for a site overlooking Sydney Harbour.  A poet’s mind has given life to his work on the marble, and when he was an associate with Mr. Millais, Mr. Holman Hunt, and others, who, in 1850, were endeavouring to bring truth and beauty of expression into art, by the bold reaction against tame and insincere conventions for which Mr. Ruskin pleaded and which the time required, Mr. Woolner joined in the production by them of a magazine called “The Germ,” to which some of the verses in this volume were contributed.

There is no more to say; but through another page let Wordsworth speak the praise of Books: 

         Yet is it just
   That here, in memory of all books which lay
   Their sure foundations in the heart of man,
   Whether by native prose, or numerous verse. 
   That in the name of all inspired souls—­
   From Homer the great thunderer, from the voice
   That roars along the bed of Jewish song,
   And that more varied and elaborate,
   Those trumpet tones of harmony that shake
   Our shores in England—­from those loftiest notes,
   Down to the low and wren-like warblings, made
   For cottagers and spinners at the wheel
   And sunburnt travellers resting their tired limbs
   Stretched under wayside hedgerows, ballad tunes
   Food for the hungry ears of little ones
   And of old men who have survived their joys—­
   ’Tis just that in behalf of these, the works,
   And of the men that framed them, whether known
   Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves,
   That I should here assert their rights, attest
   Their honours, and should, once for all, pronounce
   Their benediction; speak of them as Powers
   For ever to be hallowed; only less,
   For what we are and what we may become,
   Than Nature’s self, which is the breath of God,
   Or His pure Word by miracle revealed.

Prelude, Book V.  H. M.

MY BEAUTIFUL LADY.  INTRODUCTION.

In some there lies a sorrow too profound
To find a voice or to reveal itself
Throughout the strain of daily toil, or thought,
Or during converse born of souls allied,
As aught men understand.  And though mayhap
Their cheeks will thin or droop; and wane their eyes’
Frank lustre; hair may lose its hue, or fall;
And health may slacken low in force; and they
Are older than the warrant of their years;
Yet they to others seem to gild their lives
With cheerfulness, and every duty tend,
As if their aspects told the truth within. 
   But they are not as others:  not for them
The bounding pulse, and ardour of desire,
The rapture and the wonder in things new;
The hope that palpitating enters where
Perfection smiles on universal life;
Nor do they with elastic enterprise
Forecast delight in compassing results;
Nor, having won their ends, fall godlike back