Chapter VIII: Part 8

She tries to woo him back, with prayer and incantations; but he will not come; and when at last she is worn out with waiting, she seeks an old wizard and begs him to give her forgetfulness. But it is a hard thing that she is asking: it needs a mighty spell to make a woman forget her son; and the mother has to go without the boon. She has not wealth enough in the world to pay the Wise Man's fee. But afterwards she is glad that she was too poor to pay the price:

Because if I did not remember him,
My little child--Ah! what should we have,
He and I? Not even a grave
With a name of his own by the river's brim.
Because if among the poppies gay
On the hill-side, now my eyes are dim,
I could not fancy a child at play,
And if I should pass by the pool in the quarry
And never see him, a darling ghost,
Sailing a boat there, I should be sorry--
If in the firelit, lone December
I never heard him come scampering post
Haste down the stair--if the soul that is lost
Came back, and I did not remember.

Such poetry reveals the woman in the poet, and is precious for that reason: it brings its own new light to the book of humanity. But it is not especially characteristic of Mrs Woods' work, for much more often it is the poet in the woman who is revealed there. Powers which are independent of sex--of imagination, of sensibility, and of thought, have gone to the making of that which is finest in her verse; and surely these are gifts which, in varying degree, distinguish the poetic soul under any guise. They are not equally present here, of course. Imagination overtops them, darting with the lightness of a bird, or soaring majestically, or sweeping, strong and rapid, through a storm-cloud, or putting a swift girdle round the earth. Thought is a degree less powerful, perhaps. It is brooding, museful, tinged with a melancholy that may be wistful or passionate; and though it commonly revolves the larger issues of life within the canons of authority, it is keen and clear enough to see beyond them, and even, upon occasion, to pierce a way through. But it is not always sufficiently strong to control completely so fertile an imagination; and there is no acute sense of fact to reinforce it with truth of detail. Instead of watching, recording, analyzing, after the method of so many contemporary poets, this is a mentality which contemplates and reflects. It leans lovingly toward the past, and has a sense, partly instinctive and partly scholarly, of historic values: while, for its artistic method, it passes all the treasure that fancy has gathered, and even passion itself, through the alembic of memory. So is created a softer grace, a serener atmosphere, and a richer dignity than the realist can achieve--and we will not be churlish enough to complain if, at the same time, the salt of reality is missing.

I should think that "The Builders, A Nocturne in Westminster Abbey," most fully represents this poet's lyrical gift. Individual qualities of it may perhaps be observed more clearly elsewhere; but here they combine to produce an effect of meditative sweetness and stately, elegiac grace which are very characteristic. The poem is in ten movements, of very unequal length and irregular form. It is unrhymed, and stanzas may vary almost indefinitely in length, as the verse may pass from a dimeter, light or resonant, up through the intervening measures to the roll of the hexameter. But this originality of technique, leaving room for so many shades of thought and feeling, was certainly inspired; and below the changeful form runs perfect unity of tone. The creative impulse is subdued to the contemplative mood induced in the mind of the poet as she stands in the Abbey at night and broods upon its history. Her thought goes far back, to the early builders of the fabric whose pale phantoms seem to float in the shades of the 'grey ascending arches.'

When the stars are muffled and under them all the earth
Is a fiery fog and the sinister roar of London,
They lament for the toil of their hands, their souls' travail--
"Ah, the beautiful work!"
It was set to shine in the sun, to companion the stars
To endure as the hills, the ancient hills, endure,
Lo, like a brand
It lies, a brand consumed and blackened of fire,
In the fierce heart of London.

Or, like Dante, this poet will follow the old ghosts to a more dreadful region, and bring them news of home--

Fain would my spirit,
My living soul beat up the wind of death
To the inaccessible shore and with warm voice
Deep-resonant of the earth, salute the dead:

.....

