And tell them; and the truth of truths is LOVE.'


"The muse of Morris was Poesy's own 'summer child.' Hope, love,
and happiness, sunny-winged fancies and golden-hued imaginings,
have nested in his heart like birds.

"His verse does not cause one to tremble and turn pale--it charms
and refreshes. It does not 'posses us like a passion'--it steals
upon us like a spell. It does not storm the heart like an armed
host--it is like the visitation of gentle spirits,


'Coming and going with a musical lightness.'


It is not a turbulent mountain-torrent, hurling itself down rocky
places--it is a silver stream, gliding through quiet valleys,
in whose waves the sweet stars are mirrored, on whose bosom the
water-lilies sleep.

"Now and then there steals in a strain of sadness, like the plaint
of a bereaved bird in a garden of roses; but it is a tender, not
an OPPRESIVE sadness, and we know that the rainbow beauty of the
verse could only be born in the wedlock of smiles and tears. In
a word, his lays are not 'night and storm and darkness'--they are
morning and music and sunshine.

"It were idle at this time to quote or comment upon all those songs
of Morris best known and oftenest sung. It would be introducing to