onne, however, had an attack of the same
platitude, and possibly inoculated poor Morris. Even literature seems to
have its mischief-making bacilli. The late "incomparable and ingenious
Dean of St. Paul's" says,
"The day breaks not, it is my heart."
I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse than Morris's. Chaucer had the
malady in a milder form when he wrote:
"Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye."
The charming naivete of it!
SITTING in Ellen Terry's dressing-room at the Lyceum Theatre one evening
during that lady's temporary absence on the stage, Sarah Bernhardt
picked up a crayon and wrote this pretty word on the mirror--_Dearling_,
mistaking it for the word darling. The French actress lighted by chance
upon a Spenserianism now become obsolete without good reason. It is a
more charming adjective than the one that has replaced it.
A DEAD author appears to be bereft of all earthly rights. He is scarcely
buried before old magazines and newspapers are ransacked in search of
matters which, for reasons sufficient to him, he had carefully excluded
from the definitive edition of his collected writings.
He gave the people of his best;
His worst he kept, his best he gave.
One can imagine a poet tempted to address some such appeal as this to
any possible future publisher of his poems:
Take what thou wilt, a lyric or a line,
Take all, take nothing--and God send thee cheer!
But my anathema on thee and thine
If thou add'st aught to what is printed here.
THE claim of this country to call itself "The Land of the Free" must be
held in abeyance until every man in it, whether he belongs or does not
belong to a labor organization, shall have the right to work for his
daily bread.
THERE is a strain of primitive poetry running through the entire Irish
race, a fleeting lyrical emotion which expresses itself in a flash,
usually in connection with love of country and kindred across the sea.
I had a touching illustration of it the other morning. The despot who
reigns over our kitchen was gathering a mess of dandelions on the rear
lawn. It was one of those blue and gold days which seem especially to
belong New England. "It's in County Westmeath I 'd be this day," she
said, looking up at me. _"I'd go cool my hands in the grass on my ould
mother's grave in the bit of churchyard foreninst the priest's house at
Mullingar."_ I have seen poorer poetry than that in the magazines.
SPEAKING of th
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