it may be, in raspberry and currant hedges. Through a gateway in the garden wall you reach the sloping orchard:

Only Pomona knew no fear,

For her white breast had brush'd the pear,
And now her fingers 'gan to fling

On th' apples pink enamelling.

Beyond a high laurel hedge the shingled steeple of the little church rears its rusty weather-cock-a squat old church, restored in patches, but so delicately harmonised by moss and weather stains as to seem a natural outgrowth of the soil rather than a work of human hands. Stray branches of the churchyard yews overhang the garden wall, and on winter evenings you can see through a ragged archway in the laurel hedge the glow of the old stainedglass. At the further end of the house, the bay-window of the study looks out upon a little rose-garden with a sun-dial or a trickling fountain in its centre. Over the study mantel, piece hang the arms of a college blazoned on an oaken shield, and flanked on either hand with photographs of a school eleven and a college eight. The bookshelves are well filled with general literature and eclectic theology. There is a slight haze of dust, perhaps, over the shelf of classics, but they have been well thumbed in their day, and a certain aroma exhales even from their folded leaves. But the prevalent aroma is ever that of the English garden, the English elms and limes, the English hedgerows and hayfields beyond. The influences that have produced and that tend to preserve these pastoral paradises are no doubt open to criticism; but the merely æsthetic sense cannot but rejoice in them. And if nothing more harmful than Mr. Beeching's poems ever issued from an English parsonage one could rejoice in them without afterthought or prick of conscience.

Mr. Beeching's love of nature in its homelike aspects is very genuine, his passion and his piety are alike sincere, and his lyric gift is far from insignificant. In a Garden-the

sequence properly so-called-consists of seventeen songs and poems, not one of which is without merit, while several of them show not only deep feeling but real faculty. It must be said, too, that though Mr. Beeching's manner is not strikingly original, it is not imitative in the bad sense. He does not echo this poet or that, but simply works (as becomes the editor of Milton and compiler of the charming Paradise of English Poetry) on the established lines of a good poetical tradition. The three lyrics, for example, quoted at the end of this paper-the second, fourteenth and fifteenth of the sequence-are no mere manufactured verse, but give spontaneous utterance to genuinely poetical moods. Of the three I think, on the whole, that I prefer the second, but there is at least one memorable line in the first ("And bared the disenchanted year"), while the third is delightfully real and fresh in atmosphere. The sixteenth poem of the sequence (from which I have already quoted some lines) closes with this charming passage:

O happy garden, two long years
Have all thy voices charm'd our ears
From discord, din, and rough unrest
That drive off peace, too timorous guest.
The ever-circling years shall bring
Thee but more beautiful a spring;
(More beauteous spring, O love, to thee)
In spite of winter's jealousy!
Which of us twain shall sooner go

The separate path; ah, who can know !
One May perhaps while thrushes call

On Love in sweet antiphonal,

An air shall blow, a whisper'd sigh;

And one the other sitting by

Shall rise and quit this leafy place

With backward hands, and what still face !

Nay, tears avail not, but our love

Avails death's terror to remove.

Love dies not nor can lovers die ;

And though vast worlds between them lie,

Th' intelligencing current thrills
From each to each the thought love wills
Remember'st not the dreary day
When I must journey, how (you say)
A nightingale, ev'n love's own bird,
In our fair garden else unheard,
Pour'd from the lilac, melting-sweet,
His throated jewels at your feet,
Till blissful night return'd me home;
And is death more than absence? Come,
Leave care, 'tis May, and still we are here,
And shall be, shall be, many a year,
Hearkening these swallows, and without
The struck ball, and the echoing shout
Of village children at their play,

In the quiet air at end of day.

After this, it is sad to read the concluding stanzas of the sequence, which are, however, beautiful in their simplicity:

Rose and lily, white and red

From my garden garlanded,

These I brought and thought to grace

The perfection of thy face.

Other roses, pink and pale,

Lilies of another vale,

Thou hast bound around thy head

In the garden of the dead.

There is much merit, though not without intervals of commonplace, in the Songs and Sonnets which form the middle section of Mr. Beeching's book. The Night Watches has a fine lyric movement; there is a wistful pathos in Hope; and this little apologue is at once pretty and signifi

cant :

ROSE-FRUIT.

They praised me when they found the new-born bud,
And all my blood

Flamed, as I burst in blossom, to requite

Their dear delight.