which--as in the noble fragment of Keats' _Ode to Maia_--lift it into the
rank of great masterpieces. The epithalamium, on the other hand, with
which the book of lyrics ends, while very simple in structure, is large
in scale. It is as much longer than the rest of the lyrics as the
marriage-song which stands at the end of _In Memoriam_ is than the other
sections of that poem. In the charm of perfect simplicity it equals the
finest of his lyrics; but besides this, it has in its clear ringing music
what is for this period an almost unique premonition of the new world
that rose out of the darkness of the Middle Ages, the world that had
invented bells and church-organs, and had added a new romantic beauty to
love and marriage. With a richness of phrase that recalls the Song of
Solomon, the verses clash and swing: _Open your bars, O gates! the bride
is at hand! Lo, how the torches shake out their splendid tresses!... Even
so in a rich lord's garden-close might stand a hyacinth-flower. Lo, the
torches shake out their golden tresses; go forth, O bride! Day wanes; go
forth, O bride!_ And the verse at the end, about the baby on its mother's
lap--

_Torqutatus volo parvulus
Matris e gremio suae
Porrigens teneras manus
Dulce rideat ad patrem
Semihiante labello--_

is as incomparable; not again till the Florentine art of the fifteenth
century was the picture drawn with so true and tender a hand.

Over the _Atys_ modern criticism has exhausted itself without any
definite result. The accident of its being the only Latin poem extant in
the peculiar galliambic metre has combined with the nature of the