Mermaid_, and _House_, he avails himself of the habitual reticence of Shakespeare to defend by implication his own reserve, not without a passing sarcasm at the cost of the poet who took Europe by storm with the pageant of his broken heart. _House_ is for the most part rank prose, but it sums up incisively in the well-known retort: "'_With this same key Shakespeare unlocked his heart_,' once more! Did Shakespeare? If so, the less Shakespeare he!" This "house" image is singularly frequent in this volume. The poet seems haunted by the idea of the barrier walls, which keep off the public gaze, but admit the privileged spirit. In _Fears and Scruples_ it symbolises the reticence of God. In _Appearances_ the "poor room" in which troth was plighted and the "rich room" in which "the other word was spoken" become half human in sympathy. A woman's "natural magic" makes the bare walls she dwells in a "fairy tale" of verdure and song. The prologue seems deliberately to strike this note, with its exquisite idealisation of the old red brick wall and its creepers lush and lithe,--a formidable barrier indeed, but one which spirit and love can pass. For here the "wall" is the unsympathetic throng who close the poet in; there "I--prison-bird, with a ruddy strife At breast, and a life whence storm-notes start-- Hold on, hope hard in the subtle thing That's spirit: though cloistered fast, soar free; Account as wood, brick, stone, this ring Of the rueful neighbours, and--forth to thee!"