The themes in this book and those of _New Poems_, published in the same year, are of that personal kind of which we have already spoken. But you will be quite wrong if you suppose that they are therefore gloomy. On the contrary, though there is an occasional didactic piece, like that which gives its title to the first volume, there is more often a vein of humour. Thus we have the astonishing catalogue of lodging-house humanity in "Saints and Lodgers" with the satirical flavour of its invocation: Ye saints, that sing in rooms above, Do ye want souls to consecrate? And there is "The Jolly Tramp," a scrap of autobiography, perhaps the least bit coloured: I am a jolly tramp: I whine to you, Then whistles till I meet another fool. I call the labourer sir, the boy young man, The maid young lady, and the mother I Will flatter through the youngest child that walks. In "Wondering Brown" there is surely something unique in poetry: not alone in theme, and the extraordinary set of circumstances which enabled such a bit of life to be observed, by a poet, from the inside; but in the rare quality of it, its sympathetic satire, the genial incisiveness of its criticism of life: There came a man to sell his shirt, A drunken man, in life low down; When Riley, who was sitting near, Made use of these strange words to Brown. "Yon fallen man, that's just gone past, I knew in better days than these; Three shillings he could make a day, As an adept at picking peas." ..... "You'd scarcely credit it, I knew A man in this same house, low down, Who owns a fish-shop now--believe Me, or believe me not," said Brown. "He was a civil sort of cove, But did queer things, for one low down: Oft have I watched him clean his teeth-- As true as Heaven's above!" cried Brown. This humorous quality is the most marked form of an attitude of detachment which may be observed in most of the personal pieces. So complete is this detachment sometimes, as in "Strange People" or "Scotty Bill" or "Facts," that one is tempted to a heresy. Is it possible, in view of this lightness of touch, this untroubled pace and coolness of word and phrase, that the poet did not see the implications of what he was recording, or seeing them, was not greatly moved by them? Now there are certain passages which prove that that doubt is a heresy: that the poet did perceive and feel the complete significance of the facts he was handling. Otherwise, of course, he were no poet. There is evidence of this in such a poem as "A Blind Child," from which I quote a couple of stanzas: We're in the garden, where are bees And flowers, and birds, and butterflies; There is one greedy fledgling cries For all the food his parent sees!