The thunderings from the miners’ ledge,
    The wild assaults on nature’s hoard,
  The peak that stormward bares an edge
    Ground sharp in days when Titans warred;

  Grim heights, by wandering clouds embraced
    Where lightning’s ministers conspire,
  Grey glens, with tarns and streamlet laced,
    Stark forgeries of primeval fire.

  These scenes may gladden many a mind
    Awhile from homelier thoughts released,
  And here my fellow men may find
    A Sabbath and a vision-feast.

  I bless them in the good they feel;
    And yet I bless them with a sigh;
  On me this grandeur stamps the seal
    Of tyrannous mortality.

  The pitiless mountain stands so sure. 
    The human breast so weakly heaves,
  That brains decay while rocks endure. 
    At this the insatiate spirit grieves.

  But hither, oh ideal bride! 
    For whom this heart in silence aches,
  Love is unwearied as the tide,
    Love is perennial as the lakes.

  Come thou.  The spiky crags will seem
    One harvest of one heavenly year,
  And fear of death, like childish dream,
    Will pass and flee, when thou art here.

Very possibly this charming meditation was written on the Welsh coast; there is just such scenery as the poem describes, and the grand peak of Snowdon would well realize the imagination of the line about the girlhood of the growing hills.  The melancholy of the latter part of the composition is the same melancholy to be found in “Mimnermus in Church,” the first of Cory’s poems which we read together.  It is the Greek teaching that there is nothing to console us for the great doubt and mystery of existence except unselfish affection.  All through the book we find the same philosophy, even in the beautiful studies of student life and the memories of childhood.  So it is quite a melancholy book, though the sadness be beautiful.  I have given you examples of the sadness of doubt and of the sadness of love; but there is yet a third kind of sadness—­the sadness of a childless man, wishing that he could have a child of his own.  It is a very pretty thing, simply entitled “Scheveningen Avenue”—­probably the name of the avenue where the incident occurred.  The poet does not tell us how it occurred, but we can very well guess.  He was riding in a street car, probably, and a little girl next to him, while sitting upon her nurse’s lap, fell asleep, and as she slept let her head fall upon his shoulder.  This is a very simple thing to make a poem about, but what a poem it is!

  Oh, that the road were longer
    A mile, or two, or three! 
  So might the thought grow stronger
    That flows from touch of thee.

  Oh little slumbering maid,
    If thou wert five years older,
  Thine head would not be laid
    So simply on my shoulder!

  Oh, would that I were younger,
    Oh, were I more like thee,
  I should not faintly hunger
    For love that cannot be.