Hearken to your dead heroes, Italy; Hearken to those who made your history A bright and splendid thing ... ... What Mazzini said Have you so soon forgotten? You, who bled With Garibaldi, and the thousand more? He spoke, and your young men to battle bore His gospel with them, of men's brotherhood, Of Justice, that before the tyrant, stood Accusing, and of truth and charity. His dust to-day lies with you, Italy; Where lie his words? That sword is in your hand To seize unrighteously another's land-- Your fleet in foreign waters. By what right Dare you act so, save arrogance of might, Such cruel force as ground the Austrian heel Upon your Lombard cities, ringed with steel Unhappy Naples and despairing Rome, That exiled Garibaldi from his home, That served itself with sycophants and knaves, That filled the prisons and the nameless graves, Till, like a sunrise o'er a stormy sea, Flashed out the spirit of free Italy? Like all Mr Presland's work, this poem is closely woven: quotation does not serve it well, but this passage will at least indicate its theme and temper, and thus light up personality. There is, in the same volume, _Songs of Changing Skies_, a bit of spiritual autobiography called "To Robert Browning." It destroys at once any fiction of literary isolation; although to be sure there are cute critics who will declare that the resemblance to Browning in some of these lyrics is too obvious to need the discipular confession. It may be that these clever people are right. Yes, perhaps one would recognize certain signs in poems like "A Present from Luther" and "An Error of Luther's." But the whole question of influence is nearly always made too much of, especially in its mere outward marks. Granting the love of Browning and the debt to his teaching, which are honourably admitted here, some effect upon thought and style would be inevitable. But a deeper and more potent cause of the resemblance lies in a real affinity of mind, in buoyancy and breadth and tenacious belief in good; and in a similar poetic equipment. One must not launch upon a comparison, but it may be observed that he has profited by his master's faults, artistic and philosophical, at least as much as by his merits. For, probably warned by example, this poet works with patient care to express his thought simply; and he has attained a style of perfect clearness. While his philosophy, though full of brave hope, has escaped the unreason of that optimism which declares that 'All's well.' True, he makes Joan say, in the last words of his "Joan of Arc": ... so near eternity The evil dwindles, good alone remains, And good triumphant--God is merciful.