this quiet domestic idyll one is conscious of the first man and the first woman, of the last man and the last woman, and of God, in whom Love finds its source. Patmore's rare insight into the elemental human consciousness, his reality and delicacy of emotion, form the warp of the poem; albeit its woof includes the homeliest details of "sun and candle-light." Here is one beautiful fragment, the first recognition of love between Felix and Honoria. With the latter's sisters, they are seated one summer morning in the shadow of the grim Druid rocks
That scowled their chill gloom from above,
Like churls whose stolid wisdom mocks
The lightness of immortal love.
And, as we talked, my spirit quaff'd
The sparkling winds; the candid skies
At our untruthful strangeness laugh'd;
I kissed with mine her smiling eyes;
And sweet familiarness and awe
Prevail'd that hour on either part.
And in the eternal light I saw
That she was mine; although my heart
Could not conceive, nor would confess
Such contentation; and there grew
More form and more fair stateliness
Than heretofore between us two.
Our poet's Primal Love was essentially of the Sacraments; and early in his song—even while seeking expression for things "too simple and too sweet for words"—he struck the note of his characteristic message:—
This little germ of nuptial love
Which springs so simply from the sod,
The root is, as my song shall prove,
Of all our love to man and God.
