him, and they walked up and down by the shore of the sea together, and now, though an old man, whenever he hears the roar of the sea he remembers the beautiful lady who played with him and caressed him, when he was a little sick child.  How much he loved her!  But she was a woman, and he was only ten years old.  The reference to “chivalrous blood” signifies just this, that at the moment when she kissed him he would have given his life for her, would have dared anything or done anything to show his devotion to her.  No prettier memory of a child could be told.

We can learn a good deal about even the shyest of the poets through a close understanding of his poetry.  From the foregoing we know that Cory must have been a sickly child; and from other poems referring to school life we can not escape the supposition that he was not a strong lad.  In one of his verses he speaks of being unable to join in the hearty play of his comrades; and in the poem which touches on the life of the mature man we find him acknowledging that he believed his life a failure—­a failure through want of strength.  I am going to quote this poem for other reasons.  It is a beautiful address either to some favourite student or to a beloved son—­it is impossible to decide which.  But that does not matter.  The title is “A New Year’s Day.”

  Our planet runs through liquid space,
  And sweeps us with her in the race;
  And wrinkles gather on my face,
    And Hebe bloom on thine: 
  Our sun with his encircling spheres
  Around the central sun careers;
  And unto thee with mustering years
    Come hopes which I resign.

  ’Twere sweet for me to keep thee still
  Reclining halfway up the hill;
  But time will not obey the will,
    And onward thou must climb: 
  ’Twere sweet to pause on this descent,
  To wait for thee and pitch my tent,
  But march I must with shoulders bent,
    Yet further from my prime.

  I shall not tread thy battlefield,
  Nor see the blazon on thy shield;
  Take thou the sword I could not wield,
    And leave me, and forget. 
  Be fairer, braver, more admired;
  So win what feeble hearts desired;
  Then leave thine arms, when thou art tired,
    To some one nobler yet.

How beautiful this is, and how profoundly sad!

I shall return to the personal poetry of Cory later on, but I want now to give you some examples of his Greek work.  Perhaps the best of this is little more than a rendering of Greek into English; some of the work is pure translation.  But it is the translation of a very great master, the perfect rendering of Greek feeling as well as of Greek thought.  Here is an example of pure translation: