Gerard's poems are few; the best are his vision of a lady with gold hair and brown eyes, whom he had loved in an earlier existence, and his humorous little piece on a boy's love for a fair cousin, and on their winter walk together, and the welcome smell of roast turkey which greets them on the stairs, when they come home. There are also poems of his madness, called _Chimeres_, and very beautiful in form. You read and admire, and don't understand a line, yet it seems that if we were a little more or a little less mad we would understand: "_Et j'ai deux fois vainqueur traverse l'Acheron_: _Modulant tour a tour sur la lyre d'Orphee_ _Les soupirs de la sainte et les cris de la fee_." Here is an attempt to translate the untranslatable, the sonnet called-- "_El Desdichado_." I am that dark, that disinherited, That all dishonoured Prince of Aquitaine, The Star upon my scutcheon long hath fled; A black sun on my lute doth yet remain! Oh, thou that didst console me not in vain, Within the tomb, among the midnight dead, Show me Italian seas, and blossoms wed, The rose, the vine-leaf, and the golden grain. Say, am I Love or Phoebus? have I been Or Lusignan or Biron? By a Queen Caressed within the Mermaid's haunt I lay, And twice I crossed the unpermitted stream, And touched on Orpheus' lyre as in a dream, Sighs of a Saint, and laughter of a Fay! ON BOOKS ABOUT RED MEN _To Richard Wilby, Esq., Eton College, Windsor_. My Dear Dick,--It is very good of you, among your severe studies at Eton, to write to your Uncle. I am extremely pleased to hear that your football is appreciated in the highest circles, and shall be happy to have as good an account of your skill in making Latin verses. I am glad you like "She," Mr. Rider Haggard's book which I sent you. It is "something like," as you say, and I quite agree with you, both in being in love with the heroine, and in thinking that she preaches rather too much. But, then, as she was over two thousand years old, and had lived for most of that time among cannibals, who did not understand her, one may excuse her for "jawing," as you say, a good deal, when she met white men. You want to know if "She" is a true story. Of course it is! But you have read "She," and you have read all Cooper's, and Marryat's, and Mr. Stevenson's books, and "Tom Sawyer," and "Huckleberry Finn," several times. So have I, and am quite ready to begin again. But, to my mind, books about "Red Indians" have always seemed much the most interesting. At your age, I remember, I bought a tomahawk, and, as we had also lots of spears and boomerangs from Australia, the poultry used to have rather a rough time of it.