Or, if they sing, 'tis with so dull a cheer,

That leaves look pale, dreading the winter's near.

This expresses the grief of the poet for the absence of the Arcadian Beauty; and this is the sense of the lines in Spenser where Colin, for the purposes of the poet, represents the spirit of Arcadia itself.

Nothing is more common among the poets than these expressions of deep grief at periods when the poetic inspiration is withdrawn; and this is true also of certain religious temperaments, as may be seen in the life of Payson and others. Geo. Herbert is an example of both, being a religious poet. He is perpetually lamenting the absence of the Spirit, meaning the Spirit of Christ. A poem in his works entitled "A Parodie," begins thus:

"Souls joy, when thou art gone

And I alone,

Which cannot be,

Because thou dost abide with me,
And I depend on thee;

Yet when thou dost suppress

The cheerfulness

Of thy abode,

[meaning his soul]

And in my powers not stir abroad,

But leave me to my load:

O what a damp and shade

Doth me invade!

No stormy night

Can so afflict, or so affright,
As thy eclipsed light."

The writer did not intend to run into these com. parisons, and yet they furnish materials for serious psychological study; for it is not at all beyond the limits of the possible, but that Herbert and Spenser had a vision of the same (Arcadian) land, though under some unimportant varying accompaniments; and if we could discover a definite object in the poet of the Canticles, we might make an important discovery touching some of the most wonderful and fascinating experiences in life.

But we must return from this digression.

Colin, that is, the poet, being invited, as we have said, to give an account of his journey, which we insist was a journey to Arcadia, or the poet's paradise, professes himself very willing to yield assent (line 37, &c.), declaring how happy his journey had

made him; for, says he, referring to the queen of the country he had visited (line 40, &c.) :

Since I saw that angel's blessed eye,

Her world's bright sun, her heaven's fairest light,

My mind, full of my thoughts' satietie,

Doth feed on sweet contentment of that sight:

No feeling have in any earthly pleasure,

But in remembrance of that glory bright,

My life's sole bliss, my heart's eternal treasure.

Spenser's 35th Sonnet, and Shakespeare's 109th and 112th Sonnets, are written in the same vein.

The poet now commences his story (line 56), by giving an account, to be understood as mystical, of his having been seated at the foot of a certain mount, which he calls Mole; and, while there seated, playing, as he tells us, upon his oaten reed, he was visited by a "strange shepherd " (line 60).

Here we must draw slightly upon the reader's concessions; for we understand by this "strange shepherd" what we must for the present call-and we pray the reader not to be startled-this strange shepherd we must call, we say, the Spirit of Truth; or if the reader chooses to imagine an intervening

visitant, he may be likened to the Orphan Boy in the story of the Red Book of Appin.

He calls himself the Shepherd of the Ocean (line 66), in answer to a question by Colin; and the Ocean referred to is the great Ocean of Life, out of which there comes to some favored mortals, from time to time, a certain spirit, here personified as a Strange Shepherd.

The reader is now expected to notice that the HONEST shepherd has drawn to himself, as it were, a SENSE of the great harmony with whom, or with which, as the reader pleases, a spirit - friendship is formed. The unity of the two in spirit is poetically discovered and described in the lines from 68 to 79:

He piped, [says Colin,] I sung;
And when he sung, I piped,

Neither envying the other nor envied.

In one word, the HONEST man has discovered a principle in himself, the nature of which becomes so far disclosed as to bring to the shepherd a profound conviction of its similitude to the true good in life, and this produces in the mind of the man a

certain impulse which, personified, is represented as an invitation to leave the "waste" into which he had been led by his association, as we shall soon see, with a stream, the Bregog by name.

But Cuddy steps in (line 81), and asks Colin the burden of the song which had attracted the strange shepherd; and that, it appears, "referred" to the river Bregog, just named (line 92)-and here we must anticipate the story so far as to say, that the river Bregog signifies the false, as the poem will presently show us; and we must observe further, that, in the story about to be told by Colin, there are two streams, described as at the foot of Old Mole, one named the "Mulla," and the other this "false" river Bregog.

These two streams figure the true and the faise in life. We shall not err if we consider them as representing in the nature of MAN-his nature partaking of both-God and the world: they are called in Scripture God and Balaam, and man is required to "choose" which he will follow, as in Joshua xxiv. 15. They are likewise called life and death, between which man is also required to choose, as in Deut.

XXX. 19.

It must be noticed, that when Colin consents to