complexity, the poems grouped under this head have more in common with the former class than with the latter. The Ancient Mariner, it must be confessed, does cover a fairly long series of events, and the Rape of the Lock, if it does not copy epic style, at least mocks it: yet even in the former case all the events in the mariner's story are felt to be parts of a single experience, whose unity is further emphasized by the device of the wedding-guest; and in the latter case we think of the poem simply as a playful elaboration on the briefest and most fragile of episodes. The essential brevity of scope in the other poems is emphasized, in the case of The Eve of St. Agnes and Sohrab and Rustum, by the strict unity of time and action. So it may fairly be said that the principles of the short narrative poems can be applied, with some degree of allowance, to these stories of greater length. For that reason, and because each of the latter group is treated separately in the notes, only a few brief observations of a general nature need be made here.

It takes only a glance to show that the additional length of these poems is not devoted merely to covering more ground in the story and adding more narrative details. A large picture differs from a small one not so much in the number of details admitted, as in the scale upon which everything is drawn. The result is an effect of largeness and sweep, perhaps of greater weight and power. This is particularly true of poetry, for in the process of reading, details reach the mind singly, and the poems that have a sense of

leisureliness give time for the impressions to sink in, so that the reader comes with ever readier sympathy into the imaginative mood of the tale. The Eve of St. Agnes is a case in point. Step by step the reader accustoms himself to the unfamiliar atmosphere of a mediæval castle, and to the issues of love and hate, the prospects of youth and age, working themselves out within its walls, the chill and dreary chapel, the festive splendor of the hall, the long dim passages, finally the chamber of Madeline herself, where at last the reader, now fully in accord with the spirit of the tale, is prepared to follow in sympathetic mood the more intimate unfolding of the story.

A slightly closer examination of this same kind reveals the added fact that in the longer narrative poems can be detected signs of a formal organization. An

introduction" precedes the main action, leading up to it, and preparing the reader's mind. This is formal, elaborately so, in The Rape of the Lock; informal, but quite as useful, in Sohrab and Rustum. Similarly, when the story is virtually finished, a conclusion" follows, for the purpose of gradually lowering the emotional interest and bringing the mind to rest. The transfer of attention from the mariner to the wedding-guest accomplishes this in Coleridge's poem; and in Arnold's we find an example of singular perfection in the final description of the river and the eternal stars.

The longer poems, finally, present one more aspect from which it is well to view them as a whole. If we

put them beside the shorter narratives, and ask whether they owe their added power to the greater interest of the story itself or to the way in which the poet tells the story, it will appear at once that the impression is due to the latter cause. Merely as a story, the flight on St. Agnes' Eve has little to hold our interest; or again, the bare outline of even so moving a story as Sohrab and Rustum would perhaps hardly stir us. At first glance this seems most surprising; but only as we stop so to consider it do we realize how great is the poet's part in searching the story for its vital elements, and setting them forth so as to make us feel their power. The Ancient Mariner would have been a crude ghost story had not Coleridge brought us by subtle degrees under its unearthly spell, and suggested the delicate connection between the sailor's strange adventures and the experiences of the human soul. And only the sure hand of Keats, with its exquisite sensitiveness and his command of the magic phrase, could have made The Eve of St. Agnes the perfect poem that it is. Perhaps this ability of the poet to see beyond the mere facts of life, and to show what meaning they have for us, can fully be realized only in the study of the drama, where he is freest to exercise his own peculiar powers. But however that may be, he does the same for us in narrative poetry too, especially in these examples of moderate length, and through them we can gain some immediate realization of what part the poet plays in the life of the mind.

In the reading of poetry it is the most tangible thing that is likely to make the strongest first impression. And in lyric poetry, it is perhaps safe to say, this impression comes from the music. Pure music, of course, is another form of art; yet as familiarity with lyrics grows it is astonishing to see how close is the approach to the effects of pure music itself. Notes, to be sure, poetry lacks, but tones it does have, and in their beauty lies much of the peculiar charm of verse. Perhaps the nearest approach to the effect of pure music is the wordless refrain-pure song-such as is found in Shakspere's It Was a Lover and His Lass,

With a hey and a ho, and a hey noníno

It is the most artless, the most natural expression of a joyous, care-free spirit. But the song which contains these bursts of spontaneous music is itself trembling on the edge of being pure sound: in the last three lines especially it is the playful repetition of sound that carries the effect of the poem,-that, and the lilting gaiety of the rhythm:

In spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing hey ding a ding:

Sweet lovers love the Spring.

It needs only to read, immediately after this poem, Shelley's Dirge, to emphasize the matter by contrast.

We do not need to go to the meaning of the poem, to get an idea of sorrow: the sound of moans and wailing is in the very words themselves:

Rough wind, that moanest loud,

Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm whose tears are vain,
Bare woods whose branches stain,
Deep caves and dreary main,-
Wail for the world's wrong!

What should be the conclusion from many examples such as these, in which the effect is one of nearly pure emotion, and the lines are notable for their appropriateness of sound? This, surely, it would be safe to say that in one direction, at any rate, lyric poetry not only approaches the effect of music, but also employs methods not unlike those of music itself.

Furthermore, it would be natural to expect that the lyrics actually written to be sung should be those in which the sound counts for most in the total effect. And that, in a large sense, is practically found to be the case. The most obvious examples are found in the poetry of love, much of which, naturally, is in the form of songs. Shelley's The Indian Serenade is such a one, notable for the tone of its vowel sounds; notable, too, for the open simplicity of its thought. For this further appears, when we take time to think of it, that in listening to song we have no attention to spare