SOURCE: "A Poem by Lord Houghton," in Interpretations of Literature, Vol. I, by Lafcadio Hearn, edited by John Erskine, Dodd, Mead and Company, 1915, pp. 300-03.

In the following essay, Hearn analyzes Milnes's poem "Strangers Yet," calling it his best and one of the few possessing "that rare quality which appeals to the universal human experience."

Among many English noblemen who have figured in Victorian literature with more or less credit to themselves, there was perhaps nobody who could write more hauntingly at times than Lord Houghton. He did not write a great deal, but a considerable proportion of the few pieces which he did write have found their way into anthologies, and are likely to stay there. I shall quote and comment upon only one of these, which I think to be the best—not, perhaps, as mere verse, but as a bit of emotional thinking. The subject...