picture of wedded happiness finds no parallel, I think, anywhere in the
pages of his brother-poet:--

"Across the threshold led,
And every tear kissed off as soon as shed,
His house she enters, there to be a light
Shining within, when all without is night;
A guardian angel o'er his life presiding,
Doubling his pleasures, and his cares dividing!
How oft her eyes read his; her gentle mind
To all his wishes, all his thoughts, inclined;
Still subject--ever on the watch to borrow
Mirth of his mirth, and sorrow of his sorrow.
The soul of music slumbers in the shell,
Till waked to rapture by the master's spell;
And feeling hearts--touch them but rightly--pour
A thousand melodies unheard before."

It may be urged that Rogers exceeds in one direction as unjustifiably
as Crabbe in the opposite. But there is room in poetry for both points
of view, though the absolute--the Shakespearian--grasp of Human Life may
be truer and more eternally convincing than either.




CHAPTER X


THE TALES OF THE HALL