Song"; it may be the development of a great and consuming spiritual quest, as in "The Visionary," "The Child of Romance," "The Poetess," and the "SunWorshipper"; and it may run into such impressive tragic extremes as those in the "Actress " and the "Heart Broken," or into the rare and tremulous spiritual issues of the "Lost Angel," the "Selfconscious," and the "Spirit's Kiss." Still the same theme is illustrated, whatever be the special form of expression: in man there is nothing great but mind, and the highest poetical achievement is to depict intellectual, emotional, and spiritual experience.

In "The Serpent Play," which followed "Maiden Ecstasy," Dr. Hake illustrated his allegorical method in a "divine pastoral." While slightly abstruse this poem displays great intellectual acuteness and spiritual elevation. It is a variation on the dominant theme that evil is a powerful factor in the world, and that the good man conquers by suffering. "He lives the while he dies." Hope becomes possession only through a severe ordeal, suspense in the end being transmuted to perfect joy,

"High souls death's rusty fetters break,

To the new life awake,

And gather to the chambers of the Blest!

"

In "The New Day," a series of ninety-three sonnets, the poet is as rich in idea, as fertile in graceful imagery, as dexterous in phraseology, as melodious in movement, and fully as direct and definite in expression as in his earlier works. There are sonnets of charming reminiscence-whetting the interest around old days of the poet with Rossetti

and George Borrow-sonnets nobly enshrining a long and valued friendship; sonnets on aspects of Nature-one on great whales, one on the Alps, and one of delicately beautiful texture on a striking sunset-and sonnets many and valuable on the problem of life from the author's favourite point of view. The form is that of Shakespeare; the thought and movement (as e.g. Sonnet xlii. on "Remembered Pleasures") occasionally recall Wordsworth, as the other poems likewise sometimes do; but everywhere stands revealed the notable personality of Dr. Hake. He has always a mind of his own, and is always himself. He is never, indeed, a popular poet in the ordinary acceptation of the phrase-his subtlety, his rapid transitions of thought, his frequent sternness of concision prevent this, but he is a poet's poet, speaking to men with learned leisure and serious motives, likely to impress the wise and thoughtful. He should command his own particular audience, but they must be those that have ears to hear. There is comfort in this reflection, for it is well in an age that is called materialistic and severely practical if we can still say of a poet's communications, "These things are a mystery."

Dr. Hake died on the 11th of January, 1895.

THOMAS BAYNE,

*

THE

PARABLES AND TALES.

1872.

THOMAS GORDON HAKE.

OLD SOULS.

HE world, not hushed, lay as in trance;
It saw the future in its van,

And drew its riches in advance,

To meet the greedy wants of man;
Till length of days, untimely sped,
Left its account unaudited.

The sun, untired, still rose and set,

Swerved not an instant from its beat;
It had not lost a moment yet,

Nor used in vain its light and heat;
But, as in trance, from when it rose
To when it sank, man craved repose.

A holy light that shone of yore

He saw, despised, and left behind;
His heart was rotting to the core

Locked in the slumbers of the mind:
Not beat of drum, nor sound of fife,
Could rouse it to a sense of life.

A cry was heard, intoned and slow,

Of one who had no wares to vend :
His words were gentle, dull and low,
And he called out "Old souls to mend !"

He peddled on from door to door,
And looked not up to rich or poor.

His step kept on as if in pace

With some old timepiece in his head, Nor ever did its way retrace;

Nor right nor left turned he his tread, But uttered still his tinker's cry To din the ears of passers-by.

So well they knew the olden note
Few heeded what the tinker spake,
Though here and there an ear it smote
And seemed a sudden hold to take;
But they had not the time to stay,
And it would do some other day.

Still on his way the tinker wends, Though jobs are far between and few; But here and there a soul he mends

And makes it look as good as new. Once set to work, once fairly hired, His dull old hammer seems inspired.

Over the task his features glow;
He knocks away the rusty flakes;

A spark flies off at every blow;
At every rap new life awakes.
The soul once cleansed of outward sins,
His subtile handicraft begins.

Like iron unannealed and crude

The soul is plunged into the blast;

To temper it, however rude,

'Tis next in holy water cast;

Then on the anvil it receives

The nimblest stroke the tinker gives.

The tinker's task is at an end:

Stamped was the cross by that last blow.
Again his
cry, "Old souls to mend!"
Is heard in accents dull and low.

He pauses not to seek his pay,-
That too will do another day.

One stops and says, "This soul of mine
Has been a tidy piece of ware,
But rust and rot in it combine,

And now corruption lays it bare.
Give it a look: there was a day
When it the morning hymn could say."

The tinker looks into his eye,

And there detects besetting sin,

The decent old-established lie,

That creeps through all the chinks within. Lank are its tendrils, thick its shoots, And like a worm's nest coil the roots.

Its flowers a deadly berry bear,

Whose seed, if tended from the pod,
Had grown in beauty with the year,
Like deodara drawn to God;
Not as the dank and curly brake,
That fosters venom for the snake.

The tinker takes the weed in tow,

And roots it out with tooth and nail;

His labour patient to bestow,

Lest like the herd of men he fail.

How best to extirpate the weed,
Has grown with him into a creed.