True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;

And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore;

I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Colonel Richard Lovelace (1618-1658)

It is perhaps a platitude that one admires-secretly, at least a quality one lacks. Burns, a creature of impulse, in writing the epitaph of a brother worker, gave highest praise to self-control. The stanza of "A Bard's Epitaph," found also in such well-known poems as "To a Mouse" and "To a Mountain Daisy," has been given Burns's name. Note in this poem the change from dialect to standard English. Owre means over; blate, timid; snool, yield weakly; dool, sorrow.

A BARD'S EPITAPH

Is there a whim-inspirèd fool,

Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool?
Let him draw near;

And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.

Is there a bard of rustic song,

Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,

That weekly this area throng?

Oh, pass not by!

But, with a frater-feeling strong,

Here, heave a sigh.

Is there a man, whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career
Wild as the wave?

Here pause-and thro' the starting tear,
Survey this grave.

The

poor inhabitant below

Was quick to learn, and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame;

But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stain'd his name!

Reader, attend!-whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthy hole,
In low pursuit;

Know, prudent, cautious self-control
Is wisdom's root.

Robert Burns (1759-1796)

Poems charged with homely sentiment are, like songs and narrative verse, enjoyed by persons uninitiated into the subtleties of the unsung lyric. Kingsley is, of course, best known not as a poet but as the author of the novels Westward Ho! and Hereward the Wake. Note the feminine rimes in “Young and Old." Were the words lad and there omitted, the sense would be equally clear, but the poem would somehow lose its slow tempo and pathetic dignity.

YOUNG AND OLD

When all the world is young, lad,

And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,

And every lass a queen;

Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;

Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,

And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:

God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young.

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875)

In the above poem the second stanza affords a contrast with the first. In the following, the second answers a question which the first has propounded. Goldsmith, a member of Dr. Johnson's Club, was the versatile author of She Stoops to Conquer, The Vicar of Wakefield, The Deserted Village, and The Citizen of the World. A brilliant parody of "When Lovely Woman" may be found in the chapter on Light Verse.

WHEN LOVELY WOMAN

When lovely woman stoops to folly
And finds too late that men betray,-
What charm can soothe her melancholy,
What art can wash her guilt away?

The only art her guilt to cover,

To hide her shame from every eye,
To give repentance to her lover
And wring his bosom, is-to die.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774)

The art, the mythology, and the mystery of the ancient world have always been popular subjects with English poets. The Niobe of Greek mythology, who lost her six sons and six daughters and would not be comforted, has, for instance, become a type of the bereaved mother of all times and lands. For Byron's cultivated audience a hundred words could not have described Rome so well as the phrase "the Niobe of nations." In "Niobe,” as in "Orpheus and Eurydice," and "The Venus of Milo," Noyes has attained a high rank among modern interpreters of the legends of Greek mythology. "Niobe" is, perhaps, the finest presentation in words of the legendary mother.

NIOBE

How like the sky she bends above her child,
One with the great horizon of her pain!
No sob from our low seas where woe runs wild,
No weeping cloud, no momentary rain,
Can mar the heaven-high visage of her grief,
That frozen anguish, proud, majestic, dumb.
She stoops in pity above the labouring earth,
Knowing how fond, how brief

Is all its hope, past, present, and to come,

She stoops in pity, and yearns to assuage its dearth.

Through that fair face the whole dark universe

Speaks, as a thorn-tree speaks thro' one white flower;
And all those wrenched Promethean souls that curse
The gods, but cannot die before their hour,
Find utterance in her beauty. That fair head
Bows over all earth's graves. It was her cry

Men heard in Rama when the twisted ways

With children's blood ran red!

Her silence utters all the sea would sigh;

And, in her face, the whole earth's anguish prays.

It is the pity, the pity of human love

That strains her face, upturned to meet the doom, And her deep bosom, like a snow-white dove

Frozen upon its nest, ne'er to resume

Its happy breathing o'er the golden brace

Whose fostering was her death. Death, death alone
Can break the anguished horror of that spell!
The sorrow on her face

Is sealed: the living flesh is turned to stone;
She knows all, all, that Life and Time can tell.

Ah, yet, her woman's love, so vast, so tender;
Her woman's body, hurt by every dart;
Braving the thunder, still, still hide the slender
Soft frightened child beneath her mighty heart.
She is all one mute immortal cry, one brief

Infinite pang of such victorious pain

That she transcends the heavens and bows them down!
The majesty of grief

Is hers, and her dominion must remain

Eternal. God nor man usurps that crown.

Alfred Noyes (1880- )

In this iambic poem, note the substitution of the lighter ascending foot in the last line of the first stanza. The fifth line may be similarly explained, or heaven may be considered as a monosyllable. These substitutions are fairly frequent in iambic poetry. Similarly the dactyl appears occasionally in a trochaic line. Much as the words Promethean and Rama may connote, it is evident