He had not remembered that she was so fair,
And that her neck curved down in such a way;
The simplicity of that last line—but what a picture it is!
The important things about Mr. Brooke, however—and of course this should have been said in the first paragraph—are his sense of life and his feeling for nature. Of the first it might be said that he is strong and radiant and sure—and at the same time reverently impotent. The Hill, which I like better than anything in this collection, will illustrate:
Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
You said, “Through glory and ecstasy we pass;
Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,
When we are old, are old....” “And when we die
All’s over that is ours; and life burns on