Between Ghent And Bruges

AH yes, exactly so; but when a man

Has trundled out of England into France

And half through Belgium, always in this prance

Of steam, and still has stuck to his first plan—

Blank verse or sonnets; and as he began

Would end;—why, even the blankest verse may chance

To falter in default of circumstance,

And even the sonnet miss its mystic span.

Trees will be trees, grass grass, pools merely pools,

Unto the end of time and Belgium—points

Of fact which Poets (very abject fools)

Get scent of—once their epithets grown tame

And scarce. Even to these foreign rails—my joints

Begin to find their jolting much the same.