R,CHARD MONCKTON MILNES was born in the year - OUDL Home

The Poetry of the 'Seventies 105of a Richard Watson Dixon or a James ('B. V.') Thomson'sCity of Dreadful Night.So that the chief interest of English poetry in the'seventies is to be found not in any striking developmentor preparation in the larger activity of the art, but in thegood things that, it might almost seem, have drifted intothe time by chance, and from nowhere in particular.Finding our 'seventies to be of very little profit by themethods of comparative criticism, we may yet part fromthem not too discontented with a little anthology inour minds of those things that carry their own virtueplainly marked upon them, and make no pretence beyondit. They do not extend the tradition, and they donot open up new avenues for future effort. They aremerely good poems, touched by a breath of spontaneitythat keeps them fresh and gainly after fifty years. Wemay choose them without ordering, as they come to ourhand. Here is Dixon, with his exquisite Song:The feathers of the willowAre half of them grown yellowAbove the swelling stream;And ragged are the bushes,And rusty now the rushes,And wild the clouded gleam.The thistle now is older,His stalk begins to moulder,His head is white as snow;The branches all are barer,The linnet's song is rarer,The robin pipeth now.We may see in that something of Dixon's early Pre-Raphaelite associations; or we may agree with GerardHopkins that in such work there is a kinship with Wordsworthsuch as has not been shown by any other later poet;but there is really little more to say of it than has beensaid by Dr Bridges: ' I should say that the destiny of thispoem is that it will always be found in any collection of