“O flame that treads the marsh of time,
Flitting for ever low,
Where, through the black enchanted slime,
We, desperate, following go—
Untimely fire, we bid thee stay!
Into dark air above,
The golden gipsy thins away—
So has it been with love.”[love.”]
THE NOVELS
I
Though undoubtedly Galsworthy owes his position as an artist and as a thinking force to his plays, he still carries considerable weight as both in his novels. That his novels have not the value, whether social or literary, of his plays—that indeed his position as a novelist is largely due to his fame as a playwright—does not make away with the fact that he has given us some half-dozen novels of standing, which are worth consideration in themselves, apart from anything their author may have done in other fields.