poet is always a seer, seeing less with the eyes of the body than he does with the eyes of the soul, but that he is a true singer also, building his song out of music, repeating each line over and over again to himself till he has caught the secret of its melody, chaunting in darkness the words that are winged with light.  Certainly, whether this be so or not, it was to his blindness, as an occasion, if not as a cause, that England’s great poet owed much of the majestic movement and sonorous splendour of his later verse.  When Milton could no longer write he began to sing.—­The Critic as Artist.

THE SECRETS OF IMMORTALITY

On the mouldering citadel of Troy lies the lizard like a thing of green bronze.  The owl has built her nest in the palace of Priam.  Over the empty plain wander shepherd and goatherd with their flocks, and where, on the wine-surfaced, oily sea, [Greek text], as Homer calls it, copper-prowed and streaked with vermilion, the great galleys of the Danaoi came in their gleaming crescent, the lonely tunny-fisher sits in his little boat and watches the bobbing corks of his net.  Yet, every morning the doors of the city are thrown open, and on foot, or in horse-drawn chariot, the warriors go forth to battle, and mock their enemies from behind their iron masks.  All day long the fight rages, and when night comes the torches gleam by the tents, and the cresset burns in the hall.  Those who live in marble or on painted panel, know of life but a single exquisite instant, eternal indeed in its beauty, but limited to one note of passion or one mood of calm.  Those whom the poet makes live have their myriad emotions of joy and terror, of courage and despair, of pleasure and of suffering.  The seasons come and go in glad or saddening pageant, and with winged or leaden feet the years pass by before them.  They have their youth and their manhood, they are children, and they grow old.  It is always dawn for St. Helena, as Veronese saw her at the window.  Through the still morning air the angels bring her the symbol of God’s pain.  The cool breezes of the morning lift the gilt threads from her brow.  On that little hill by the city of Florence, where the lovers of Giorgione are lying, it is always the solstice of noon, of noon made so languorous by summer suns that hardly can the slim naked girl dip into the marble tank the round bubble of clear glass, and the long fingers of the lute-player rest idly upon the chords.  It is twilight always for the dancing nymphs whom Corot set free among the silver poplars of France.  In eternal twilight they move, those frail diaphanous figures, whose tremulous white feet seem not to touch the dew-drenched grass they tread on.  But those who walk in epos, drama, or romance, see through the labouring months the young moons wax and wane, and watch the night from evening unto morning star, and from sunrise unto sunsetting can note the shifting