One is right, perhaps, in believing that this particular affinity with his time is instinctive, for it reveals itself in many ways, subtler or more obvious, through all his work. As forthright avowal it naturally occurs most in his earlier poems. There is, for example, the humanitarianism of the fine "Indignation" ode in his first volume, called _Interludes and Poems_. This is an invocation of righteous anger against the deplorable conditions of the workers' lives. A fierce impulse drives through the ode, in music that is sometimes troubled by its own vehemence. Wilt thou not come again, thou godly sword, Into the Spirit's hands? ..... Against our ugly wickedness, Against our wanton dealing of distress, The forced defilement of humanity, ..... And shall there be no end to life's expense In mills and yards and factories, With no more recompense Than sleep in warrens and low styes, And undelighted food? Shall still our ravenous and unhandsome mood Make men poor and keep them poor?-- In the same volume there is a passage which may be said to present the obverse of this idea. It occurs in an interlude called "An Escape," and is only incidental to the main theme, which is much more abstract than that of the ode. A young poet, Idwal, has withdrawn from the society of his friends, to meditate about life among the hills. All the winter long he has kept in solitude, his spirit seeking for mastery over material things. As the spring dawns he is on the verge of triumph, and the soul is about to put off for ever its veil of sense, when news reaches him from the outer world. His little house, from which he has been absent so long, has been broken into, and robbed, by a tramp. The friend who comes to tell about it ends his tale by a word of sympathy--"I'm sorry for you"--and Idwal replies: It's sorry I am for that perverted tramp, As having gone from being the earth's friend, Whom she would have at all her private treats. Now with the foolery called possession he Has dirtied his own freedom, cozen'd all His hearing with the lies of ownership. The earth may call to him in vain henceforth, He's got a step-dame now, his Goods.... Evidence less direct but equally strong is visible in the later work. It lies at the very root of the tragedy of _Deborah_, a heroine drawn from fisher-folk, who in the extremity of fear for her lover's life cries: O but my heart is dying in me, waiting: ..... For us, with lives so hazardous, to love Is like a poor girl's game of being a queen.