And, when thus the fight
Faltered and men once bold with faces white
Turned this and that way in excuse to flee,
I only stood, and by the foeman's might
Was overborne and mangled cruelly.

Then crawled I to her feet, in whose dear cause
I made this venture, and 'Behold,' I said,
'How I am wounded for thee in these wars.'
But she, 'Poor cripple, would'st thou I should wed
A limbless trunk?' and laughing turned from me.
Yet she was fair, and her name 'Liberty.'

The sonnet beginning

A prison is a convent without God--
Poverty, Chastity, Obedience
Its precepts are:

is very fine; and this, written just after entering the gaol, is
powerful:

Naked I came into the world of pleasure,
And naked come I to this house of pain.
Here at the gate I lay down my life's treasure,
My pride, my garments and my name with men.
The world and I henceforth shall be as twain,
No sound of me shall pierce for good or ill
These walls of grief. Nor shall I hear the vain
Laughter and tears of those who love me still.

Within, what new life waits me! Little ease,
Cold lying, hunger, nights of wakefulness,
Harsh orders given, no voice to soothe or please,
Poor thieves for friends, for books rules meaningless;
This is the grave--nay, hell. Yet, Lord of Might,
Still in Thy light my spirit shall see light.

But, indeed, all the sonnets are worth reading, and The Canon of Aughrim,
the longest poem in the book, is a most masterly and dramatic description
of the tragic life of the Irish peasant. Literature is not much indebted
to Mr. Balfour for his sophistical Defence of Philosophic Doubt which is
one of the dullest books we know, but it must be admitted that by sending
Mr. Blunt to gaol he has converted a clever rhymer into an earnest and
deep-thinking poet. The narrow confines of the prison cell seem to suit
the 'sonnet's scanty plot of ground,' and an unjust imprisonment for a
noble cause strengthens as well as deepens the nature.

In Vinculis. By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Author of The Wind and the
Whirlwind, The Love Sonnets of Proteus, etc. etc. (Kegan Paul.)

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO WALT WHITMAN

(Pall Mall Gazette, January 25, 1889.)

'No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as a literary
performance . . . or as aiming mainly toward art and aestheticism.'
'Leaves of Grass . . . has mainly been the outcropping of my own
emotional and other personal nature--an attempt, from first to last, to
put _a Person_, a human being (myself, in the latter half of the
Nineteenth Century in America,) freely, fully and truly on record. I
could not find any similar personal record in current literature that
satisfied me.' In these words Walt Whitman gives us the true attitude we
should adopt towards his work, having, indeed, a much saner view of the
value and meaning of that work than either his eloquent admirers or noisy
detractors can boast of possessing.