"A child,
Curious and innocent,
Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicing
Loses himself in the fair

Thus, thro' the World,
Seeing, feeling and knowing
Goes Man, till at last,
Tired of experience, he turns
To the friendly and comforting breast
Of the old nurse, Death."

We might have quoted, too, a sonnet of the earlier series,
for preference his Staff-Nurse: Old Style, or The Chief, in
order to show the endless adaptability of the old form to
new uses--

"The greater masters of the commonplace,
Rembrandt and good Sir Walter--only these
Could paint her all to you: experienced ease,
And antique liveliness, and ponderous grace;
The sweet old roses of her sunken face;
The depth and malice of her sly gray eyes;
The broad Scots tongue that flatters, scolds, defies;
The thick Scots wit that fells you like a mace.
These thirty years had she been nursing here,
Some of them under Syme, her hero still.
Much is she worth, and even more is made of her.
Patients and students hold her very dear.
The doctors love her, tease her, use her skill.
They say 'The Chief' himself is half-afraid of her."

These lines have an aroma of their own, new in the record
of the sonnet. The death of Andrew Lang, another occasional
associate of that little group, which occurred when the main
text of this volume was already complete, may remind us how
quickly fashions change. He helped in his day the revival
of Old French forms of verse, and so increased the wit and
savour of his art; but his best contribution to lyric is his
sonnet on Homeric criticism, which opens--

"The sacred keep of Ilion is rent . .'

There for once he attained a trumpet-note that must have
astonished himself.

-360-