O thou weed, Who art so lovely fair, and smell'st so sweet That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne'er been born! Meredith has written nothing more like _Modern Love_, and for twenty years after the publication of the volume containing it he published no other volume of verse. In 1883 appeared _Poems and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth_; in 1887 _Poems and Ballads of Tragic Life_; and, in 1888, _A Reading of Earth_, to which _A Reading of Life_ is a sort of companion volume. The main part of this work is a kind of nature-poetry unlike any other nature-poetry; but there are several groups which must be distinguished from it. One group contains _Cassandra_, from the volume of 1862, _The Nuptials of Attila, The Song of Theodolinda_, from the volume of 1887. There is something fierce, savage, convulsive, in the passion which informs these poems; a note sounded in our days by no other poet. The words rush rattling on one another, like the clashing of spears or the ring of iron on iron in a day of old-world battle. The lines are javelins, consonanted lines full of force and fury, as if sung or played by a northern skald harping on a field of slain. There is another group of romantic ballads, containing the early _Margaret's Bridal Eve_, and the later _Arch-duchess Anne_ and _The Young Princess_. There are also the humorous and pathetic studies in _Roadside Philosophers_ and the like, in which, forty years ago, Meredith anticipated, with the dignity of a poet, the vernacular studies of others. And, finally, there is a section containing poems of impassioned meditation, beginning with the lofty and sustained ode to _France, December_ 1870, and ending with the volcanic volume of _Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History_, published in 1900.