I also would bring
To the old unheeded spirits news of Earth;
Of England, their own country, choose to tell them,
And how above St. Edward's bones the Minister
Gloriously stands, how it no more beholds
The silver Thames broadening among green meadows
And gardens green, nor sudden shimmer of streams
And the clear mild blue hills.
Rather so high it stands the whole earth under
Spreads boundless and the illimitable sea.

The steps of the sentry, pacing over the stones which cover the great dead below, remind her of those other builders who lie there, makers of Empire.

Over what dust the atom footfall passes!
Out of what distant lands, by what adventures
Superbly gathered
To lie so still in the unquiet heart of London!
Is not the balm of Africa yet clinging
About the bones of Livingstone? Consider
The long life-wandering, the strange last journey
Of this, the heroic lion-branded corpse,
Still urging to the sea!
And here the eventual far-off deep repose.

This poem is characteristic, both in the way it blends imagination and profound feeling with pensive thought, and in its literary flavour. One may note the opulent language, enriched from older sources, the historical lore and the allusive touch so fascinating to those who love literature for its own sake. But the poet can work at times in a very different manner. There is, for instance, another piece of unrhymed verse, "March Thoughts From England," which is a riot of light and colour, rich scent and lovely shape and bewitching sound--the sensuous rapture evoked by a Provençal scene 'recollected in tranquillity.' Or there is "April," with the keen joy of an English spring, also a glad response to the direct impressions of sense. Imagination is subordinated here; but if we turn in another direction we are likely to find it paramount. It may be manifested in such various degrees and through such different media that sharp contrasts will present themselves. Thus we might turn at once from the playful fancy of "The Child Alone" (where a little maid has escaped from mother and nurse into the wonderful, enchanted, adventurous world just outside the garden) to the thrice-heated fire of "Again I Saw Another Angel." Here imagination has fanned thought to its own fierce heat; and in the sudden flame serenity is shrivelled up and gives place to passionate despair. In a vision the poet sees the awful messenger of the Lord leap into the heavens with a great cry--

Then suddenly the earth was white
With faces turned towards his light.
The nations' pale expectancy
Sobbed far beneath him like the sea,
But men exulted in their dread,
And drunken with an awful glee
Beat at the portals of the dead.

I saw this monstrous grave the earth
Shake with a spasm as though of birth,
And shudder with a sullen sound,
As though the dead stirred in the ground.
And that great angel girt with flame
Cried till the heavens were rent around,
"Come forth ye dead!"--Yet no man came.

But from the intensity of that we may pass to the dainty grace of the Songs, where the poet is weaving in a gossamer texture. Or we may consider a love-lyric like "Passing," a fragile thing, lightly evoked out of a touch of fantasy and a breath of sweet pain.

With thoughts too lovely to be true,
With thousand, thousand dreams I strew
The path that you must come. And you
Will find but dew.

I break my heart here, love, to dower
With all its inmost sweet your bower.
What scent will greet you in an hour?
The gorse in flower.

In the plays there are lyrics, too, delicately stressing their character of poetic drama, and giving full compass to the author's powers in each work. Indeed, the combination of lyric and dramatic elements is very skilfully and effectively managed. There is a ballad which serves in each case to state the _motif_ at the opening of the play: not in so many words, of course, but suggested in the tragical events of some old story. And snatches of the ballad recur throughout, crooned by one of the persons of the drama, or played by a lutist at a gay court festival. But always the dramatic scheme is subserved by the lyrical fragments. Sometimes it will fill a short interval with a note of foreboding, or make a running accompaniment to the action, or induce an ironic tone, or, by interpreting emotion, it will relieve tension which had grown almost too acute. But, fittingly, when the crisis approaches and action must move freely to the end, the lyric element disappears.

"The Ballad of the Mother," which precedes "Wild Justice," creates the atmosphere in which the play moves from beginning to end. It prefigures the plot, too, in its story of the dead mother who hears her children weeping from her grave in the churchyard; and, after vainly imploring both angel and sexton to let her go and comfort them, makes a compact with the devil to release her.

