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

110 John DrinkwaterFour ducks on a pond,A grass-bank beyond,A blue sky of spring,White clouds on the wing;What a little thingTo remember for years—To remember with tears.In 1879 Sir Edwin Arnold published The Light of Asia.It is an exposition in narrative verse of Buddhist philosophy,running to some 5000 lines, and probably finds asfew readers to-day as Philip James Bailey's Festus, aneven longer philosophical poem of an earlier generation.And yet, if there were time for everything, the perusal ofArnold's poem would not be among our wasted employments.I cannot speak of it with any critical certainty;I happened to read it young, and I still retain, especiallyfrom such interludes as ' We are the voices of the wanderingwind', a pleasing impression of somewhat drowsy butwell-sustained romance.In conclusion, we may note that Robert Louis Stevenson,William Ernest Henley, Edmund Gosse, RobertBridges and Alice Meynell were of grown years when ourdecade began, as were John Davidson, Francis Thompsonand William Watson by the time it closed. The names ofGosse, Bridges and Alice Meynell all appeared on titlepages in the 'seventies, but in their maturity these poetsbelong to a later period. The account we have had togive is not a very inspiring one; but it is not withoutinterest as a passage in the larger story of English verse.