POETRY.
THE PREACHER.* UNDER delicate spring verdure, Young, yellow-green oaklets, The late leafing ash-bough, Fresh sycamore fans, Amid bracken fronds uncrumpling,
Tufts of lucent grasses, Knots of starry eye-bright, Wild strawberry bloomsf Upon a mossy boulder I sit meditating
In the sunny silence Of this May afternoon.
Scarce a leaf is lifted,
Scarce a blade is stirring,
The only flower nodding On our old quarry side Is that cluster of red crane's-bill Two honey-searching butterflies Have set gently rocking In the thicket above.
No sound stirs the quiet But the low, elfin music Of gnats faintly fifing, A wild-bee's wandering drum.
Then of wings a sudden whirring, A long, mellow chuckle, And upon a lush tree-top A blackbird has lit.
He pauses, as poets pause To let their fancies flood them, Before their souls' freshets They suffer to escape ; Now on his golden reed-pipe Pensively he preludes ; Now to all his listeners Pours his full lay,
With such a brave tenderness,
With such a grave gentleness, With such a passionate purity, That I rise to my feet To hearken with bared head That little fervent minister Discourse from his high pulpit In his black Geneva gown.
ALFRED PRECRVAL GRAVES.
• An experiment in unrhymed metre suggested by an article on the subject by Mr. J. St. Lee Strachey In the London Mercury.
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