"Then help me out, devil, O help me, good devil!"
"A price must be paid to a spirit of evil.
Will you pay me the price?" said the spirit from Hell.
"The price shall be paid, the bargain is made."

.....

Boom! boom! boom!
From the tower in the silence there sounds the great bell.
"I am fixing the price," said the devil from Hell.

The mother in the play is Mrs Gwyllim, wife of a vicious tyrant. For twenty-one years she had borne cruelty and humiliation at his hands. She had even been patient under the wrongs which he had inflicted on her children: the violence which had maimed her eldest son, Owain, in his infancy; which had hounded another boy away to sea and had driven a daughter into a madhouse. But at the opening of the play a sterner spirit is growing in her: meekness and submission are beginning to break down under the consciousness of a larger duty to her children. We find that she has been making appeals for help, first to their only accessible relation; and that failing, to the Vicar of their parish. But neither of these men had dared to move against the tyrant. They live on a lonely little island off the coast of Wales, where Gwyllim practically has the small population in his power. He had built a lighthouse on the coast; and at the time of the action, which is early in the nineteenth century, he is empowered to own it and to take toll from passing vessels. Thus he controls the means of existence of the working people; and the rest are deterred, by reasons of policy or family interest, from putting any check upon him.

In the first scene the mother announces to her daughter Nelto and her favourite son Shonnin the result of her appeal to the Vicar. His only reply had been to affront her with a counsel of patience, though Gwyllim's misconduct is as notorious as his wife's long-suffering. We are thus made to realize the isolation and helplessness of the family before we proceed to the second scene, with its culmination of Gwyllim's villainy and the first hint of rebellion. He comes into the house, furious at the discovery of what he calls his wife's treachery. Owain, the crippled son, is present during part of the scene; and Nelto passes and repasses before the open door of an inner room, hushing the baby with stanzas of the ballad which opens the play. In the presence of their children, Gwyllim raves at his wife, taunts her with her helplessness, boasts of his own infidelity, and flings a base charge at her, of which he says he has already informed the parson; while Nelto croons--

The angels are fled, and the sexton is sleeping,
And I am a devil, a devil from Hell.

The mother does not answer; but Owain is goaded to protest. This only excites Gwyllim further, and he strikes Owain as he sits in his invalid chair; while Shonnin, coming in from the adjoining room, brings the scene to a climax by asking of his father the money that he needs to go away to school. Gwyllim replies, taking off his coat meanwhile, that there is a certain rule in his family. When a son of his is man enough to knock him down he shall have money to go out into the world; but not before. He invites Shonnin to try his strength:

GWYLLIM. ... Come on. Why don't you come on? I'm making no
defence.

SHONNIN. Mother?

GWYLLIM. Leave her alone. Strike me, boy. I bid you do it.

SHONNIN. Then I will; with all my might, and may God
increase it!

OWAIN. There is no God.

Shonnin strikes three times; and is then felled by a blow from his father, who goes out, shouting orders to wife as he retreats. The scene closes in a final horror. Nelto, a pretty, high-spirited girl, has hitherto taken little part in the action. Her character, however, has been clearly indicated in one or two strong touches. We realize that she is young, impulsive, warm-hearted; keenly sensitive to beauty, wilful and bright; thrilling to her fingertips with life that craves its birthright of liberty and joy. But we see, too, that with all her ardour she is as proud and cold in her attitude to love as a very Artemis. And when she declares that she also has reached the point of desperation, and that sooner than remain longer in the gloom and terror of her home she will fling herself into a shameful career, we feel that the climax has indeed been reached.

