But Landor never loved London. We find him presently wandering by the shores of Wales, and among its mountains. Doubtless he takes his cast-net with him; the names of Ianthé and Ioné decorate occasional verses; a certain Rose Aylmer he encounters, too, who loans him a book (by Clara Reeve), from a sketch in which he takes hint for his wild, weird poem of _Gebir_, his first long poem--known to very few--perhaps not worth the knowing. It is blind in its drift; war and pomp and passion in it--ending with a poisoned cup; and contrasting with these, such rural beatitudes as may be conjured under Afric skies, with tender love-breezes, ending in other beatitudes in coral palaces beneath the sea. This, at any rate, is the phantasmic outline which a reading leaves upon my own memory. Perhaps another reader may be happier. That shadowy Rose Aylmer, through whom the suggestion for the poem came, was the real daughter of Lord Aylmer, of the near Welsh country; what Landor’s intimacy with her may have been, in its promise or its reach, we do not know; but we do know that when she died, somewhat later and in a far country, the poet gave her name embalmment in those wonderful little verses, which poor Charles Lamb, it is said, in his later days, would repeat over and over and over, never tiring of the melody and the pathos. Here they are:-- “Ah, what avails the sceptred race, Ah, what the form divine! What--every virtue, every grace! Rose Aylmer, all were thine. Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes May weep, but never see, A night of memories and of sighs I consecrate to thee!”