To Sleepy Man’s Castle by Comforting Ferry.
(So hush-a-by, weary my Dearie!)
Mr. Roberts has collected his several volumes, exclusive of The Book of the Rose, into one, eliminating such of the earlier work as falls short of his standard of criticism, and adding new matter showing growth and constantly broadening affinity with life. He manifests more and more the potentialities of his nature, and while all of his later work does not ring equally true, the majority of it is instinct with sincerity and high idealism, and one may go to it for unforced, unconventional song, having art without trammels, for a breath of the ozone of nature, and
for suggestive thoughts upon life and the things of the spirit. Its creed is epitomized in the following lines, pregnant with suggestion to the votary of Art, the creed of the idealist, and yet the truer realist:
Said Life to Art: I love thee best
Not when I find in thee
My very face and form, expressed
With dull fidelity.
But when in thee my longing eyes
Behold continually