In the third scene the plan of wild justice is formulated. It had originated in the mind of Owain, who had fed his brooding temper on old stories of revenge. To him the dreadful logic of the scheme seemed unanswerable. No power on earth or heaven could help them; either they must save themselves, or be destroyed, body and soul. He puts his plan before Shonnin--to lure their father by a light wrongly placed, as he rows home at night, on to the quicksands at the other side of the island. But Shonnin, if he has less strength of will than Owain, is more thoughtful and more sensitive. He is appalled at the proposal. Owain reminds him of their wrongs; asks him what this monster has done that he should live to be their ruin. And Shonnin, seeing the issues more clearly, replies

... Nothing;
But then I have done nothing to deserve
To be made a parricide.

But Nelto has been listening, and hers is a nature of a very different mettle. Besides, as she has put the alternative to herself, it means but a choice between two evils; and this plan of Owain's seems at least a cleaner thing than the existence she had contemplated. She declares that she will be the instrument of the revenge.

The rest of the play is occupied with the execution of the plan. Scene IV shows us Nelto going on her way down to the sea at night with the lantern that is to lead Gwyllim on to the sands. She is trying not to think; but the very face of nature seems to reflect the horror that is in her soul--

... Down slips the moon.
NELTO. Broken and tarnished too? Now she hangs motionless
As 'twere amazed, in a silver strait of sky
Between the long black cloud and the long black sea;
The sea crawls like a snake.

The figure of a woman suddenly appears in the path. It is her mother; she has overheard their plans, and for a moment Nelto is afraid that she has come to frustrate them. But Mrs Gwyllim has a very different purpose: she intends to take upon herself the crime that her children are about to commit--

All's fallen from me now
But naked motherhood. What! Shall a hare
Turn on the red-jawed dogs, being a mother,
The unpitying lioness suckle her whelps
Smeared with her heart's blood, this one law be stamped
For ever on the imperishable stuff
Of our mortality, and I, I only,
Forbidden to obey it?

But Nelto sees that she is too frail and weak for the task; and entreats her mother to return to the house. Time is slipping, and her father is waiting for the boat.

MRS. GWYLLIM. Ellen, you are too young;
You should be innocent--

NELTO. Never again
After this night. Come, mother, I am yours;
Make me a wanton or an avenger.

MRS. GWYLLIM. Powers
That set my spirit to swing on such a thread
Over mere blackness, teach me now to guide it!

NELTO. Mother, the moon dips.

MRS. GWYLLIM. Go, my daughter, go!
And let these hands, these miserable hands,
Too weak to avenge my children, let them be
Yet strong enough to pull upon my head
God's everlasting judgment! All that weight
Fall on me only!

We see what follows in the closing scenes as a fulfilment of that prayer. Nelto takes the boat to meet Gwyllim, intending to row him over to the false light that she herself has placed. When he has stepped ashore she is to push off instantly, and leave him either to stride forward into the quicksand, or to be drowned by the tide. Owain and his mother peer from their window through the darkness, trying to follow Nelto's movements by the light on her boat. They have locked Shonnin in his room that he may not know what they are doing and interfere. But he manages to awaken a sleeping child in the next room, and is released in time to discover what is afoot. He seizes another lantern and rushes down to the bay to signal a warning to his father. Meantime Mrs Gwyllim and Owain search the opposite shore with a telescope; they see the light on the boat approach it, stop for just so long as a man would need to clamber out, and then move away. For a few seconds they distinguish the swaying light that Gwyllim carries, and then it disappears. To their strained imagination it seems that they hear his terrible cry as he reaches the quicksand; and at the same time they are horrified to see that Nelto's boat is returning to him. She also has heard the cry, and has gone back to try to save her father. The light moves forward, slowly at first and then more quickly, as Nelto seems to spring ashore. A moment afterwards it too goes out.

No other sign comes to the watchers, for when they turn their glasses to the nearer shore Shonnin also has disappeared. They keep their dreadful vigil till dawn; and then the mother, pitifully hoping against hope, goes out to seek her children.--She returns with Nelto's shawl.

