"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here. Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said; "We shall go down with unreluctant tread Rose-crowned into the darkness!" ... Proud we were, And laughed, that had such brave, true things to say. --And then you suddenly cried, and turned away. Perhaps as magical as any of Mr. Brooke's work is a longer poem called _The Fish_,--a remarkable and original piece of fantasy that makes the sub-aqueous universe vivid and real to the senses of the reader, and opens to him a new world of imaginative experience. Even the opening lines will serve to indicate something of the curious trance-quality: In a cool curving world he lies And ripples with dark ecstasies. The kind luxurious lapse and steal Shapes all his universe to feel And know and be; the clinging stream Closes his memory, glooms his dream, Who lips the roots o' the shore, and glides Superb on unreturning tides ... In other of these poems, one is struck by Mr. Brooke's passion for ugliness. He loves to take the most hideous and base facts of life and give them a place in his work alongside the things of beauty. It would be hard to find anything more humorous and at the same time more repulsive than this: WAGNER Creeps in half wanton, half asleep, One with a fat wide hairless face. He likes love music that is cheap; Likes women in a crowded place; And wants to hear the noise they're making. His heavy eyelids droop half-over, Great pouches swing beneath his eyes. He listens, thinks himself the lover, Heaves from his stomach wheezy sighs; He likes to feel his heart's a-breaking. The music swells. His gross legs quiver. His little lips are bright with slime. The music swells. The women shiver, And all the while, in perfect time His pendulous stomach hangs a-shaking.