With all his purple spoils upon him Creeps back the plunderer Sea, with its succession of pictures such as these: O bandit, with the white-plumed horsemen, Raiding a thousand shores, Thy coffers crammed with spars and anchors And wave-defeated oars! Admirable phrasing is that of “wave-defeated oars”! But before taking up the more strenuous side of his work, there is another lyric rich in melody and emotion,—a lyric in which one feels the under-current of passion. It is named, “A Song of Desire”: Thou dreamer with the million moods, Of restless heart like me, Lay thy white hands against my breast And cool its pain, O Sea! O wanderer of the unseen paths, Restless of heart as I, Blow hither from thy caves of blue, Wind of the healing sky! O treader of the fiery way, With passionate heart like mine, Hold to my lips thy healthful cup Brimmed with its blood-red wine! O countless watchers of the night, Of sleepless heart like me, Pour your white beauty in my soul, Till I grow calm as ye! O sea, O sun, O wind and stars, (O hungry heart that longs!) Feed my starved lips with life, with love, And touch my tongue with songs! Mr. Knowles is a modern of the moderns, and his Whitmanesque conviction that “we tally all antecedents;” that “we are the scald, the oracle, the monk, and the knight;” that “we easily include them and more,”—finds expression in each of his volumes, in poems ranging from boyish fustian, at which he would now smile, to the noble lines of “Veritas” and other poems in the later work. There are certain subjects that hold within them percussion powder ready to explode at the touch of a thought,—subjects which, to one’s own peculiar temperament, seem to be provocative of a fulminant outburst whenever one collides with them, and this is such an one to Mr. Knowles. However, it is well to be shaken up occasionally by such detonating lines as these: We have sonnets enough, and songs enough, And ballads enough, God knows! But what we need is that cosmic stuff Whence primitive feeling glows, Grown, organized to the needs of rhyme Through the old instinctive laws, With a meaning broad as the boughs of time And deep as the roots of cause. It is passion and power that we need to-day, We have grace and taste full store; We need a man who will say his say With a strength unguessed before:— * * * * * Whose lines shall glow like molten steel From being forged in his soul, Till the very anvil shall burn to feel The breath of the quenchless coal! Your dainty wordsters may cry “Uncouth!” As they shrink from his bellows’ glow; But the fire he fans is immortal youth, And how should the bloodless know!