Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffodillies fill their cups with tears,
To deck the laureat hearse where Lycid lies.

And at the same time he plucks the berries of the myrtle and the ivy.

_Miss Ilex._ Very beautiful, if not true to English seasons: but Milton
might have thought himself justified in making this combination in
Arcadia. Generally, he is strictly accurate, to a degree that is in
itself a beauty. For instance, in his address to the nightingale--

Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among,
I woo to hear thy even-song,
And missing thee, I walk unseen,
On the dry smooth-shaven green.

The song of the nightingale ceases about the time that the grass is
mown.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ The old Greek poetry is always true to Nature,
and will bear any degree of critical analysis. I must say I take no
pleasure in poetry that will not.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ No poet is truer to Nature than Burns, and no
one less so than Moore. His imagery is almost always false. Here is a
highly-applauded stanza, and very taking at first sight--

The night-dew of heaven, though in silence it weeps,
Shall brighten with verdure the sod where he sleeps;
And the tear that we shed, though in secret it rolls,
Shall long keep his memory green in our souls.

But it will not bear analysis. The dew is the cause of the verdure: but
the tear is not the cause of the memory: the memory is the cause of the
tear.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ There are inaccuracies more offensive to me than
even false imagery. Here is one, in a song which I have often heard with
displeasure. A young man goes up a mountain, and as he goes higher and
higher, he repeats _Excelsior_: but _excelsior_ is only taller in the
comparison of things on a common basis, not higher, as a detached object
in the air. Jack's bean-stalk was _excelsior_ the higher it grew: but
Jack himself was no more _celsus_ at the top than he had been at the
bottom.

_Mr. MacBorrowdale._ I am afraid, doctor, if you look for profound
knowledge in popular poetry, you will often be disappointed.

_The Rev. Dr. Opimian._ I do not look for profound knowledge. But I do
expect that poets should understand what they talk of. Burns was not a
scholar, but he was always master of his subject. All the scholarship of
the world would not have produced _Tarn o' Shanter_: but in the whole
of that poem th