MRS. GWYLLIM. Where are my children, if they are not there?
They cannot both be--Owain, where are they?

OWAIN _[Makes a gesture towards the sea]_. Mother,
May God have mercy on us!

MRS. GWYLLIM. No, not both,
Not both! She's somewhere in the house. Come, Ellen!
She is afraid to come. Come, Nelto, Nelto!
Shonnin, my heart's adored, Shonnin, my love,
Do not be angry with me, answer, Shonnin,
Shonnin! Not dead--not dead!

OWAIN. O hush--hush--hush!

In a summary of this kind it is impossible to indicate all the dramatic values of the work. One cannot show, for instance, how the characters come to life, and by touches bold or subtle, develop an individuality out of which the conflict of the drama springs. Even the conflict itself can hardly be suggested, for an outline of the story gives only the physical action; whilst there is a spiritual struggle in the minds of at least two of the characters which is infinitely more tragical. And neither can one hope to convey any sense of the force with which the play takes possession of the mind. That is of course, its chief artistic excellence; and on a moment's consideration it is seen to be a remarkable achievement. For although the poet is working towards a catastrophe very remote from ordinary experience, and in a poetic medium deeply stamped with the marks of an earlier age, she has succeeded in evoking a powerful illusion of reality. Here and there, indeed, are signs that the handicap she has imposed upon herself is almost too great. There is, perhaps, a shade of excess in the portraiture of Gwyllim; or, to put it in another way, the author has not taken an opportunity to balance what is extraordinary in this character with the relief which would have suggested a complete personality. And now and then there is a hint of incongruity in the use of a rich Elizabethan diction, even for Owain, who is supposed to be steeped in the literature of that age.

Those are not radical defects, however, for they do not interrupt the enjoyment of the drama: they only emerge as an afterthought. If the incompleteness of Gwyllim disturbed our conviction of his villainy, the whole plot would be weakened. Whereas we are profoundly convinced that the wrongs of his family are intolerable, and the revolt a natural consequence. Similarly, if the exuberant Elizabethan language were really unfitted to the spirit of the work, I imagine that it would be barely possible to read the drama through, so irritating would be its ineptitude. But, as a fact, the language wins upon us somehow as the right expression for these people. We are probably satisfied, subconsciously, that human creatures who have been thrust back to an almost elemental stage of passion and thought, might talk in some such way. In any case the emotional force of that old style, with its vivid imagery and metaphor and its copious flow, does somehow suit the intensity and gloomy grandeur of this play.

I am not sure that it suits _The Princess of Hanover_ quite so well--which is curious, considering that we have, in the royal theme of this drama, a subject which might be supposed to require an ornate style. But in treating the tragic love-story of Sophia of Zell the poet was bound to reproduce something of the atmosphere of the Hanoverian Court, with its intrigues and indecencies and absurd conventionality. And at such points poetry lends too large a dignity. In those scenes, however, where as in "Wild Justice," the author comes to deal with naked passion and with turbulent thought that is driving some person of the drama to disaster, the instrument is admirably fitted to its purpose. Thus, in the second half of the play, when the unfortunate Princess at last yields to her lover, Königsmarck, and plots with him to escape from her sottish husband, there are moments when it seems that no other medium would serve. There is, for example, the crucial scene in the second act when the endurance of the Princess finally gives way. The action turns here directly towards its tragic culmination; for the Princess, who had hitherto saved her honour at the cost of her love, suddenly breaks down at an insult from the old Electress. The revulsion of feeling as she flings restraint away carries her to an ecstatic sense of liberty. As the Electress goes out and she is left alone with her lady-in-waiting, she laughs bitterly and declares that she is now free for ever from the House of Hanover.

LEONORA. Weeping, dear lady,
Will balm our misery better than laughter.

