* * * * *

I hope that some of my readers will be interested in Miss Beatrice
Crane's little poem, Blush-Roses, for which her father, Mr. Walter Crane,
has done so lovely and graceful a design. Mrs. Simon, of Birkdale Park,
Southport, tells me that she offered a prize last term at her school for
the best sonnet on any work of art. The poems were sent to Professor
Dowden, who awarded the prize to the youthful authoress of the following
sonnet on Mr. Watts's picture of Hope:

She sits with drooping form and fair bent head,
Low-bent to hear the faintly-sounding strain
That thrills her with the sweet uncertain pain
Of timid trust and restful tears unshed.
Around she feels vast spaces. Awe and dread

Encompass her.
And the dark doubt she fain
Would banish, sees the shuddering fear remain,
And ever presses near with stealthy tread.

But not for ever will the misty space
Close down upon her meekly-patient eyes.
The steady light within them soon will ope
Their heavy lids, and then the sweet fair face,
Uplifted in a sudden glad surprise,
Will find the bright reward which comes to Hope.

I myself am rather inclined to prefer this sonnet on Mr. Watts's Psyche.
The sixth line is deficient; but, in spite of the faulty _technique_,
there is a great deal that is suggestive in it:

Unfathomable boundless mystery,
Last work of the Creator, deathless, vast,
Soul--essence moulded of a changeful past;
Thou art the offspring of Eternity;
Breath of his breath, by his vitality
Engendered, in his image cast,
Part of the Nature-song whereof the last
Chord soundeth never in the harmony.
'Psyche'! Thy form is shadowed o'er with pain
Born of intensest longing, and the rain
Of a world's weeping lieth like a sea
Of silent soundless sorrow in thine eyes.
Yet grief is not eternal, for clouds rise
From out the ocean everlastingly.

I have to thank Mr. William Rossetti for kindly allowing me to reproduce
Dante Gabriel Rossetti's drawing of the authoress of Goblin Market; and
thanks are also due to Mr. Lafayette, of Dublin, for the use of his
photograph of H.R.H. the Princess of Wales in her Academic Robes as
Doctor of Music, which served as our frontispiece last month, and to
Messrs. Hills and Saunders, of Oxford, and Mr. Lord and Mr. Blanchard, of
Cambridge, for a similar courtesy in the case of the article on Greek
Plays at the Universities.

(1) Canute the Great. By Michael Field. (Bell and Sons.)

(2) Life of Elizabeth Gilbert. By Frances Martin. (Macmillan and Co.)

(3) Ourselves and Our Neighbours. By Louise Chandler Moulton. (Ward and
Downey.)

(4) Warring Angels. (Fisher Unwin.)

(5) A Song of Jubilee and Other Poems. By Mrs. De Courcy Laffan. (Kegan
Paul.)

(6) Life of Madame de Stael. By Bella Duffy. 'Eminent Women' Series.

(7) Life of Mrs. Godolphin. By John Evelyn, Esq., of Wooton. Edited by
William Harcourt of Nuneham. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co.)

THE POETS' CORNER--V

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 15, 1888.)

Mr. Heywood's Salome seems to have thrilled the critics of the United
States.