TO C. J. R. IN REMEMBRANCE OF SUNNY DAYS AND STARLIT NIGHTS WHEN WE RAMBLED TOGETHER ON CRUMBLING CLIFFS THAT ARE NOW AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA THIS EDITION OF A STORY WHICH HAS BEEN A LINK BETWEEN US IS INSCRIBED

CAUGHT IN THE EBBING TIDE

A REMINISCENCE OF RAXTOX CLIFFS

The mightiest Titan's stroke could not withstand An ebbing tide like this. These swirls denote How wind and tide conspire. I can but float To the open sea and strike no more for land. Farewell, brown cliffs, farewell, beloved sand Her feet have pressed—farewell, dear little boat Where Gelert,[Footnote] calmly sitting on my coat, Unconscious of my peril, gazes bland!

All dangers grip me save the deadliest, fear: Yet these air-pictures of the past that glide— These death-mirages o'er the heaving tide— Showing two lovers in an alcove clear, Will break my heart. I see them and I hear As there they sit at morning, side by side.

[Footnote: A famous swimming dog.]

THE VISION

_With Barton elms behind—in front the sea, Sitting in rosy light in that alcove, They hear the first lark rise o'er Raxton Grove: 'What should I do with fame, dear heart?' says he, 'You talk of fame, poetic fame, to me Whose crown is not of laurel but of love— To me who would not give this little glove On this dear hand for Shakespeare's dower in fee.

While, rising red and kindling every billow, The sun's shield shines 'neath many a golden spear, To lean with you, against this leafy pillow, To murmur words of love in this loved ear— To feel you bending like a bending willow, This is to be a poet—this, my dear!'_

O God, to die and leave her—die and leave The heaven so lately won!—And then, to know What misery will be hers—what lonely woe!— To see the bright eyes weep, to see her grieve Will make me a coward as I sink, and cleave To life though Destiny has bid me go. How shall I bear the pictures that will glow Above the glowing billows as they heave?

One picture fades, and now above the spray Another shines: ah, do I know the bowers Where yon sweet woman stands—the woodland flowers, In that bright wreath of grass and new-mown hay— That birthday wreath I wove when earthly hours Wore angel-wings,—till portents brought dismay?

Shall I turn coward here who sailed with Death Through many a tempest on mine own North Sea, And quail like him of old who bowed the knee— Faithless—to billows of Genesereth? Did I turn coward when my very breath Froze on my lips that Alpine night when He Stood glimmering there, the Skeleton, with me, While avalanches rolled from peaks beneath?

Each billow bears me nearer to the verge Of realms where she is not—where love must wait. If Gelert, there, could hear, no need to urge That friend, so faithful, true, affectionate, To come and help me, or to share my fate. Ah! surely I see him springing through the surge. [The dog, plunging into the tide and striking towards his master with immense strength, reaches him and swims round him.]

Oh, Gelert, strong of wind and strong of paw, Here gazing like your namesake, 'Snowdon's Hound,' When great Llewelyn's child could not be found, And all the warriors stood in speechless awe— Mute as your namesake when his master saw The cradle tossed—the rushes red around— With never a word, but only a whimpering sound To tell what meant the blood on lip and jaw!

In such a strait, to aid this gaze so fond, Should I, brave friend, have needed other speech Than this dear whimper? Is there not a bond Stronger than words that binds us each to each?— But Death has caught us both. 'Tis far beyond The strength of man or dog to win the beach.

Through tangle-weed—through coils of slippery kelp Decking your shaggy forehead, those brave eyes Shine true—shine deep of love's divine surmise As hers who gave you—then a Titan whelp!— I think you know my danger and would help!— See how I point to yonder smack that lies At anchor—Go! His countenance replies. Hope's music rings in Gelert's eager yelp! [The dog swims swiftly away down the tide.]

Now, life and love and death swim out with him! If he should reach the smack, the men will guess The dog has left his master in distress. She taught him in these very waves to swim— 'The prince of pups,' she said, 'for wind and limb'— And now those lessons come to save—to bless.

