_Sister Songs_, published in 1895--the poem of which Mr William Archer has said that "Shelley would have adored it"--is a poem to read aloud; for sound and sense herein celebrate their divine nuptials. One of the high memories of the present writer is that of hearing it so read by Mr George Wyndham at the hearthstone of Byron's granddaughter. The lines therein that deal with sex, dormant in the child-girl, yielded the poet perhaps his most amazing imagery. "Superabundance," murmured some--surely a "fault" as happy as was ever son of Adam's. The charge of obscurity brought against the poem was more apt; for who that did not know of his days--and his nights--in the London streets, could follow such a poignant piece of autobiography as this? Forlorn, and faint, and stark, I had endured through watches of the dark The abashless inquisition of each star; Yea, was the outcast mark Of all those heavenly passers' scrutiny; Stood bound and helplessly For Time to shoot his barbèd minutes at me; Suffered the trampling hoof of every hour In night's slow-wheelèd car; Until the tardy dawn dragged me at length From under those dread wheels; and, bled of strength, I waited the inevitable last. Then there came past A child; like thee, a spring-flower; but a flower Fallen from the budded coronal of Spring, And through the city-streets blown withering. She passed,--O brave, sad, lovingest, tender thing!-- And of her own scant pittance did she give, That I might eat and live: Then fled, a swift and trackless fugitive. And how shall that final episode be turned more explicitly? There are still a few things left that cannot be uttered, or, if uttered, that become the counterpart, even for the willing ear, of that "tenuity of the bat's cry" reported to elude the common hearing. It is even as Balzac, great talker himself, says, that everything (especially theology I think) is the cheaper for being discussed. Yet this untold story transcends the mere romance of De Quincey's Ann, and might, indeed, for a moment, reverse Rossetti's just indictment of the life of "Jenny"--"It makes a goblin of the sun." For this "flower fallen from the budded coronal of Spring" took root and flourished, even in London mire, and again the fragrant petals unfolded and the greenery grew.