This poem is characteristic, both in the way it blends imagination and profound feeling with pensive thought, and in its literary flavour. One may note the opulent language, enriched from older sources, the historical lore and the allusive touch so fascinating to those who love literature for its own sake. But the poet can work at times in a very different manner. There is, for instance, another piece of unrhymed verse, "March Thoughts From England," which is a riot of light and colour, rich scent and lovely shape and bewitching sound--the sensuous rapture evoked by a Provençal scene 'recollected in tranquillity.' Or there is "April," with the keen joy of an English spring, also a glad response to the direct impressions of sense. Imagination is subordinated here; but if we turn in another direction we are likely to find it paramount. It may be manifested in such various degrees and through such different media that sharp contrasts will present themselves. Thus we might turn at once from the playful fancy of "The Child Alone" (where a little maid has escaped from mother and nurse into the wonderful, enchanted, adventurous world just outside the garden) to the thrice-heated fire of "Again I Saw Another Angel." Here imagination has fanned thought to its own fierce heat; and in the sudden flame serenity is shrivelled up and gives place to passionate despair. In a vision the poet sees the awful messenger of the Lord leap into the heavens with a great cry-- Then suddenly the earth was white With faces turned towards his light. The nations' pale expectancy Sobbed far beneath him like the sea, But men exulted in their dread, And drunken with an awful glee Beat at the portals of the dead. I saw this monstrous grave the earth Shake with a spasm as though of birth, And shudder with a sullen sound, As though the dead stirred in the ground. And that great angel girt with flame Cried till the heavens were rent around, "Come forth ye dead!"--Yet no man came. But from the intensity of that we may pass to the dainty grace of the Songs, where the poet is weaving in a gossamer texture. Or we may consider a love-lyric like "Passing," a fragile thing, lightly evoked out of a touch of fantasy and a breath of sweet pain. With thoughts too lovely to be true, With thousand, thousand dreams I strew The path that you must come. And you Will find but dew. I break my heart here, love, to dower With all its inmost sweet your bower. What scent will greet you in an hour? The gorse in flower.