Let us stop at that and collect our impressions. It is a very dangerous subject that Mr. Andrews has chosen. The temptation to indulge in “sob-stuff” in reflecting on “Mother,” is well-nigh irresistible, since the sentiment goes back to the childhood not only of the individual, but of the race, and probably earlier. It is almost inextricably mingled with the tears of things. But tears are not a proper accompaniment of poetry or of beauty. The mission of Art is to dry all tears, and the utmost severity and serenity are needed in dealing with a profoundly emotional subject exactly to keep the tears from welling into it. That Mr. Andrews has not succeeded is evident from the opening stanza which I have just quoted. It is almost drenched with sentiment. Listen to the rhythm which is nearly a lullaby in reverie, and let us ask ourselves whether it is not calculated, quite apart from the words, to throw the reader backwards into his mother’s arms. “Which once enclosed my world,” “and the white road wending,” “whereon my stars were hung,” “the blown and shifting wraith of blue smoke curled”—these are sentimental rhythms, and their inevitable effect is to induce a reverie of the past rather than a meditation or contemplation of the future. The mood is backward-looking, and not forward-looking, an indulgence and not an effort of spirit. It is quite in accordance with the diagnosis that a concluding stanza of the poem should repeat the opening stanza, since there is no release in a mood of this kind. In great reveries it will be observed that the movement is forward and upwards. The action starts from a profound sentiment, but it works its way upward to a triumphant assertion of spiritual realisation. Look, for instance, at _Lycidas_ or _Adonais_, both sentimental in origin, but both exalted in conclusion. There the song springs from a dewy bed, drenched with tears, but it mounts and mounts until it ends in the sky. Mr. Andrews keeps well to the ground, and, as I have said, his concluding stanza is only a slight variation of the prelude. The influence of Kipling is to be discerned at work, especially Kipling’s “Envoi,” beginning, “There’s a whisper down the field.” Kipling is another of the writers whose sentiment is still tied to his mother’s apron-strings; and his “Envoi” and “Mother o’ Mine” are almost as poisonous to poetry as Meredith’s “Love in the Valley.” We need not be averse to sentiment as such, but the most careful discrimination between the nest and the sky is essential to an æsthetic use of it. Let us start in sentiment, by all means, but let us rise from it as quickly as possible.