last wave murmuring there."

Somewhat akin to the "sea

line of her soul" is the noble figure in Soothsay:

"The wild waifs cast up by the sea

Are diverse ever seasonably.

Even so the soul-tides still may land

A different drift upon the sand.

But one the sea is ever more:

And one be still, 'twixt shore and shore,

As the sea's life, thy soul in thee.'

The Sea-Limits contains the most perfect illustration of the poet's association of time with the sea, but we have also

"The hour which might have been yet might not be,

Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore

Yet whereof life was barren, -on what shore
Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?"

The House of Life55

In 73 there is a magnificent figure in which the sea is

truth:

"Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
Unto the furthest flood-brim, look with me;

Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
Miles and miles distant though the last line be,

And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,

Still leagues beyond those leagues the re is more

sea.

In Penumbra the sea's voice is regret, and in the House of Life, 40, the sea is the symbol of separation.

In Pos

session the flying foam overleaping the crest of the wave

seems to mean the "further reach of longing" that possession brings.

Chapter VI.
Morris.

When we turn from Rossetti to Morris, "builder of a

shadowy isle of bliss" we find ourselves in a wholly dif

ferent atmosphere.

It is true that the impression left

by his flowing verse, in spite of the warm coloring and the dreamlike loveliness of the whole, is a singularly sad one; however "bright, soft and fair" everything may be, even the stories that end happily have the same sad cadence about them - "each tale's ending needs must be the same"; we are ever reminded that all fades to "twilight and dark night" at last, an inscrutable fate shadows all life, struggle is

vain, the year is rich but it is slipping by and

"who knoweth

What thing cometh after death?"

His verse is saturated with the autumnal feeling that sometimes creeps upon the midsummer air and fills the soul with more piercing melancholy than the unmasked autumn itself. The sea, however, has very little to do with this impression of gentle sadness. Its figurative use is not frequent that is, when the large amount of sea-verse is considered and when so used it has for the most part the function of setting forth the concrete; in a few cases only has it a