She too that loveth awaketh and hopes for thee; Her eyes already have sped the shades that flee, Already they watch the path thy feet shall take: Awake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake! And if thou tarry from her,--if this could be,-- She cometh herself, O heart, to be loved, to thee; For thee would unashamed herself forsake: Awake to be loved, my heart, awake, awake! Awake, the land is scattered with light, and see, Uncanopied sleep is flying from field and tree: And blossoming boughs of April in laughter shake; Awake, O heart, to be loved, awake, awake! Lo all things wake and tarry and look for thee: She looketh and saith, 'O sun, now bring him to me. Come more adored, O adored, for his coming's sake, And awake my heart to be loved: awake, awake!' Donne has written nothing at once so subtle and so pure and lovely as this, nothing the end and aim of which is so entirely to leave an untroubled impression of beauty. But it is not true either that the thought and imagery of love-poetry must be of the simple, obvious kind which Steele supposes, that any display of dialectical subtlety, any scintillation of wit, must be fatal to the impression of sincerity and feeling, or on the other hand that love is always a beautiful emotion naturally expressing itself in delicate and beautiful language. To some natures love comes as above all things a force quickening the mind, intensifying its purely intellectual energy, opening new vistas of thought abstract and subtle, making the soul 'intensely, wondrously alive'. Of such were Donne and Browning. A love-poem like 'Come into the garden, Maud' suspends thought and fills the mind with a succession of picturesque and voluptuous images in harmony with the dominant mood. A poem such as _The Anniversarie_ or _The Extasie_, _The Last Ride Together_ or _Too Late_, is a record of intense, rapid thinking, expressed in the simplest, most appropriate language--and it is a no whit less natural utterance of passion. Even the abstractness of the thought, on which Mr. Courthope lays so much stress in speaking of Donne and the 'metaphysicals' generally, is no necessary implication of want of feeling. It has been said of St. Augustine 'that his most profound thoughts regarding the first and last things arose out of prayer ... concentration of his whole being in prayer led to the most abstract observation'. So it may be with love-poetry--so it was with Dante in the _Vita Nuova_, and so, on a lower scale, and allowing for the time that the passion is a more earthly and sensual one, the thought more capricious and unruly, with Donne. The _Nocturnall upon S. Lucies Day_ is not less passionate because that passion finds expression in abstract and subtle thought. Nor is it true that all love-poetry is beautiful. Of none of the four poems I have mentioned in the last paragraph is pure beauty, beauty such as is the note of Mr. Bridges' song, the distinctive quality.