Moreover, the poems contain passages of description which, for truth to Nature, touched by real imagination, are finer than anything he had yet achieved.

The story entitled _Delay has Danger_ contains the fine picture of an autumn landscape seen through the eyes of the miserable lover--the picture which dwelt so firmly in the memory of Tennyson: "That evening all in fond discourse was spent, When the sad lover to his chamber went, To think on what had pass'd, to grieve, and to repent: Early he rose, and looked with many a sigh On the red light that fill'd the eastern sky: Oft had he stood before, alert and gay, To hail the glories of the new-born day; But now dejected, languid, listless, low, He saw the wind upon the water blow, And the cold stream curl'd onward as the gale From the pine-hill blew harshly down the dale; On the right side the youth a wood survey'd, With all its dark intensity of shade; Where the rough wind alone was heard to move, In this, the pause of nature and of love, When now the young are rear'd, and when the old, Lost to the tie, grow negligent and cold-- Far to the left he saw the huts of men, Half hid in mist that hung upon the fen; Before him swallows, gathering for the sea, Took their short flights, and twitter'd on the lea; And near the bean-sheaf stood, the harvest done, And slowly blacken'd in the sickly sun; All these were sad in nature, or they took Sadness from him, the likeness of his look, And of his mind--he ponder'd for a while, Then met his Fanny with a borrow'd smile." The entire story, from which this is an extract, is finely told, and the fitness of the passage is beyond dispute.

At other times the description is either so much above the level of the narrative, or below it, as to be almost startling.

In the very first pages of _Tales of the Hall_, in the account of the elder brother's early retirement from business, occur the following musical lines: "He chose his native village, and the hill He climb'd a boy had its attraction still; With that small brook beneath, where he would stand And stooping fill the hollow of his hand To quench th' impatient thirst--then stop awhile To see the sun upon the waters smile, In that sweet weariness, when, long denied, We drink and view the fountain that supplied The sparkling bliss--and feel, if not express, Our perfect ease in that sweet weariness." Yet it is only a hundred lines further on that, to indicate the elder brother's increasing interest in the graver concerns of human thought, Crabbe can write: "He then proceeded, not so much intent, But still in earnest, and to church he went Although they found some difference in their creed, He and his pastor cordially agreed; Convinced that they who would the truth obtain By disputation, find their efforts vain; The church he view'd as liberal minds will view, And there he fix'd his principles and pew." Among those surprises to which I have referred is the apparently recent development in the poet of a lyrical gift, the like of which he had not exhibited before.

Crabbe had already written two notable poems in stanzas, _Sir Eustace Grey_ and that other painful but exceedingly powerful drama in monologue, _The Hall of Justice_.