INTRODUCTION
And yet,—
again,—
"the light,
Returning, shall give back the golden hours,
Ocean a windless level . . . ."
again, best of all, in the last word,—
"Still may Time hold some golden space
Where I'll unpack that scented store
Of song and flower and sky and face,
And count, and touch, and turn them o'er,
Musing upon them."
He cannot forego his sensations, that "box of compacted sweets." He even forefeels a ghostly landscape where two shall go wandering through the night, "alone." So the faith that broke its chrysalis in the first disillusionment of boyhood, in "Second Best," beautiful with the burden of Greek lyricism, ends triumphant with the spirit still unsubdued.—
"Proud, then, clear-eyed and laughing, go to greet
Death as a friend."
So go, "with unreluctant tread." But in the disillusionment of beauty and of love there is an older tone. With what bitter savor, with what grossness of diction, caught from the Elizabethan and satirical elements in his culture, he spends anger in words! He reacts, he rebels, he storms. A dozen poems hardly exhaust his gall. It is not merely that beauty and joy and love are transient, now, but in their going they are corrupted into their opposites,—ugli-
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