I do not say that Keble was always successful in the pursuit of simplicity. But it was his object all through. Outside the _Christian Year_, indeed, in the _Lyra Innocentium_ the studied avoidance of the ornamental and the attractive, degenerated into vapid debility. But in the "Morning" and "Evening" poems: Only, O Lord, in Thy dear love, Fit us for perfect rest above, And help us, this and every day, To live more nearly as we pray. and-- If some poor wandering child of Thine Have spurned to-day the Voice Divine, Now Lord, the gracious work begin: Let him no more lie down in sin. have the true note of pure directness; how, in the middle of so sweet and low a strain, such a stanza as-- The Rulers of this Christian land, 'Twixt Thee and us ordained to stand-- Guide Thou their course, O Lord, aright, Let all do all as in Thy sight. could be intruded, shows us how uncritical, how helpless Keble could be. Again, consider such a poem as that for the "Second Sunday after Easter," quoted above, O for a sculptor's hand, &c. and some of the stanzas on "St. Matthew's Day": There are in this loud stunning tide Of human care and crime, With whom the melodies abide Of the everlasting chime, Who carry music in their heart Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, Plying their daily task with busier feet, Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat; and again for "Septuagesima": There is a book who runs may read, &c. and what is perhaps the finest of all his lyrics, that for "Whitsunday": When God of old came down from Heaven, In power and wrath He came: Before His feet the clouds were riven, Half darkness and half flame. Around the trembling mountain's base The prostrate people lay, A day of wrath and not of grace, A dim and dreadful day. These have the authentic note of grandeur. They are lines that take the heart and imagination captive, and linger in the memory unbidden. It may be, of course, that some of them are consecrated by familiar use, by being connected with moments of emotion and resolution. What an immense, what a sacred power, these writers of liturgical poems wield! but, on the other hand, such familiarity is apt to blind us also to excellence of style. No, the claim of genuine, severe simplicity may be sustained for Keble. (2) Propriety.--I am using the word, of course, in the extended sense of delicate appositeness, not as the reverse of impropriety.--Keble has a wonderful power, without tricks of rhetoric, of touching in some natural homely feeling with exquisite grace. How could the instinctive dislike of change in familiar surroundings be more pathetically described than in the poem for Whit Monday?