"And pray, sir," asked the Professor, "who but a man with an English heart could have written that home-yearning song:
'Oh to be in England Now that April's there; And whoever wakes in England, Sees, some morning unaware, That the lowest boughs, and the brush-wood sheaf Round the elm tree bole, are in tiny leaf; While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough, In England--now!'"
"There is somewhere a still finer home-thought," said Harry. "I remember learning it when I was at college;" and as Adriana looked backward and smiled, and the Professor nodded approval, and Miss Alida said, "Let us have the lines, Harry," he repeated them without much self-consciousness, and with a great deal of spirit:
"'Nobly, nobly Cape St. Vincent to the westward died away; Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking into Cadiz Bay; Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face Trafalgar lay; In the dimmest north-east distance, dawned Gibraltar grand and grey; "Here and there did England help me,--how can I help England?"--say, Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God to praise and pray, While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over Africa.'"
There was a hearty response to Harry's effort, and then Miss Alida's favorite minister--who had been silent during the whole discussion, much to her disappointment--spoke.
"A poet's nature," he said, "needs that high reverence which is to the spirit what iron is to the blood; it needs, most of all, the revelation of Christianity, because of its peculiar temptations, doubts, fears, yearnings, and obstinate questionings. Mr. Browning has this reverence, and accepts this revelation. He is not half-ashamed, as are some poets, to mention God and Christ; and he never takes the name of either in vain. He does not set up a kind of pantheistic worship. No one has ever told us, as Browning has in his poem of 'Christmas Eve and Easter Day,' how hard it is to be a Christian. Do you remember its tremendous dream of the Judgment Day:
'When through the black dome of the firmament, Sudden there went, Like horror and astonishment, A fierce vindictive scribble of red Quick flame across; as if one said (The angry Scribe of Judgment), There, Burn it!'
And who can read the pleading of the youth who has chosen the world, and not recognize the amiable young man of to-day, unable to put the cup of pleasure utterly away, but resolving to let