down the tables of contents of his books brings home to us the strength of this preoccupation. He has poems on

Had he been born a century earlier, his works might have been illustrated by Bewick. These nature-poems (and there are many others, of course, dealing with larger aspects of

nature) show an observant eye and a reflective mind; for Mr. Benson seldom fails to draw a moral or to distil a sentiment from whatever subject he contemplates. If he goes to the ant, or to the newt or barbel, it is to consider his ways and be wise. I do not think, if the truth must be told, that he is equally successful in presenting those aspects of human life which his preface promises. He expresses personal moods, indeed, and sometimes moods aroused by contemplation of, or contact with, his fellow men; but he studiously avoids (or so it seems) all attempt at narrative, drama, or analysis of character, and on the whole he handles life too gingerly to take high rank as a philosophic poet.

His verse is always clear and pleasant, sometimes vivid, seldom impetuous in its movement or haunting in its cadences. His metrical skill is very considerable, and he employs some charming stanzas; but he seldom or never produces a song, a lilt, a poem that carries its own music with it and sings aloud in the reader's memory. His diction is pure, his faults of style are few. Sometimes one feels that a glaring fault would be a welcome change-only less welcome than a thrilling beauty.

Of his nature-poems this seems to me a good specimen : not quite characteristic, inasmuch as it has no particular moral; but excellently descriptive and almost dramatic in its conciseness:

THE HAWK.

The hawk slipt out of the pine, and rose in the sunlit air:

Steady and slow he poised; his shadow slept on the grass:

And the bird's song sickened and sank; she cowered with furtive stare

Dumb, till the quivering dimness should flicker and shift and pass.

Suddenly down he dropped: she heard the hiss of his wing,

Fled with a scream of terror: oh, would she had dared to rest! For the hawk at eve was full, and there was no bird to sing, And over the heather drifted the down from a bleeding breast.