'Poets are all who love--who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is LOVE.' "The muse of Morris was Poesy's own 'summer child.' Hope, love, and happiness, sunny-winged fancies and golden-hued imaginings, have nested in his heart like birds. "His verse does not cause one to tremble and turn pale--it charms and refreshes. It does not 'posses us like a passion'--it steals upon us like a spell. It does not storm the heart like an armed host--it is like the visitation of gentle spirits, 'Coming and going with a musical lightness.' It is not a turbulent mountain-torrent, hurling itself down rocky places--it is a silver stream, gliding through quiet valleys, in whose waves the sweet stars are mirrored, on whose bosom the water-lilies sleep. "Now and then there steals in a strain of sadness, like the plaint of a bereaved bird in a garden of roses; but it is a tender, not an OPPRESIVE sadness, and we know that the rainbow beauty of the verse could only be born in the wedlock of smiles and tears. In a word, his lays are not 'night and storm and darkness'--they are morning and music and sunshine. "It were idle at this time to quote or comment upon all those songs of Morris best known and oftenest sung. It would be introducing to my readers old friends who took lodgings in their memories 'long time ago.' In reference to them, I would only remark their peculiar adaptedness to popular taste, the keen discrimination, the nice tact, or, to use one of Sir James Mackintosh's happy expressions, the 'FEELosophy' with which the poet has interlaced them with the heart-strings of a nation. "'A Rock in the Wilderness' is an ode that any poet might be proud to own. It is much in the style of Campbell--chaste, devotional, 'beautiful exceedingly.' I know nothing of the kind more musically sweet than the serenade ''Tis now the promised hour'--the first line in especial-- 'The fountains serenade the flowers, Upon their silver lute-- And nestled in their leafy bowers, The forest birds are mute.' "Many an absent lover must have blessed our lyrist for giving voice to his own yearning affection, half sad with that delicate jealousy which is no wrong to the loved one, in the song 'When other friends are round thee.'