After

"How fared you when you mortal were? What did you see on my peopled star?" "Oh, well enough," I answered her, "It went for me where mortals are!

"I saw blue flowers and the merlin's flight And the rime on the wintry tree, Blue doves I saw and summer light On the wings of the cinnamon bee."

There is in all this a kind of reverent worship without any trace of mysticism. And still less of that modern attitude more popular and surely more fruitless than mysticism--defiance.

There is a quite different side to the poetry of Mr. Hodgson, which one would hardly suspect after reading his outdoor verse. The lamplit silence of the library is as charming to him as the fragrant silence of the woods. He is as much of a recluse among books as he is among flowers. No poet of today seems more self-sufficient. Although a lover of humanity, he seems to require no companionship. He is no more lonely than a cat, and has as many resources as Tabby herself. Now when he talks about books, his poetry becomes intimate, and forsakes all objectivity. His humour, a purely intellectual quality with him, rises unrestrainedly.