ENVOY

(The day after the rescue: Gelert and his master walking along the sand.)

'Twas in no glittering tourney's mimic strife,— 'Twas in that bloody fight in Raxton Grove, While hungry ravens croaked from boughs above, And frightened blackbirds shrilled the warning fife— 'Twas there, in days when Friendship still was rife. Mine ancestor who threw the challenge-glove Conquered and found his foe a soul to love, Found friendship—Life's great second crown of life.

So I this morning love our North Sea more Because he fought me well, because these waves Now weaving sunbows for us by the shore Strove with me, tossed me in those emerald caves That yawned above my head like conscious graves— I love him as I never loved before.

PREFACE TO THIS EDITION

The heart-thought of this hook being the peculiar doctrine in Philip Aylwin's Veiled Queen, and the effect of it upon the fortunes of the hero and the other characters, the name 'The Renascence of Wonder' was the first that came to my mind when confronting the difficult question of finding a name for a book that is at once a love-story and an expression of a creed. But eventually I decided, and I think from the worldly point of view wisely, to give it simply the name of the hero.

The important place in the story, however, taken by this creed did not escape the most acute and painstaking of the critics. Madame Galimberti, for instance, in the elaborate study of the book which she made in the Rivista d' Italia, gave great attention to its central idea: so did M. Maurice Muret, in the Journal des Débats; so did M. Henri Jacottet in La Semaine Littéraire. Mr. Baker, again, in his recently published work on fiction, described Aylwin as 'an imaginative romance of modern days, the moral idea of which is man's attitude in face of the unknown,' or, as the writer puts it, 'the renascence of wonder.' With regard to the phrase itself, in the introduction to the latest edition of Aylwin—the twenty-second edition—I made the following brief reply to certain questions that have been raised by critics both in England and on the Continent concerning it. The phrase, I said, 'The Renascence of Wonder,'

Is used to express that great revived movement of the soul of man which is generally said to have begun with the poetry of Wordsworth, Scott, Coleridge, and others, and after many varieties of expression reached its culmination in the poems and pictures of Rossetti. The phrase 'The Renascence of Wonder' merely indicates that there are two great impulses governing man, and probably not man only but the entire world of conscious life—the impulse of acceptance—the impulse to take unchallenged and for granted all the phenomena of the outer world as they are, and the impulse to confront these phenomena with eyes of inquiry and wonder.

The painter Wilderspin says to Henry Aylwin, 'The one great event of my life has been the reading of The Veiled Queen, your father's hook of inspired wisdom upon the modern Renascence of Wonder in the mind of man.' And further on he says that his own great picture symbolical of this renascence was suggested by Philip Aylwin's vignette. Since the original writing of Aylwin, many years ago, I have enlarged upon its central idea in the Encyclopaedia Britannica and in the introductory essay to the third volume of Chambers's Cyclopædia of English Literature, and in other places. Naturally, therefore, the phrase has been a good deal discussed. Quite lately Dr. Robertson Nicoll has directed attention to the phrase, and he has taken it as a text of a remarkable discourse upon the 'Renascence of Wonder in Religion.' I am tempted to quote some of his words:—

Amongst the Logia recently discovered by the explorers of the Egypt Fund, there is one of which part was already known to have occurred in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. It runs as follows:—'Let not him that seeketh cease from his search until he find, and when he finds he shall wonder: wondering he shall reach the kingdom, and when he reaches the kingdom he shall have rest.'…We believe that Butler was one of the first to share in the Renascence of Wonder, which was the renascence of religion….Men saw once more the marvel of the universe and the romance of man's destiny. They became aware of the spiritual world, of the supernatural, of the lifelong struggle of the soul, of the power of the unseen.

The words quoted by Dr. Nicoll might very appropriately be used as a motto for Aylwin and also for its sequel The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswells Story.