The times., 1898-10-02

gigantic harp. There is a touch of some
thing deeper than satire in this:
The 81 ~ gripped him by the hair, and sun by
sun they fell,
Till they came to the belt of Naughty Stars that
rim the mouth OF He'll;
The first are red with pride and wrath, the next
white with pain
But the third are black with clirkered sin that
cannot burn again.
They may hold their path, they may leave their
path, with never a soul to mark,
They may burn or freeze, but they must not
in the Scorn of the Outer Dark
When Tomlinson has been questioned by
the wardens of both heaven and hell, and
it has been discovered that he has never
done anything of his own free will, but
always through the influence of some
friend or some book, we have this scene,
fit for the pencil of Dore:
Empusas crew, so naked-new they may not face
the fire,
But weep that they bin too small TO sin to the
height of their desire,
Over the coal they chased the Soul, and racked 1t
all abroad,
As children rife cadds-case the ravens fool
ish hoard.
And back they came with the tatte.ed Thing, as
children after play
And they said, The soul that he got from God
he has bartered clean away.
We have thrcshed stock OF print and book, and
winnowed a chattering wind,
And many soul whereirom he stole, but his
cannot find.
We have handled him. we have dandlod him, we
have scared him to the bone,
And sure if tooth and nail show truth he has no
soul OF his own
The ballad is not one which lends itself
aptly to quotation. 1t should be read in its
length and breadth, and height and
depth. The ineXtinguishable laughter of
the gods is in that poem-the laughter
which is always tinged with sadness, al
ways pitiful of the littleness of man. The
man who wrote il comes of the race of
Milton, who peopled heaven with enor-
nous shadows of humankind, like the
specter Of the Brocken. But Milton took
himself seriously. Kipling, with the re-
serve and horror of cant which marks
the modern intellectual Englishman,.
rarely does this Therefore "Tomlinson"
is satire and not small edition of Mil
ton.
Christmas in India" written for an
Indian paper many years ago, is In this
volume, as is also that cutting bit of sar-
casm on the complacent English tourist.
"Pagett, NJ P" Half a dozen ditties of
the Departmental" style cynical, point
ed, and a tritle self-conscious, are here,
but better than these is a ballad of Vik-
ing simplicity, the Ballad of Fishers
Boarding House" This hostelry existed
in one of those cosmopolitan ports which
are like nothing else except Frisco in
the days of the Argonauts-ful OF waits
and strays from all parts OF the world.
The tale is simple, even primitive. 1t is
only the story of Salem Hardieker, who
killed Hans. the blue-eyed Dane, in a
brawl over one Anne of Austria, whose
establishments Hans had disdained for
the sake of Ultruda, his bethrothed. 1t is
a tale as old as humanity, and for that
reason is worth the telling. KiplinS tells
it with an elementary simplicity which is
its proper medium Last of all comes the
noble music of the "RecessiOnal. This is
rather an extraordinary collection of
poems for a wee book which may be car
ried in ones smallest pocket (San Fran
cisco: William Doxey, AT the Sign of the
Lark