Where'er you find "the cooling western breeze,"
In the next line, it "whispers through the trees: "
If crystal streams "with pleasing murmurs creep,"
The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) "with sleep.'

3881

Pope: E. on Criticism. Pt. ii. Line 150

What woful stuff this madrigal would be,
in some starved hackney sonnetteer, or me?
But let a lord once own the happy lines,
How the wit brightens! how the style refires!
3882
The dog-star rages! nay, 'tis past a doubt,
All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:
Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,
They rave, recite, and madden round the land.
3883

Pope: E. on Criticism. Pt. ii. Line 218

Pope: Epis. to Arbuthnot. Line 3,

Is there a parson much be-mused in beer,

A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,

A clerk, foredoomed his father's soul to cross,
Who pens a stanza, when he should engross?

All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strain Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain. 3884

Pope: Epis. to Arbuthnot. Line 15.

As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,
I lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.
3885
Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,
That tends to make one worthy man my foe,
Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,

Pope: Epis. to Arbuthnot. Line 127.

Or from the soft-ey'd virgin steal a tear! 3886

Pope: Epis. to Arbuthnot. Line 283.

He who now to sense, now nonsense, leaning, Means not, but blunders round about a meaning; And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,

It is not poetry, but prose run mad:

All these, my modest satire bade translate,
And owned that nine such poets made a Tate.

3887

Pope: Epis. to Arbuthnot. Line 185.

Let Envy howl, while heaven's whole chorus sings,
And bark at honor not conferr'd by kings;

Let Flatt'ry sickening see the incense rise,
Sweet to the world, and grateful to the skies:
Truth guards the poet, sanctifies the line,

And makes immortal, verses as mean as mine.

3888

Even copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,

Pope: Epil. to Satires. Dialogue ii. Line 242.

Pope: Satire v. Line 280

The last and greatest art, the art to blot.

3889

Sages and chiefs long since had birth
Ere Cæsar was, or Newton named;

Those raised new empires o'er the earth,

And these new heavens and systems framed;

Vain was the chiefs', the sages' pride!

They had no poet, and they died.

3890 Pope: Imit. of Horace. A Fragment. Bk. 4. Ode 9

Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound,
Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there;
Then wrote, and flounder'd on, in mere despair.
3891

Pope: Dunciad. Bk. i. Line 118.

Now times are changed, and one poetic itch
Has seiz'd the court and city, poor and rich:
Sons, sires, and grandsires, all will wear the bays,
Our wives read Milton, and our daughters plays;
To theatres and to rehearsals throng,

And all our grace at table is a song.

3892

Rising with Aurora's light,

Pope: Satire v. Line 169

The Muse invoked, sit down to write;
Blot out, correct, insert, refine,

Enlarge, diminish, interline;

Be mindful, when invention fails,

To scratch your head, and bite your nails. 3893

Swift: On Poetry. Line 85.

The bard, nor think too lightly that I mean
Those little, piddling witlings, who o'erween
Of their small parts, the Murphys of the stage,
The Masons and the Whiteheads of the age,
Who all in raptures their own works rehearse,
And drawl out measured prose, which they call verse.
3894
Churchill: Independence. Line 291.

The poor poet

Worships without reward, nor hopes to find

A heaven save in his worship.

3895

George Eliot: Spanish Gypsy. Bk. i

Where go the poets' lines?

Answer, ye evening tapers!

Ye auburn locks, ye golden curls,

Speak from your folded papers! 3896

Oliver Wendell Holmes: The Poet's Lot. St. 3.

The busy shuttle comes and goes

Across the rhymes, and deftly weaves

A tissue out of autumn leaves,

With here a thistle, there a rose.

3897

T. B. Aldrich: Cloth of Gold. Prelude

A "poet" is a word soon said;

A book's a thing soon written. Nay, indeed,
The more the poet shall be questionable,
The more unquestionably comes his book!

There's more than passion goes to make a man,
Or book, which is a man too.

3898

Mrs. Browning: Aurora Leigh. Bk. v. Line 400

I have been sojourning late

Among the pleasant places of my Past,

The green and quiet neighborhoods of Thought,
In which I wandered in my wayward youth,
With no companion but the constant Muse,
Who sought me when I needed her — ah, when
Did I not need her, solitary else.

