Then the poem breaks into this pæan, whose music outsings its thought when pushed to analysis; this is one of Mr. Woodberry’s metrical exceptions that prove the rule. Here is sheer music making fine but not extraordinary thought seem great, whereas in the majority of his work it is the thought to which one listens rather than the melody; but to the lyric, I shall go singing over-seas; “The million years of the planets increase; All pangs of death, all cries of birth, Are clasped at one by the heart of the earth.” I shall go singing by tower and town: “The thousand cities of men that crown Empire slow-rising from horde and clan, Are clasped at one by the heart of man.” I shall go singing by flower and brier: “The multitudinous stars of fire, And man made infinite under the sod, Are clasped at one by the heart of God.” I shall go singing by ice and snow: “Blow soon, dread angel, greatly blow, Break up, ye gulfs, beneath, above, Peal, time’s last music,—‘love, love, love!’” Of his recent volume in which he gathers his most representative work, “The North Shore Watch,” a threnody published some years ago, remains one of the truest poems in sincerity and sympathy of expression,—not only an idyl of remembered comradeship, but of the sea in its many moods; and here one may note that of Mr. Woodberry’s references to nature, those of the sea are incomparably the finest, and exhale an invigorating savor of the brine. They are scattered through “The North Shore Watch,” but because of the stately sadness of the verse are less representative of his characteristic note than are these buoyant lines which open the poem “Seaward”: I will go down in my youth to the hoar sea’s infinite foam; I will bathe in the winds of heaven; I will nest where the white birds home; Where the sheeted emerald glitters and drifts with bursts of snow, In the spume of stormy mornings, I will make me ready and go; Where under the clear west weather the violet surge is rolled, I will strike with the sun in heaven the day-long league of gold; Will mix with the waves, and mingle with the bloom of the sunset bar, And toss with the tangle of moonbeams, and call to the morning star; And wave and wing shall know me a seachild even as they, Of the race of the great seafarers, a thousand years if a day. These lines have the bracing ozone of the east wind; it is good to fill one’s lungs with their freshening breath. In another sea-song, “Homeward Bound,” an exultant, grateful hymn, Mr. Woodberry speaks of steering “Through the weird, red-billowing sunset” and of falling asleep in the “rocking dark,” and with the dawn, Whether the purple furrow heaps the bows with dazzling spray, Or buried in green-based masses they dip the storm-swept day, Or the white fog ribbons o’er them, the strong ship holds her way