He looks around to see some god,
And far upon the fire-scorched sod
He sees his brown-burnt tribesmen lie,
And thinks their voices fill the sky,
And dreads some unseen sudden blow—
And even as I watch him, lo,
My savage-self I seem to know.
“Or again he reincarnates the Druid:
And dreaming so I dream my dream:
I see a flood of moonlight gleam
Between vast ancient oaks, and round
A rough-hewn altar on the ground
Weird Druid priests are gathered
While through their midst a man is led
With face that seems already dead.
“And again the type is changed into a Shelleyan recluse, a hermit who had had retreated to his cave, and that hermit
Was even that soul mine eyes have traced
Through brute and savage steadily,
That he even now is part of me
Just as a wave is of the sea.
“If there are traces of Shelley in this poem, Rossetti and Swinburne have also their echo in some of its rhapsodic, highly figurative stanzas. There are unmistakable germs in it, too, of some of the supernatural ideas that afterward received a much more vital expression in ‘Fiona Macleod’s’ work.”
The volume was dedicated to his friend Walter Pater and from him and other writers and friends he received many interesting letters, and from them I select the following:
2 Bradmore Road, May 28th.
My dear Sharp,