They are graceful songs, and their glamour will not fail so long as there remain lovers to read them. The critic is disarmed by their ingenuousness: he is constrained to take them as they stand, with their warmth and colour, their sweet music and the occasional flashes of observed truth (like the March runnels of this poem) which redeem them from total unreality. The reward lies close ahead. For even on this theme of love, and still in the lyric mood, sanity soon triumphs. It heralds its victory with a laugh, and the air is lightened at once from the scented gloom of romanticism. "Sing no more songs of lovers dead," it cries, sound and strong enough now to make fun of itself. We are no lovers, pale with dreams, Who languish by Lethean streams. Upon our bodies warm day gleams; And love that tingles warm and red From sole of foot to crown of head Is lord of all pale lovers dead! The volume from which that stanza is taken, _The Web of Life_, contains this poet's finest lyrics. From the standpoint of art nothing that he has done--and he is always a scrupulous artist--can surpass it; and the seeker whose single quest is beauty, need go no further down the list of Mr Gibson's works. There are some perfect things in the book: poems like "Song," "The Mushroom Gatherers" and "The Silence," in which the early grace and felicity survive; and where the lyric ecstasy is deepened by thought and winged by emotion. In one sense, therefore, although this volume is only midway through the period we are concerned with, it has attained finality. We ought to pause on it. We see that it culminates and closes the 'happy singing-flight' with which this career began. We realize, too, that it has absolute value, as poetry, by virtue of which many a good judge might rank it higher than its remarkable successors. And, indeed, it is hard to break away from its spell. But when we judge _The Web of Life_ relatively, when we place it back in the proper niche amongst its kindred volumes, its importance seems suddenly to dwindle. Beside the later books, it grows almost commonplace; we perceive its charm to be of the conventional kind of the whole order of regular English poetry to which it belongs. That is to say, though there is no sign that the work has been directly modelled upon the accredited poets of an earlier generation, it has characteristics which relate it to them and secure a place in the line of descent. There are pieces which remind us of Keats or the younger Tennyson. Here is a stanza from the poem called "Beauty" which might have been the inspiration of the whole book: With her alone is immortality; For still men reverently Adore within her shrine: The sole immortal time has not cast down, She wields a power yet more divine Than when of old she rose from out the sea Of night, with starry crown. Though all things perish, Beauty never dies.