As we have fallen upon this personal, biographical vein, and as the best key to a man's poetry is to know the man and what he may have encountered, we may cite the poem entitled "The Pearl." It is compact of life and experience: we see the courtier and the scholar ripening into the saint; the world not forgotten or ignored, but its best pursuits calmly weighed, fondly enumerated and left behind, as steps of the celestial ladder. THE PEARL. "I know the ways of learning; both the head And pipes that feed the press, and make it run; What reason hath from nature borrowed, Or of itself, like a good housewife, spun In laws and policy; what the stars conspire; What willing nature speaks, what forc'd by fire; Both th' old discoveries, and the new-found seas; The stock and surplus, cause and history: All these stand open, or I have the keys: Yet I love thee. "I know the ways of honor, what maintains The quick returns of courtesy and wit: In vies of favor whether party gains, When glory swells the heart and mouldeth it To all expressions both of hand and eye, Which on the world a true-love knot may tie, And bear the bundle, wheresoe'er it goes: How many drams of spirits there must be To sell my life unto my friends or foes: Yet I love thee. "I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains, The lullings and the relishes of it; The propositions of hot blood and brains; What mirth and music mean; what love and wit Have done these twenty hundred years, and more; I know the projects of unbridled store: My stuff is flesh, not grass; my senses live, And grumble oft, that they have more in me Than he that curbs them, being but one to five: Yet I love thee. "I know all these, and have them in my hand; Therefore not sealed, but with open eyes I fly to thee, and fully understand Both the main sale, and the commodities; And at what rate and price I have thy love; With all the circumstances that may move: Yet through the labyrinths, not my grovelling wit, But thy silk-twist let down from heav'n to me, Did both conduct and teach me, how, by it, To climb to thee." A splendid retrospect this of a short life: and with what accurate knowledge of art, science, policy, literature, of powers of body and mind. Herbert's poems are full of this sterling sense and philosophical reflection--the mintage of a master mind. Addison's version of the twenty-third Psalm has entered into every household and penetrated every heart by its sweetness and pathos. There is equal gentleness and sincerity in Herbert's: "The God of love my shepherd is, And he that doth me feed. While he is mine, and I am his, What can I want or need?