LIII

There are strange shadows fostered of the moon,
More numerous than the clear-cut shade of day.
Go forth, when all the leaves whisper of June,
Into the dusk of swooping bats at play,—

Or go into that late November dusk
When hills take on the noble lines of death,
And on the air the faint astringent musk

Of rotting leaves pours vaguely troubling breath.-
Then shall you see shadows whereof the sun
Knows nothing,-aye, a thousand shadows there
Shall leap and flicker and stir and stay and run,
Like petrels of the changing foul or fair,—
Like ghosts of twilight, of the moon, of him
Whose homeland lies past each horizon's rim. .

LIV

Across the shaken bastions of the year
March drives his windy chariot-wheels of cold.
Somewhere, they tell me, Spring is waiting near.
But all my heart is with things grey and old:-
Reliques of other Aprils, that are blown
Recklessly up and down the barren earth;
Mine the dull grasses by the Winter mown,
And the chill echoes of forgotten mirth.
Spring comes, but not for me. I know the sign
And feel it alien. I am of an age

That passes. All the blossoms that were mine
Lie trampled now beneath December's rage.
Ye children of the Spring,—may life be sweet!
For me, the world crumbles beneath my feet.

LV

They brought me tidings; and I did not hear
More than a fragment of the words they said.
Their further speech died dull upon my ear;
For my rapt spirit otherwhere had fled-
Fled unto you in other times and places.
Old memories winged about me in glad flight.
I saw your lips of longing and delight,—

Your grave glad eyes beyond their chattering faces.
I saw a world where you have been to me
More than the sun, more than the wakening wind.
I saw a brightness that they could not see.
And yet I seemed as smitten deaf and blind.
I heard but fragments of the words they said.
Life wanes. The sunlight darkens. You are dead.

LVI

Out of the dusk into whose gloom you went,
Answer me, tell me, why you chose to go?
Why did you seek that far-strewn firmament?
Was loneliness not keen enough below?

Did some old wrong affright you? Some new ill?
Did one more bloom that lured you turn to dust?
What spur could goad that lovely weary will,
What hopeless calm, what storm of shaken trust?
Across the giant waste of this unknown.
Must I forever send my questionings?
Had you no word to leave me for my own
Before you went? Must my imaginings

Deem you forgot? Or did your heart foretell

That time's whole later hush would speak farewell?

LVII

Now from the living fountains of my thought
Spring streams of comfort, crystalline and mild,
To cool the wound the sudden stroke has wrought
And bid my heart in peace be reconciled.
My spirit whispers" From this meteor flown,
Draw knowledge of the stars, now all is done.
Assign it station in some system known,

Part of the ordered brightness round the sun."
Good counsell-reconcile, transmute, remould
To earth's conglomerate mass this unconfined
Pilgrim of sky,—or label it, grown cold,
To edify a chaos-fearing mind? . . .
Love, love, I keep memorial of you! Nay!—
Unsolved, bright, lonely, till my Judgment Day!

I

THE WORLD OF H. G. WELLS

VAN WYCK BROOKS

III

The Philosophy of the New Republican

T is obvious that the socialism of Wells, touching as it does at every point the fabric of society, remains at bottom a personal and mystical conception of life. His typical socialist, or constructive man, or Samurai, or New Republican, or what you will, is as distinctly a poetic projection from life as Nietzsche's Superman, or Carlyle's Hero, or the Superior Man of Confucius. Like them, it implies a rule of conduct and a special religious attitude.

Nietzsche's Superman is a convenient figure by which for the moment to throw into relief the point I have in mind. Plainly a conception of this kind should never be intellectualized and defined. It is a living whole, as a human being is a living whole, and the only way to grasp it is to place oneself at the precise angle of the poet who conceived it. But the fixed intellect of man is not often capable of rising to the height of such an argument, nor do the run of critics and interpreters rise to such a height themselves. In the case of Nietzsche, particularly, they have confounded the confusion, urging precise definitions and at the same time disagreeing among themselves as to which definitions may be held valid. But indeed the Superman does not mean" this or that: it can merely be approached from different points of view with different degrees of sympathy. And so it is with the New Republican of Wells.

I have mentioned the Superman because Wells himself has reached a conception of aristocracy similar in certain respects to that of Nietzsche but in others wholly antagonistic. In The Food of the Gods he certainly exhibits a sympathy with Nietzsche on the poetical and ideal side; for his giants are not simply grandchildren of Rabelais, they practise of necessity a morality at variance with that of the little men among whom they grow.

When Caddles comes to London he does not, and cannot, expect the little men to feed him; not intending evil and seeing merely that he must live, he sweeps the contents of a baker's shop into his mouth with just the unconcerned innocence of laws and prohibitions that a child would feel before a blackberry bush. The very existence of a larger, freer race implies a larger and freer morality, and the giants and the little folk alike see that the same world cannot for long contain them both. But perhaps one can mark the distinction by saying that, unlike the Supermen, they are not masters but servants of the cosmic process. They themselves are not the goal toward which the whole creation tends. Humanity is not a setting for their splendor, but something that wins through them its own significance.

In fact it fully proves how profound is the socialistic instinct in Wells, that though in English-wise and almost in the manner of Carlyle he has come to believe in the great ones of this world, he has never lost the invincible socialist conviction that a great man is only a figure of speech. In The Discovery of the Future he says: I must confess that I believe that if by some juggling with space and time Julius Cæsar, Napoleon, Edward IV, William the Conqueror, Lord Rosebery, and Robert Burns had all been changed at birth, it would not have produced any serious dislocation of the course of destiny. I believe that these great men of ours are no more than images and symbols and instruments taken, as it were, haphazard by the incessant and consistent forces behind them." The individual who stands on his achievement, the "lord of creation," is to him at best a little misinformed, at the worst blustering, dishonest, presuming, absurd,— "Byronic."

He

By an original instinct the Wells hero is an inconspicuous little person, fastidiously untheatrical, who cuts no figure personally and who, to adopt a phrase from one of his later books, escapes from individuality in science and service." abhors "personages." For the personage is one who, in some degree, stands on his achievement, and to Wells man, both in his love and his work, is experimental: he is an experiment toward an impersonal synthesis, the well-being of the species. It is true that this idea of man as an experiment does not con