WHY THIS VOLUME IS SO THIN.

In youth I dreamed, as other youths have dreamt,

Of love, and thrummed an amateur guitar

To verses of my own,— a stout attempt

To hold communion with the Evening Star

I wrote a sonnet, rhymed it, made it scan.

Ah me! how trippingly those last lines ran.—

O Hesperus! O happy star! to bend

O'er Helen's bosom in the tranced west,

To match the hours heave by upon her breast,

And at her parted lip for dreams attend —

If dawn defraud thee, how shall I be deemed,

Who house within that bosom, and am dreamed?

For weeks I thought these lines remarkable;

For weeks I put on airs and called myself

A bard: till on a day, as it befell,

I took a small green Moxon from the shelf

At random, opened at a casual place,

And found my young illusions face to face

With this:—‘ Still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow'd upon my fair Love's ripening breast

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest;

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever,— or else swoon to death.’

O gulf not to be crossed by taking thought!

O heights by toil not to be overcome!

Great Keats, unto your altar straight I brought

My speech, and from the shrine departed dumb.

— And yet sometimes I think you played it hard

Upon a rather hopeful minor bard.