"The tree many-rooted That swells to the sky With frondage red-fruited The life-tree am I; In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves; ye shall live and not die. "But the Gods of your fashion That take and that give, In their pity and passion That scourge and forgive, They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die and not live. "My own blood is what stanches The wounds in my bark: Stars caught in my branches Make day of the dark, And are worshipped as suns till the sunrise shall tread out their fires as a spark." Morris's interpretation of pre-Raphaelite tenets took him into mediæval legend and the classics for his subject matter. In his first volume, "The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems," he came into competition with Tennyson, who was at the same time issuing his Arthurian legends. The polish of Tennyson's verse, as well as its symbolical meaning for the time, was more acceptable than the actual return to the nature of the fifteenth century, and this the first volume from a pre-Raphaelite was hardly noticed by the critics. Morris sulked within his literary tents for ten years before he again appeared, this time with "The Life and Death of Jason" (1867), which immediately became popular. Later came the "Earthly Paradise." These tales, in verse noble and simple, in style recalling the tales of Chaucer, yet with a charm all their own, in which the real men and women of Chaucer give place to types, have been the delight of those who like to find in poetry a dreamland of romance where they may enjoy themselves far from the problems and toils of everyday life. He differs from all the other poets of this group in his lack of religious hope. His mind was of the type that could not stand up against the undermining influences of the age: hence world-weariness and despair are the constantly recurring notes. [Illustration: DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI] Mrs. Browning far outdistanced her husband in the early days in popularity. She pleased the people by her social enthusiasm, a characteristic more marked in her verse than in that of any of the poets mentioned. The critics have found many faults in her style, mainly those growing out of an impassioned nature which carried her at times beyond the realm of perfectly balanced art. But even an English critic of the conservatism of Edmund Gosse could at last admit that "In some of her lyrics and more rarely in her sonnets she rose to heights of passionate humanity which place her only just below the great poets of her country."