Page:The Poet's Chantry pg 066.jpg

66

declares his dying Copernicus. And this poet's work is more than peaceful, it is joyous. The St. Thecla of his legend is not only "beauteous as a rose new-blown," she is the " blithesomest" of hermit-missionaries. His St. Dorothea (whom so great a dramatist as Massinger succeeded in portraying only as an heroic prig) speaks gaily, and has room in her consecrated heart for all "lovely things and fair." "Glad man was he, our Cid," cry the companions of the great mediæval warrior; and one learns with no surprise of Erin's apostle that

So has de Vere dwelt upon the blitheness of Christian character, upon the God-like stillness which may dwell even in the tempest's heart. It is all very tranquil and beautiful, this golden haze wrapping the world in peace. And if it be not quite like human life as most of us know it, why—so much the worse for us!

"I am doing what in me lies to keep alive poetry with a little conscience in it," he once said, adding with characteristic humility, "if I fail in that attempt I shall not fret about it; others will do it later—what I have aimed at doing—and will probably do it better." The nobility of this aim sweeps through his pages, pure and keen as the mountain's breath. We feel it in his own high seriousness and self-possession, in that