Nay, Soul, thy shame forbear! Between the earth and sky Was never man could buy The bread of life with prayer, Not though his brother there Saw him with hunger die.
His life a man may give, But, not for deepest ruth, Beauty, nor love, nor truth Whereby himself doth live. Come home, poor fugitive! Art thou so poor, forsooth?
Thy heart—look thou aright! Fear not the wild untrod, Nor birth, nor burial sod! Look, and in native light, Bare as to Christ’s own sight, Living shalt thou see God.
The dramatic poem, “Agathon,” which is builded upon the philosophy of Plato, is perhaps the most thoughtful and thought-inciting work in the newly collected volume. It is in no sense of the word dramatic, but doubtless cast in this form from its wider adaptability to the contrasts of thought. The poem is too lengthy to follow an analysis of its philosophy, which is wrought out with subtle elaboration, smacking too much at times of a logical demonstration, but in the main leavened with imaginative phrase. Its poetic climax is in the apostrophe which follows the statement that
The sweetest roamer is a boy’s young heart.
The lines form a blank-verse lyric with a rich cadence and movement:
O youngest Roamer, Hesper shuts the day, White Hesper folded in the rose of eve; The still cloud floats, and kissed by twilight sleeps; The mists drop down, and near the mountain moor; And mute the bird’s throat swells with slumber now; And now the wild winds to their eyries cling.
O youngest Roamer, wonderful is joy, The rose in bloom that out of darkness springs; The lily folded to the wave of life, The lotus on the stream’s dark passion borne.
Ah, fortunate he roams who roameth here, Who finds the happy covert and lies down, And hears the laughter gurgling in the fount, And feels the dreamy light imbathe his limbs. No more he roams, he roams no more, no more.
These lines are reminiscent of Tennyson’s “Princess” in their metrical note, particularly in the final couplet of the first stanza, with the “dying fall” of the cadence, bringing to mind:
Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost, And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
Mr. Woodberry’s poetic affiliation with Tennyson comes out unmistakably in various other poems, leaving no doubt as to one of the masters who sing in his over-tones. Here, for illustration, is a transfusion with Tennyson’s “Tears, Idle Tears.” One stanza of the flawless lyric reads: