Being wise after the event, one can discover auguries of that change in the very early work. There is, for example, a group of little poems called _Faring South_, studied directly from peasant life in the south of France. They indicate that even at that time an awakening sympathy with toiling folk had begun to guide his observation; and they are in any case a very different record of European travel from that of the mere poetaster. There are studies of a stonebreaker, a thresher, a ploughman; there is a veracious little picture of a housemother, returning home at the end of market-day laden, tired and dusty; but happy to be under her own vine-porch once more. And most interesting of all the group, there is a shepherd, the forerunner of robuster shepherds in later books, and evidently a figure which has for this author a special attraction. With folded arms, against his staff he stands, Sun-soaking, rapt, within the August blaze The while his sheep with moving rustle graze The lean, parched undergrowth of stubble lands. Indifferent 'neath the low blue-laden sky He gazes fearless in the eyes of noon; And earth, because he craves of her no boon, Yields him deep-breasted, sun-steeped destiny. But these characters are not living people, they are types rather than individuals, and idealized a little. They are, as it were, seen from a distance, in passing, and in a golden light. Years were to pass before knowledge and insight could envisage them completely and a dramatic sense could endow them with life. Meantime the more characteristic qualities of this early work were to develop independently. The lyrical power of it, in particular, was to enjoy its flowering time, revelling in the sweet melancholy of old unhappy love stories, in courts and rose-gardens, kings and queens, knights and ladies and lute-players. Perhaps the most charming examples in this kind are "The Songs of Queen Averlaine." Here are a couple of stanzas from one of them, in which the queen is brooding sadly over the thought of her lost love and lost youth: Spring comes no more for me: though young March blow To flame the larches, and from tree to tree The green fire leap, till all the woodland, glow-- Though every runnel, filled to overflow, Bear sea-ward, loud and brown with melted snow, Spring comes no more for me! ..... Spring comes no more for me: though May will shake White flame of hawthorn over all the lea, Till every thick-set hedge and tangled brake Puts on fresh flower of beauty for her sake; Though all the world from winter-sleep awake, Spring comes no more for me!