How long, O Death?  And shall thy feet depart
Still a young child’s with mine, or wilt thou stand
Full grown the helpful daughter of my heart,
What time with thee indeed I reach the strand
Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,
And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?

And as a keen eye for the imagery attendant on a word is essential to all writing, whether prose or poetry, that attempts the heart, so languor of the visual faculty can work disaster even in the calm periods of philosophic expatiation.  “It cannot be doubted,” says one whose daily meditations enrich The People’s Post-Bag, “that Fear is, to a great extent, the mother of Cruelty.”  Alas, by the introduction of that brief proviso, conceived in a spirit of admirably cautious self-defence, the writer has unwittingly given himself to the horns of a dilemma whose ferocity nothing can mitigate.  These tempered and conditional truths are not in nature, which decrees, with uncompromising dogmatism, that either a woman is one’s mother, or she is not.  The writer probably meant merely that “fear is one of the causes of cruelty,” and had he used a colourless abstract word the platitude might pass unchallenged.  But a vague desire for the emphasis and glamour of literature having brought in the word “mother,” has yet failed to set the sluggish imagination to work, and a word so glowing with picture and vivid with sentiment is damped and dulled by the thumb-mark of besotted usage to mean no more than “cause” or “occasion.”  Only for the poet, perhaps, are words live winged things, flashing with colour and laden with scent; yet one poor spark of imagination might save them from this sad descent to sterility and darkness.

Of no less import is the power of melody which chooses, rejects, and orders words for the satisfaction that a cunningly varied return of sound can give to the ear.  Some critics have amused themselves with the hope that here, in the laws and practices regulating the audible cadence of words, may be found the first principles of style, the form which fashions the matter, the apprenticeship to beauty which alone can make an art of truth.  And it may be admitted that verse, owning, as it does, a professed and canonical allegiance to music, sometimes carries its devotion so far that thought swoons into melody, and the thing said seems a discovery made by the way in the search for tuneful expression.

What thing unto mine ear
Wouldst thou convey,—­what secret thing,
O wandering water ever whispering? 
Surely thy speech shall be of her,
Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
What message dost thou bring?