The wide scope of this sympathy, the facility with which genius can handle extreme contrasts of the same passion with equal skill, is, I think, finely exemplified in the two poems of “Maud” and “Guinevere.” I have already compared the latter to an exquisite piece of sculpture. The former seems to me like a wild, fanciful, highly-coloured painting, in which some true artist has striven to embody the unattainable conceptions of a dream. Was ever colouring mixed on palette more vivid and glowing than this description of a lover waiting for his mistress in her garden— “There falls a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate; She is coming—my dove, my dear! She is coming—my life, my fate! The red rose cries, She is near—she is near! The white rose weeps,—She is late! The larkspur listens,—I hear—I hear! And the lily whispers,—I wait!” Is there not in these lines, besides grace, sentiment, pathos, tenderness, a wealth of pictorial fancy, such as Landseer himself has not outdone in his magical representation of clown and elves and stars and flowers grouped round Titania in Fairyland? As in “clear-faced Arthur” is rendered the ideal dignity of love, so in Maud’s hapless suitor we find exemplified its mad enthusiasm and passion. With both, self is unhesitatingly sacrificed to the welfare of another. When the fatal shot has been fired, and the exile faces a foreign shore in utter hopelessness that he shall ever look on the face he loves again, the pity for himself that cannot but chill his sorrowing heart merges in anxiety and tenderness for Maud. Even now—perhaps now more than ever—in grief, danger, and privation, his first thought flies to the idol for whom he has built his life into a throne, that she may reign there unrivalled and supreme. May _his_ be the shame, the sorrow, and the suffering!—such is his wild, pathetic prayer—and let the treasure of his heart go free. If there be danger, let it lower round _his_ unprotected head. If there be punishment, let _him_ bear it for both! Ay, though she may never reward him for it, never even know it; for in this world these two are surely parted not to meet again. What of that? She is still his queen—his goddess—his love—the aim of his existence, the darling of his care. “Comfort her, comfort her, all things good, While I am over the sea; Let me and my passionate love go by, But speak to her all things holy and high, Whatever happen to me. Me and my harmful love go by, But come to her waking, or find her asleep, Powers of the height, powers of the deep, And comfort her though I die.”