“We are Earth’s best, that learnt her lesson here.
Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!” we said;
“We shall go down with unreluctant tread
Rose-crowned into the darkness!” ... Proud we were,
And laughed, that had such brave, true things to say.
—And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.
Perhaps as magical as any of Mr. Brooke’s work is a longer poem called The Fish,—a remarkable and original piece of fantasy that makes the sub-aqueous universe vivid and real to the senses of the reader, and opens to him a new world of imaginative experience. Even the opening lines will serve to indicate something of the curious trance-quality:
In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal