heroines of sonnet-sequence and song-string. She herself has a
distinct touch of philosophy, anticipating with nonchalant resignation
the year's severance, and with equally nonchalant anticipation the
time when

"Some day next year I shall be,
Entering heedless, kissed by thee."

Her wooer paints her with gusto, but scarcely with ardour; and ends
with the boding note--

"Yet, if little stays with man,
Ah! retain we all we can!"--

seeming to be at least as doubtful of his own constancy as of hers.
Nor do we meet her again in the volume. The well-known complementary
pieces which make up _Switzerland_ were either not written, or
held back.

The inferior but interesting _Modern Sappho_, almost the poet's
only experiment in "Moore-ish" method and melody--

"They are gone--all is still! Foolish heart, dost thou quiver?"--

is a curiosity rather than anything else. The style is ill suited to
the thought; besides, Matthew Arnold, a master at times of blank
verse, and of the statelier stanza, was less often an adept at the
lighter and more rushing lyrical measures. He is infinitely more at
home in the beautiful _New Sirens_, which, for what reason it is
difficult to discover, he never reprinted till many years later,