PRINCESS. Misery? I am mad with all the joy
Of all my years, my youth-consuming years'
Hoarded, unspent delight.
Say, Leonora,
Where are my wings? Do they not shoot up radiant,
A splendour of snowy vans, swimming the air
Just ere the rush of rapture?

One might quote a dozen such passages, in which a rush of emotion seems to overflow most naturally into poetical extravagance. There is the rhapsody of the Electress--significantly, upon the theme of Queen Elizabeth. There are the love-scenes, passionate or tender, between Königsmarck and the Princess; and the fierce moods--of sheer avidity or hatred or remorse--of the courtesan who contrives their downfall. But the only other illustration which need be given is taken from the last scene of the play; and has a further importance which must be noted. I mean the tragic irony which underlies it, and, running throughout the scene, closes the play on a note of appalling mockery.

The scene is in the Electoral Palace at night, or rather very early morning, when the grey light is slowly coming. The Princess and Leonora have come into the outer hall of their apartments to burn certain papers in the fireplace there. Their plans are all made for flight with Königsmarck on the following day; and as they kindle the fire they talk, the Princess eagerly and Leonora with more caution, about their chances of escape. But on the very spot where they stand, Königsmarck had been secretly assassinated less than an hour before. And at this moment, while they are talking, his body is being hastily bricked into a disused staircase leading out of the hall. Faint sounds of the work reach the ears of the ladies as they begin their task; but though Leonora is disquieted, the Princess will not listen to her fears. She is on the crest of a mood of exaltation--

PRINCESS. The night is almost over,
Soon will the topmost towers discern the day.
The day! The day! O last of all the days
I have spent in extreme penury of joy,
In garish misery, unhelped wrong,
And in unpardonable dishonour....

.....

Up lingering dawn!
Why dost thou creep so pale, like one afraid?
I want the sun! I want to-morrow!

LEONORA. Madam,
There was a hand on the door. What can these builders
Be doing here at this hour?

PRINCESS. Why, they're building.
What does it matter? Let them build all night,
I warrant they'll not build a wall so high
Love cannot overleap it.

_Bibliography_

LASCELLES ABERCROMBIE

_Interludes and Poems._ John Lane. 1908.

_The Sale of St Thomas._ Published by the Author. (Out of Print.)
1911.

_Emblems of Love._ John Lane. 1912.

_Deborah._ John Lane. 1913.

Contributions to _New Numbers_, February, April, August, December,
1914. (Out of Print.)

EVA GORE BOOTH

_The Three Resurrections and The Triumph of Maeve._ Longmans. 1905.

_The Agate Lamp._ Longmans. 1912.

_The Sorrowful Princess._ Longmans. 1907.

RUPERT BROOKE

_Poems._ Sidgwick & Jackson. 1911.

_1914 and Other Poems._ Sidgwick & Jackson. 1915.

Contributions to _New Numbers_. (See ABERCROMBIE.)

JOSEPH CAMPBELL

_The Mountainy Singer._ Maunsel. 1909.

_Irishry._ Maunsel. 1913.

PADRAIC COLUM

_Wild Earth._ (Out of Print.) 1907.

JAMES COUSINS

_The Quest._ Maunsel. 1906.

_Etain the Beloved._ Maunsel. 1912.

_Straight and Crooked._ Grant Richards. 1915.

WILLIAM H. DAVIES

_The Soul's Destroyer._ Alston Rivers. 1906.

_New Poems._ Elkin Mathews. 1907.

_Nature Poems._ A. C. Fifield. 1908.

_Farewell to Poesy._ A. C. Fifield. 1910.

_Songs of Joy._ A. C. Fifield. 1911.

_Foliage._ Elkin Mathews. 1913.

_The Bird of Paradise._ Methuen. 1914.

WALTER DE LA MARE

_Songs of Childhood._ Longmans. (Out of Print.) 1902.

_Poems._ Murray. 1906.

_The Listeners._ Constable. 1912.

_A Child's Day._ Constable. 1912.

