“but if I could understand
     What you are, root and all, and all in all,”—­

I should at length comprehend the divine and inexplicable gift of song.

The “Ballad of the Making of a Poet.”

But beautiful as it is in detail, this poem, and at least one other in the little volume, have the great merit which has hitherto been lacking in the best of Mr. Davidson’s work.  They are thoroughly considered; seen as solid wholes; seen not only in front but round at the back.  In fact, they are natural growths of Mr. Davidson’s philosophy of life.  In his “Ballad of the Making of a Poet” Mr. Davidson lets us know his conception of the poet’s proper function.

“I am a man apart: 
A mouthpiece for the creeds of all the world;
A soulless life that angels may possess
Or demons haunt, wherein the foulest things
May loll at ease beside the loveliest;
A martyr for all mundane moods to tear;
The slave of every passion; and the slave
Of heat and cold, of darkness and of light;
A trembling lyre for every wind to sound.
* * * * *
Within my heart
I’ll gather all the universe, and sing
As sweetly as the spheres; and I shall be
The first of men to understand himself....”

Making, of course, full concessions to the demands of poetical treatment, we may assume pretty confidently that Mr. Davidson intended this “Ballad in Blank Verse of the Making of a Poet” for a soul’s autobiography, of a kind.  If so, I trust he will forgive me for doubting if he is at all likely to fulfil the poet’s office as he conceives it here, or even to approach within measurable distance of his ideal—­

     “A trembling lyre for every wind to sound.”

That it is one way in which a poet may attain, I am not just now denying.  But luckily men attain in many ways:  and the man who sits himself down of fixed purpose to be an AEolian harp for the winds of the world, is of all men the least likely to be merely AEolian.  For the first demand of AEolian sound is that the instrument should have no theories of its own; and explicitly to proclaim yourself AEolian is implicitly to proclaim yourself didactic.  As a matter of fact, both the “Ballad of the Making of a Poet” and the “Ballad of a Nun” contain sharply pointed morals very stoutly driven home.  In each the poet has made up his mind; he has a theory of life, and presents that theory to us under cover of a parable.  The beauty of the “Ballad of a Nun”—­or so much of it as stands beyond and above mere beauty of language—­consists in this, that it is informed, and consciously informed, by a spirit of tolerance so exceedingly wide that to match it I can find one poem and one only among those of recent years:  I mean “Catherine Kinrade.”  In Mr. Brown’s poem the Bishop is welcomed into Heaven by the half-wilted harlot he had once condemned to painful and public punishment.  In Mr. Davidson’s poem, Mary, the Mother of Heaven, herself takes the form and place of the wandering nun and fills it until the penitent returns.  Take either poem:  take Mr. Brown’s—­