Occasionally, it is true, the principle on which the verse is built is too strictly applied: the phraseology is abrupt beyond the required effect; and the lines, instead of following a rule which seems to measure their length by a natural pause, are broken arbitrarily. Speaking broadly, however, it is beautifully fitted to the themes of _Daily Bread_, though one is not so sure about it in a poem like "Akra the Slave." This is a delightful narrative, akin in subject to the earlier work, and belonging to that period much more than to the date at which it was published, 1910. One cannot linger upon it, nor even upon the more important work which followed, and is happily still continuing--more important because it indicates development and marked progress along the new lines. The three parts of _Fires_ carry forward the conception of _Daily Bread_, but now in narrative style, permitting therefore a relaxation of the austere dramatic truth of the dialogue form. The verse is modified accordingly, as will be seen in this passage from "The Shop": A workman has entered his favourite shop--the little general-store of a poor neighbourhood--to buy his evening paper. But he is not attended to immediately; and a sickly little girl who has come for a fraction of a loaf and a screw of tea, is also waiting. The shopkeeper is engrossed with a parcel from the country--from a little convalescent son who has gone for the first time to his father's native place: Next night, as I went in, I caught A strange, fresh smell. The postman had just brought A precious box from Cornwall, and the shop Was lit with primroses, that lay atop A Cornish pasty, and a pot of cream: And as, with gentle hands, the father lifted The flowers his little son had plucked for him, He stood a moment in a far-off dream, As though in glad remembrances he drifted On Western seas: and, as his eyes grew dim, He stooped, and buried them in deep, sweet bloom: Till, hearing, once again, the poor child's cough, He served her hurriedly, and sent her off, Quite happily, with thin hands filled with flowers. And, as I followed to the street, the gloom Was starred with primroses; and many hours The strange, shy flickering surprise Of that child's keen, enchanted eyes Lit up my heart, and brightened my dull room.