To go down to the side of the people who weep in the shadow of death.
One of Mr. Russell’s poems suggests in its very first line a lyric from Shelley’s Hellas, and the two poems form an interesting contrast between the temperaments of the poet of sentimental Platonism and this later singer who adds to Shelley’s lyric vision a firmer stationing on the substance of earth. While Shelley began on a high note of joy that
The world’s great age begins anew,
The golden years return, ...
but ends on the note of disenchantment:
O, cease! must hate and death return?
Cease! must men kill and die?
Cease! Drain not to its dregs the urn
Of bitter prophecy.
The world is weary of the past;