"How fared you when you mortal were? What did you see on my peopled star?" "Oh, well enough," I answered her, "It went for me where mortals are! "I saw blue flowers and the merlin's flight And the rime on the wintry tree, Blue doves I saw and summer light On the wings of the cinnamon bee." There is in all this a kind of reverent worship without any trace of mysticism. And still less of that modern attitude more popular and surely more fruitless than mysticism--defiance. There is a quite different side to the poetry of Mr. Hodgson, which one would hardly suspect after reading his outdoor verse. The lamplit silence of the library is as charming to him as the fragrant silence of the woods. He is as much of a recluse among books as he is among flowers. No poet of today seems more self-sufficient. Although a lover of humanity, he seems to require no companionship. He is no more lonely than a cat, and has as many resources as Tabby herself. Now when he talks about books, his poetry becomes intimate, and forsakes all objectivity. His humour, a purely intellectual quality with him, rises unrestrainedly. MY BOOKS When the folks have gone to bed, And the lamp is burning low, And the fire burns not so red As it burned an hour ago, Then I turn about my chair So that I can dimly see Into the dark corners where Lies my modest library. Volumes gay and volumes grave, Many volumes have I got; Many volumes though I have, Many volumes have I not. I have not the rare Lucasta, London, 1649; I'm a lean-pursed poetaster, Or the book had long been mine.... Near the "Wit's Interpreter" (Like an antique Whitaker, Full of strange etcetera), "Areopagitiea," And the muse of Lycidas, Lost in meditation deep, Give the cut to Hudibras, Unaware the knave's asleep.... There lies Coleridge, bound in green, Sleepily still wond'ring what He meant Kubla Khan to mean, In that early Wordsworth, Mat. Arnold knows a faithful prop,-- Still to subject-matter leans, Murmurs of the loved hill-top, Fyfield tree and Cumnor scenes. The poem closes with a high tribute to Shelley, "more than all the others mine." The following trifle is excellent fooling: THE GREAT AUK'S GHOST The Great Auk's ghost rose on one leg, Sighed thrice and three times winkt, And turned and poached a phantom egg, And muttered, "I'm extinct." But it is in the love of unextinct animals that Mr. Hodgson's poetic powers find their most effective display. His masterpiece on the old unhappy Bull is surprisingly impressive; surprisingly, because we almost resent being made to feel such ardent sympathy for the poor old Bull, when there are so many other and more important objects to be sorry for. Yet the poet draws us away for the moment from all the other tragedies in God's universe, and absolutely compels our pity for the Bull. The stanzas in this poem swarm with life.