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“Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.”

We love a poet more for what he has suffered than what he has done, and yet ultimately, if we will only see it, what he suffers and what he does are the same. As boys we love our Byron and our Shelley; as men our Goethe and our Shakspere. Gordon, I say, as poet and failure is better than prose-man and success. But see now what he has to say about this life in which he failed so.

Firstly, there is all the doubt and bewilderment of a period of transition:

“We are children lost in the wood.”

“Lord,” prays this woman that loves Laurence Raby,

“Lord, lead us out of this tangled wild,

where the wise and the prudent have been beguiled,

and only the babes have stood.”

Meantime,

“Onward! onward! still we wander,

nearer draws the goal;

Half the riddle’s read, we ponder

vainly on the whole....

Onward! onward! toiling ever,

weary steps and slow;

doubting oft, despairing never,

to the goal we go!”

To what goal? Well,

“The chances are I go where most men go.”