'In the glory of youth the young man went; His heart with pride was stirred; "They should yield," he cried, "to the message sent, And force of the burning word." 'The long years passed and a wearied man Crept back to the old home door: "I have spoken my word and none has heard, And the great world rolls as before."' Or this:-- 'Forward we look, and we gild it all, Rich is the picture and tender and fair, Backward we look, and the blue mists fall, Veiling the troubles that once were there. 'Ah! well, and ah! well, and lighter the load, If heart the enchanter weave his web; If he tells love-stories to cheat the road, And binds in our dreams the purple thread.' Or this:-- 'Ah! love so sweet, and patient, and fond, I wandered far from thy sight, And I said to myself that the world beyond Was a garden rich with delight. 'And there rose an image from morn to morn Of new bewildering days, Till my heart grew proud and I thought with scorn Of the peaceful homely ways. 'For the young are light, and I never had learnt To know the false from the true, And my feet were drawn where the far lights burnt With their wonder strange and new. 'And now how bitter to heart is the taste, And gone are the folly and pride; And I save what I can from the years of waste And stand once more at thy side.' It will be seen that the store of words at the singer's command is limited; his palette is set with few colours; his lute has but few strings; and it is in this that he resembles the singers of the Italian folk-songs and couplets which have only the limited vocabulary of the peasant to express so many of the deepest chords of human feeling. These English verses might, like those Italian _canzone_, be created by one to whom all the stores of knowledge and of culture were sealed books. They are cast in the simplest of all possible forms of expression, and there is not one which would not suit the plaintive measure of a crooning ballad sung in twilight by the embers of a cottage hearth. They suggest their own music, and it would be difficult to read them aloud without falling into some rhythmical balance of their lines. Auberon Herbert is, we know by his prose works, master of rich stores of language and of scholarship; therefore this simplicity of style in his verses springs, not from poverty of resources, but from correctness of instinct. These songs are _naïf_ as a child's prayer at its mother's knee at eventide; were they ornate or elaborate they would cease to be, as they are now, the frank and spontaneous utterances of the soul, natural, I have said, as song of linnet or of lark.