Poetry is

Henry Vaughan: Anguish

The grandest chariot wherein king-thoughts ride;
One who shall fervent grasp the sword of song
As a stern swordsman grasps his keenest blade,
To find the quickest passage to the heart.

3901

Alexander Smith: A Life Drama. Sc. 2.

Poems, like pictures, are of different sorts,

Some better at a distance, others near;

Some love the dark, some choose the clearest light,

And boldly challenge the most piercing eye;

Some please for once, some will forever please.

3902 Roscommon: Transl. Horace's Art of Poetry. Line 405.

God is the PERFECT POET,

Who in creation acts his own conceptions.

3903

Robert Browning: Paracelsus. Sc 2.

In Spring the Poet is glad,

And in Summer the Poet is gay;

But in Autumn the Poet is sad,

And has something sad to say:

And the autumn songs of the Poet's soul
Are set to the passionate grief

Of Winds that sough and Bells that toll
The Dirge of the Falling Leaf.

3904

Byron Forceythe Willson: Autumn Song

The source of each accordant strain
Lies deeper than the Poet's brain.

First from the people's heart must spring
The passions which he learns to sing;
They are the wind, the harp is he,
To voice their fitful melody, —

The language of their varying fate,
Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,
The talisman which holds inwrought
The touchstone of the listener's thought;
That penetrates each vain disguise,
And brings his secret to his eyes.

3905

The Poet's license!

Bayard Taylor: Amran's Wooing 'tis the fee Of earth, and sky, and river To him who views them royally, To have and hold forever!

3906

Can the poets, in the rapture
Of their finest dreams,

Paint the lily of the valley
Fairer than she seems?

3907

J. G. Saxe: The Poet's License

J. G. Saxe: De Musa.

Poets are all who love, who feel great truths
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

3908

Bailey: Festus. Sc. Another and a Better World.

Poetry is itself a thing of God;

He made His prophets poets, and the more
We feel of poesy, do we become

Like God in love and power under-makers.

3909

Bailey: Festus. Proem. Line 5.

Bailey: Festus. Sc. Home.

Poets live upon the living light
Of nature and of beauty; they love light.
3910
All other trades demand, verse-makers beg;
A dedication is a wooden leg.
3911

There is a pleasure in poetic pains,
Which only poets know.

3912

Young: Love of Fame. Satire iv. Line 191.

Cowper: Task. Bk. ii. Line 285.

Keats: Grasshopper and Cricket.

The poetry of earth is never dead. 3913

Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song. 3914

Keats: Epis. to George Felton Mathews

Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope;

Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey;
Because the first is crazed beyond all hope,

The second drunk, the third so quaint and mouthey:
With Crabbe it may be difficult to cope.

3915

Byron: Don Juan. Canto 1. St. 205

Ovid's a rake, as half his verses show him,
Anacreon's morals are a still worse sample,
Catullus scarcely has a decent poem,

I don't think Sappho's Ode a good example,
Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn,

Where the sublime soars forth on wings more ample;
But Virgil's songs are pure, except that horrid one
Beginning with "Formosum Pastor Corydon."

Lucretius' irreligion is too strong

For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food;
I can't help thinking Juvenal was wrong,
Although no doubt his real intent was good,
For speaking out so plainly in his song,
So much, indeed, as to be downright rude:
And then what proper person can be partial
To all those nauseous epigrams of Martial?
3916

Byron: Don Juan. Canto i. Sts. 42 and 43.

Nothing so difficult as a beginning

In poesy, unless perhaps the end;

For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning

The race, he sprains a wing, and down we tend,
Like Lucifer, when hurl'd from heaven for sinning;
Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend,

Being pride, which leads the mind to soar too far,
Till our own weakness shows us what we are.
3917

Byron: Don Juan. Canto iv. St 1.

All are not moralists, like Southey, when
He prated to the world of "Pantisocrasy;
Or Wordsworth, unexcised, unhired, who then
Season'd his peddler poems with democracy;
Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen
Lent to the Morning Post its aristocracy;
When he and Southey, following the same path,
Espoused two partners (milliners, of Bath).

Such names at present cut a convict figure,
The very Botany Bay in moral geography;
Their loyal treason, renegado vigor,

Are good manure for their more bare biography.
3918

Byron: Don Juan. Canto iii. Sts. 93 and 94