One would expect, on reading delicacies of this kind, that the poet would express himself not less beautifully than tenderly in regard to woman. As a matter of fact, he certainly ranks next to Rossetti as a love poet, even in point of workmanship. I am also inclined to think, and I believe that critics will later recognise this, that his feeling in regard to the deeper and nobler qualities of love can only be compared to the work of Browning in the same direction. It has not Browning's force, nor the occasional sturdiness that approaches roughness. It is altogether softer and finer, and it has none of Browning's eccentricities. A collection of sonnets, fifty-nine in number, entitled "The Growth of Love" may very well be compared with Rossetti's sonnet-sequence, "The House of Life." But it is altogether unlike Rossetti's work; it deals with thought more than sensation, and with joy more than sorrow. But before we give an example of these, let me quote a little fancy of a very simple kind, that gives the character of Robert Bridges as a love poet quite as well as any long or elaborate poem could do. Long are the hours the sun is above, But when evening comes I go home to my love. I'm away the daylight hours and more, Yet she comes not down to open the door. She does not meet me upon the stair,-- She sits in my chamber and waits for me there. As I enter the room she does not move; I always walk straight up to my love; And she lets me take my wonted place At her side, and gaze in her dear dear face. There as I sit, from her head thrown, back Her hair falls straight in a shadow black. Aching and hot as my tired eyes be, She is all that I wish to see. And in my wearied and toil-dinned ear. She says all things that I wish to hear. Dusky and duskier grows the room, Yet I see her best in the darker gloom. When the winter eves are early and cold, The firelight hours are a dream of gold. And so I sit here night by night, In rest and enjoyment of love's delight. But a knock at the door, a step on the stair Will startle, alas, my love from her chair. If a stranger comes she will not stay: At the first alarm she is off and away. And he wonders, my guest, usurping her throne, That I sit so much by myself alone.