"Some Mænad girl with vine leaves on her breast Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans, So softly that the little nested thrush Will never wake, and then will shrilly laugh and leap will rush Down the green valley where the fallen dew Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store, Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew Trample the loosetrife down along the shore, And where their horned master sits in state Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate." And yet the religious influence still makes itself felt. "Why must I behold [he exclaims] The wan white face of that deserted Christ Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold?" but it is only momentary, and once more he sports with the sylvan gods and goddesses till "The heron passes homeward from the mere, The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees, Gold world by world the silent stars appear And like a blossom blows--before the breeze A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky." and he hears "the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate." Wilde never wrote anything better in verse than this with the single exception of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." The poem deserves to rank among the finest pastorals in the language. It is essentially musical, written with artistic restraint and with a discrimination of the use of words and their combination that marks the great artist. It is a true nature poem and it will appeal to all those who prefer musical verse to the artificial manufacture of rhymes, and simple sentences to the torturing of words into unheard-of combinations. As a contrast to it comes the "Magdalen Walks" which, in construction and rhythm, is somewhat lacking in ease and freedom. It is a curious thing that Wilde's affections seemed to alternate between the unordered simplicity of English woods and meadows and the trim artificial parterres and bouquets of Versailles or Sans Souci. There is a constraint about the metre of this poem which does rather suggest a man walking along a trim avenue from which he can perceive flowers, meadows and riotous hedges--in the distance. There is also a suggestion of Tennyson's "Maud" about-- "And the plane to the pine tree is whispering some tale of love Till it rustles with laughter and tosses its mantle of green And the gloom of the wych elm's hollow is lit with the iris sheen Of the burnished rainbow throat and the silver breast of a dove." "Impression du Matin" might be said to be a successful attempt to render a Whistler pastel into verse, but there is a human note about the last verse that elevates the poem far above such a mere _tour de force_, and there is a fine sense of effect in the picture of the "pale woman all alone" standing in the glimmering light of the gas lamp as the rays of the sun just touch her hair.