But that is dramatically appropriate--the logic of Joan's character. And it seems to me that a more intimate and sincere expression is to be found in the chastened mood of a sonnet called "To April": There will be other days as fair as these Which I shall never see; for other eyes The lyric loveliness of cherry trees Shall bloom milk-white against the windy skies And I not praise them; where upon the stream The faëry tracery of willows lies I shall not see the sunlight's flying gleam, Nor watch the swallows sudden dip and rise. Most mutable the forms of beauty are, Yet Beauty most eternal and unchanged, Perfect for us, and for posterity Still perfect; yearly is the pageant ranged. And dare we wish that our poor dust should mar The wonder of such immortality? The wistfulness of that wins by its grace where a more strenuous optimism provokes a challenge; just as the tentative 'perhaps' in the last line of "Sophocles' Antigone" softly woos the sceptic: There are fair flowers that never came to fruit; Cut by sharp winds, or eaten by late frost, Barrenly in forgetfulness, they're lost To little-heedful Nature; so, in suit, Beneath the footsteps of calamity Young lives and lovely innocently come To total up old evil's deadly sum-- Do the gods pity dead Antigone? We look too close, we look too close on earth At good and evil; blind are Nature's laws That kill, or make alive, and so are done. Not in the circle of this death and birth May we perceive a justifying cause, Beyond, perhaps, for God and good are one. One must not pause to gather up the threads of personality in these three volumes of lyrics; and, with the more important work in drama still ahead, it is only possible just to glance at their specific values. All the pieces are not equally good, of course, but there is a proportion of exquisite poetry in each volume, and--a healthy sign--the proportion is greatest in the last of the three, _Songs of Changing Skies_, published in 1913. Of this best work there are at least three kinds. There is that which one may call the lyric proper, small in size, simple in design, light in texture, the free expression of a single mood. Such is "From a Window," in which the peculiar charm of the poet's verse in this kind is well seen. It is not a showy attractiveness: it does not storm the senses nor clamour for approval. It enters the mind quietly, and perhaps with some hesitancy; but having entered, it takes absolute possession.