It is significant that for his sonnets Mr. Brooke frequently chooses the Shakesperian form,--a form which, strangely, English poets have generally for at least a century discarded in favor of the Petrarchan model. The common feeling appears to be that the Petrarchan (a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a, c-d-e-c-d-e or some variation on that scheme) is musical and emotional; and that the Shakesperian (a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g) is harsh, cold, mechanical, and incapable of subtle harmonies. The exact reverse of this is the case. It is perhaps too much to ask the reader to write a sequence of a hundred sonnets in each form, as a test; but I am confident that after such an experience, he would agree with me. The Petrarchan form is capable of only one successful effect; a rising on the crest of a wave, whose summit is the end of the eighth line; and a subsidence of the wave, in the course of the last six lines. The Shakesperian form, on the other hand, is capable of a literally infinite variety of effects: no pattern is set arbitrarily in advance, but, as in blank verse, any pattern may be created. The first twelve lines--which are nothing but three quatrains--can be moulded into a contour that fits any shape or size of thought whatsoever; and the couplet at the end--a device despised by the ignorant--may be used either to clinch the purport of the preceding twelve lines, or to blend with them, or startlingly to refute them, or to serve any other end that the genius of the writer is capable of imagining. The mere novice will like this form because of its simple rhyme-scheme and its superficial ease of working; the experienced amateur will prefer the Petrarchan form because, while the more complex rhyme-scheme presents for him no difficulties, the basic inadequacies of his thought-structure are fairly well concealed by the arbitrary sonnet-structure; but the master of imagination and expression is likely to follow Shakespeare and the novice in preferring the true English form, wherein he can with perfect freedom create a subtly modulated movement that will answer to every sway and leap of his thought. Mr. Brooke, whose sense of form is keen, is one of those who can safely and wisely try the more interesting and more dangerous medium. I have thought it worth while to talk a good deal of the sonnet in connection with Mr. Brooke for the reason that several of his very finest pieces are in this form. The following is one that stands a good chance of being in the anthologies a hundred years from now: THE HILL Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill, Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass. You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass; Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still, When we are old, are old ..." "And when we die All's over that is ours; and life burns on Through other lovers, other lips," said I, "Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"