Phillips was no pioneer: he followed the great tradition of English poetry, and must be counted among the legitimate heirs. At his best, he resembles Keats most of all; and none but a real poet could ever make us think of Keats. If he be condemned for not breaking new paths, we may remember the words of a wise man--"It is easier to differ from the great poets than it is to resemble them." He loved to employ the standard five-foot measure that has done so much of the best work of English poetry. In _The Woman with the Dead Soul_, he showed once more the musical possibilities latent in the heroic couplet, which Pope had used with such monotonous brilliance. In _Marpessa_, he gave us blank verse of noble artistry. But he was far more than a mere technician. He fairly meets the test set by John Davidson. "In the poet the whole assembly of his being is harmonious; no organ is master; a diapason extends throughout the entire scale; his whole body, his whole soul is rapt into the making of his poetry.... Poetry is the product of originality, of a first-hand experience and observation of life, of a direct communion with men and women, with the seasons of the year, with day and night. The critic will therefore be well-advised, if he have the good fortune to find something that seems to him poetry, to lay it out in the daylight and the moonlight, to take it into the street and the fields, to set against it his own experience and observation of life." One of the most severe tests of poetry that I know of is to read it aloud on the shore of an angry sea. Homer, Shakespeare, Milton gain in splendour with this accompaniment. With the words of John Davidson in mind, let us take two passages from _Marpessa_, and measure one against the atmosphere of day and night, and the other against homely human experience. Although Mr. Davidson was not thinking of Phillips, I believe he would have admitted the validity of this verse. From the dark The floating smell of flowers invisible, The mystic yearning of the garden wet, The moonless-passing night--into his brain Wandered, until he rose and outward leaned In the dim summer; 'twas the moment deep When we are conscious of the secret dawn, Amid the darkness that we feel is green.... When the long day that glideth without cloud, The summer day, was at her deep blue hour Of lilies musical with busy bliss, Whose very light trembled as with excess, And heat was frail, and every bush and flower Was drooping in the glory overcome; Any poet knows how to speak in authentic tones of the wild passion of insurgent hearts; but not every poet possesses the rarer gift of setting the mellower years to harmonious music, as in the following gracious words: