II. HOPE DEFERRED. BRING no more flowers and books and precious things! O, speak no more of our beloved Art, Of summer haunts, melodious wanderings In leafy refuge from this weary mart: Surely such thoughts were dear unto my heart; Now every word a newer sadness brings! Thus oft some forest-bird, caged far apart From verdurous freedom, droops his careless wings, of these sonnets in all. Two of them are constructed according to the true Italian model. The other two end with rhyming couplets, and therefore have that epigrammatic termination which the Italian masters considered fatal to the beauty of the sonnet. Mr. Stedman is nevertheless a genuine sonneteer in spirit, if not always in form; and a little further study of the peculiar structure of this species of poem will place him in the front rank of sonnet-writers. Indeed, I shall not attempt to decide whether the sonnets hereafter quoted have not already won him that position. III. THE SWALLOW. HAD I, my love declared, the tireless wing Apace with suns that o'er new woodlands rise IV. TO B. T. (With a copy of the Iliad.) BAYARD, awaken not this music strong, While round thy home the indolent sweet breeze THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH. I. EUTERPE. Now if Euterpe held me not in scorn, I'd shape a lyric, perfect, fair, and round Not of Desire alone is music born, Not till the Muse wills is our passion crowned: Unsought she comes, if sought but seldom found. Hence is it poets often are forlorn, Taciturn, shy, self-immolated, pale, Taking no healthy pleasure in their kind, Wrapt in their dream as in a coat of mail. Hence is it I, the least, a very hind, Have stolen away into this leafy vale, Drawn by the flutings of the silvery wind. II. PURSUIT AND POSSESSION. WHEN I behold what pleasure is Pursuit, Spirit of verse which still eludes my art, You shapes of loveliness that still do haunt me, O never, never rest upon my heart, If when I have thee I shall little want thee! Still flit away in moonlight, rain, and dew, |