etching by Whistler is, or one of those beautiful little Greek figures which in the olive woods round Tanagra men can still find, with the faint gilding and the fading crimson not yet fled from hair and lips and raiment; and many of them seem like one of Corot's twilights just passing into music, for not merely in visible colour, but in sentiment also—which is the colour of poetry—may there be a kind of tone.

But I think that the best likeness to the quality of this young poet's work I ever saw was in the landscape by the Loire. We were staying once, he and I, at Amboise, that little village with its gray-slate roofs and steep streets and gaunt grim gateway, where the quiet cottages nestle like white pigeons into the sombre clefts of the great bastioned rock, and the stately Renaissance houses stand silent and apart—very desolate now, but with some memory of the old days still lingering about the delicately-twisted pillars, and the carved doorways, with their grotesque animals, and laughing masks, and quaint heraldic devices, all reminding one of a people who could not think life real till they had made it fantastic. And above the village, and beyond the bend of the river, we used to go in the afternoon, and sketch from one of the big barges that bring the wine in autumn and the wood in winter down to the sea, or lie in the long grass and make plans pour la gloire, et pour ennuyer les philistins, or wander along the low sedgy banks, "matching our reeds in sportive rivalry," as comrades used in the old Sicilian days; and the land was an ordinary land enough, and bare too when one thought of Italy, and how the oleanders were robing the hillsides by Genoa in scarlet, and the cyclamen filling with its purple every valley from Florence to Rome; for there was not much real beauty, perhaps, in it, only long white dusty roads, and straight rows of formal poplars; but now and then some little breaking gleam of broken light would lend to the gray field and the silent barn a secret and a mystery that were hardly their own, would transfigure for one exquisite moment the peasants passing down through the vineyard, or the shepherd watching on the hill, would tip the willows with silver, and touch the river into gold; and the wonder of the effect, with the strange simplicity of the material, always seemed to me to be a little like the quality of these the verses of my friend.

OSCAR WILDE.

ROSE LEAF AND APPLE LEAF

FROM THE HILL OF GARDENS


The outline of a shadowy city spread
Between the garden and the distant hill—
And o'er yon dome the flame-ring lingers still,
Set like the glory on an angel's head:
The light fades quivering into evening blue
Behind the pine-tops on Ianiculum;
The swallow whispered to the swallow "come!"
And took the sunset on her wings, and flew.

One rift of cloud the wind caught up suspending
A ruby path between the earth and sky;
Those shreds of gold are angel wings ascending
From where the sorrows of our singers lie;
They have not found those wandering spirits yet,
But seek for ever in the red sunset.

Pass upward angel wings! Seek not for these,
They sit not in the cypress-planted graves;
Their spirits wander over moonlit waves,
And sing in all the singing of the seas;
And by green places in the spring-tide showers,
And in the re-awakening of flowers.

Some pearl-lipped shell still dewy with sea foam
Bear back to whisper where their feet have trod;
They are the earth's for evermore; fly home!
And lay a daisy at the feet of God.



IN THE COLISEUM


Night wanes; I sit in the ruin alone;
Beneath, the shadow of arches falls
From the dim outline of the broken walls;
And the half-light steals o'er the age-worn stone
From a midway arch where the moon looks through,
A silver shield in the deep, deep blue.

This is the hour of ghosts that rise;
—Line on line of the noiseless dead—
The clouds above are their awning spread;
Look into the shadow with moon-dazed eyes,
You will see the writhing of limbs in pain,
And the whole red tragedy over again.

The ghostly galleys ride out and meet,
The Cæsar sits in his golden chair,
His fingers toy with his women's hair,
The water is blood-red under his feet,—
Till the owl's long cry dies down with the night,
And one star waits for the dawning light.

ROME, 1881.



THE SEA-KING'S GRAVE


High over the wild sea-border, on the
furthest downs to the west,
Is the green grave-mound of the Norseman,
with the yew-tree grove on its crest.
And I heard in the winds his story, as they
leapt up salt from the wave,
And tore at the creaking branches that grow
from the sea-king's grave.
Some son of the old-world Vikings, the wild
sea-wandering lords,
Who sailed in a snake-prowed galley, with a
terror of twenty swords.
From the fiords of the sunless winter, they
came on an icy blast,
Till over the whole world's sea-board the
shadow of Odin passed,
Till they sped to the inland waters and under
the South-land skies,
And stared on the puny princes, with their
blue victorious eyes.
And they said he was old and royal, and a
warrior all his days,
But the king who had slain his brother lived
yet in the island ways.
And he came from a hundred battles, and
died in his last wild quest,
For he said, "I will have my vengeance, and
then I will take my rest."
He had passed on his homeward journey, and
the king of the isles was dead;
He had drunken the draught of triumph, and
his cup was the isle-king's head;
And he spoke of the song and feasting, and
the gladness of things to be,
And three days over the waters they rowed on
a waveless sea.
Till a small cloud rose to the shoreward, and
a gust broke out of the cloud,
And the spray beat over the rowers, and the
murmur of winds was loud,
With the voice of the far-off thunders, till the
shuddering air grew warm,
And the day was as dark as at even, and the
wild god rode on the storm.
But the old man laughed in the thunder as he
set his casque on his brow,
And he waved his sword in the lightnings and
clung to the painted prow.
And the shaft of the storm-god's quiver,
flashed out from the flame-flushed skies,
Rang down on his war-worn harness, and
gleamed in his fiery eyes.
And his mail and his crested helmet, and his
hair, and his beard burned red;
And they said, "It is Odin calls;" and he
fell, and they found him dead.
So here, in his war-guise armoured, they laid
him down to his rest,
In his casque with the rein-deer antlers, and
the long grey beard on his breast:
His bier was the spoil of the islands, with a
sail for a shroud beneath,
And an oar