less characteristic.[51] Perhaps the most successful of them is “The Rime of Redemption”—­in “The Masque of Shadows” volume.  Sir Loibich’s love has died in her sins, and he sits by the fire in bitter repentance.  He hears the voice of her spirit outside in the moonlight, and together they ride through the night on a black steed, first to Fairyland, then to Purgatory, and then to the gate of Heaven.  Each of these in turn is offered him, but he rejects them all—­

  “With thee in hell, I choose to dwell”—­

and thereby works her redemption.  The wild night ride has an obvious resemblance to “Lenore”: 

“The wind screams past; they ride so fast,
Like troops of souls in pain
The snowdrifts spin, but none may win
To rest upon the twain.”

Very different from these, and indeed with no pretensions to the formal peculiarities of popular minstrelsy, is O’Shaughnessy’s weird ballad “Bisclaveret,” [52] suggested by the superstition concerning were-wolves: 

“The splendid fearful herds that stray
By midnight”—­
“The multitudinous campaign
Of hosts not yet made fast in Hell.”

Bisclaveret is the Breton word for loup garou; and the poem is headed with a caption to this effect from the “Lais” of Marie.  The wild, mystical beauty of which the Celtic imagination holds the secret is visible in this lyrist; but it would perhaps be going too far to attribute his interest in the work of Marie de France to a native sympathy with the song spirit of that other great branch of the Celtic race, the ancient Cymry.

Payne’s volume of sonnets, “Intaglios” (a title perhaps prompted by the chiselled workmanship of Gautier’s “Emaux et Camees”) bears the clearest marks of Rossetti’s influence—­or of the influence of Dante through Rossetti.  The inscription poem is to Dante, and the series named “Madonna dei Sogni” is particularly full of the imagery and sentiment of the “Purgatorio” and the “Vita Nuova.”  Several of the sonnets in the collection are written for pictures, like Rossetti’s.  Two are on Spenserian subjects, “Belphoebe” and “The Garden of Adonis”, and one, “Bride-Night” is suggested by Wagner’s “Tristram und Isolde.”  Payne’s work as a translator is of importance, and includes versions of the “Decameron,” “The Thousand and One Nights,” and the poems of Francois Villon, all made for the Villon Society.

Jewels and flowers are set thickly enough in the pages of all this school; but it is in Theophile Marzials’ singular, yet very attractive, verses that the luxurious colour in which romance delights, and the decorative features of Pre-Raphaelite art run into the most bizarre excesses.  He wantons in dainty affectations of speech and eccentricities of phantasy.  Here we find again the orchard closes, the pleached pleasances, and all those queer picture paradises, peopled with tall lilied maidens, angels with peacock wings and thin gold hoops above their heads, and court minstrels thrumming lutes, rebecks, and mandolins—­