_Peacock Pie._ Constable. 1913.

WILFRED WILSON GIBSON

_Urlyn the Harper_ and _The Queen's Vigil_. Elkin Mathews (Vigo
Cabinet Series). 1900.

_On the Threshold._ Samurai Press. 1907.

_The Stonefolds._ Samurai Press. 1907.

_The Web of Life._ (Out of Print.) 1908.

_Akra the Slave._ Elkin Mathews. 1910.

_Daily Bread._ Elkin Mathews. 1910.

_Womenkind._ David Nutt (Pilgrim Players Series). 1911.

_Fires._ Elkin Mathews. 1912.

_Borderlands._ Elkin Mathews. 1914.

_Thoroughfares._ Elkin Mathews. 1914.

_Battle._ Elkin Mathews. 1915.

RALPH HODGSON

_Eve._ "At the Sign of Flying Fame." (Out of Print.) 1913.

_The Bull._ "At the Sign of Flying Fame." 1913.

_The Mystery._ "At the Sign of Flying Fame." 1913.

_The Song of Honour._ (Out of Print.)

_All the above re-issued by_ The Poetry Bookshop.

FORD MADOX HUEFFER

_Collected Poems._ Max Goschen. 1914.

ROSE MACAULAY

_The Two Blind Countries._ Sidgwick & Jackson. 1914.

JOHN MASEFIELD

_Salt Water Ballads._ Grant Richards. 1902. (Out of Print.)
(Reprinted by Elkin Mathews.) 1913.

_Ballads._ Elkin Mathews. (Out of Print.) 1903.

_Ballads and Poems._ Elkin Mathews. 1910.

_The Everlasting Mercy._ Sidgwick & Jackson. 1911.

_The Widow in the Bye-Street._ Sidgwick & Jackson. 1912.

_Dauber._ Wm. Heinemann. 1913.

_Daffodil Fields._ Wm. Heinemann. 1913.

_Philip the King._ Wm. Heinemann. 1914.

_The Faithful._ Wm. Heinemann. 1915.

ALICE MILLIGAN.

_Hero Lays._ Maunsel. 1908.

SUSAN L. MITCHELL

_The Living Chalice._ Maunsel. 1913.

_Aids to the Immortality of Certain Persons in Ireland._ Maunsel.
1913.

HAROLD MONRO

_Judas._ Sampson Low. 1908.

_Before Dawn._ Constable. 1911.

_Children of Love._ Poetry Bookshop. 1914.

_Trees._ Poetry Bookshop. 1915.

=Sarojini Naidu=

_The Golden Threshold._ Wm. Heinemann. 1905.

_The Bird of Time._ Wm. Heinemann. 1912.

SEUMAS O'SULLIVAN

_Poems._ Maunsel. 1912.

_An Epilogue._ Maunsel. 1914.

"JOHN PRESLAND"

_The Marionettes._ T. Fisher Unwin. 1907.

_Joan of Arc._ Simpkin Marshall. 1909.

_Mary Queen of Scots._ Chatto & Windus. 1910.

_The Deluge._ Chatto & Windus. 1911.

_Manin._ Chatto & Windus. 1911.

_Marcus Aurelius._ Chatto & Windus. 1912.

_Songs of Changing Skies._ Chatto & Windus. 1913.

_Belisarius._ Chatto & Windus. 1913.

James Stephens

_Insurrections._ Maunsel. (Out of Print.) 1909.

_The Hill of Vision._ Maunsel. 1912.

_Songs from the Clay._ Macmillan. 1915.

MRS MARGARET L. WOODS

_Collected Poems._ John Lane. 1914.

ELLA YOUNG

_Poems._ Tower Press Booklets. 1906.

NOTE.--The lists do not, in every case, include all the author's works; the principal object being to give the books mentioned in the Studies.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Obvious spelling and typographical errors in the prose were corrected. Only egregious errors were corrected in the poetry.