Artistically, doubtless, that would have been a gain, but ethically it would have been a loss; we should have lost the moral force of the slow nemesis that creeps with death upon the soul abandoned to sensuousness. The Sea- The Islet. "And all at once they sang, 'Our island home Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam.”” AGAIN in "The Sea-Fairies," the temptation to live for the senses rather than the soul rings like a charming bell in the siren call of the fairies to the weary mariners. "Who can light on as happy a shore AND again in "The Islet," when the wife of the singer would charm him from a life of action to indolent ease we hear the song of death. "Whither, O whither, love, shall we go?'" And when he asks in the crashing music, if it shall be "To a sweet little Eden on earth that I know," She at once replies: "Thither, O thither, love, let us go.'" But he knows that in the Eden of sensuous intoxication there is spiritual death, and bravely answers, "No, love, no. For the bud ever breaks into bloom on the tree, And a worm is there in the lonely wood.'" THE SANCTITY OF LOVE. Lady Clare. The Love and Death. The Miller's Daughter. The Gardener's Daughter. Dora. The May Queen. Lord of Burleigh. The Beggar Maid. The Talking Oak. The Brook. Sea Dreams. Maud. Enoch Arden. ENNYSON is not only the finest of English TEN poets in the exquisite finish of his art, but he is one of the purest. He has not written a line which may not be read in the presence of the most chaste and sensitive. He never leaves a stain upon the whiteness of the tender flower of our home. The breath that breathes through his Idylls is ever fresh and pure. When he sings of the sanctities of love we are in that Eden of long ago, where pure hearts and calm imaged the perfect face of love. Our poet touches the most delicate subjects with a hand so steady and with eyes so clear, that the finished picture impresses us, not with the sensuous, but with the spiritual. Within the veil of Sense he shows the sanctities of the soul. We pass |