"vivacity which grows with age is not far from folly."




OF VERS DE SOCIETE


_To Mr. Gifted Hopkins_.

My Dear Hopkins,--The verses which you have sent me, with a request "to
get published in some magazine," I now return to you. If you are anxious
that they should be published, send them to an editor yourself. If he
likes them he will accept them from you. If he does not like them, why
should he like them because they are forwarded by _me_? His only motive
would be an aversion to disobliging a _confrere_, and why should I put
him in such an unpleasant position?

But this is a very boorish way of thanking you for the _premiere
representation_ of your little poem. "To Delia in Girton" you call it,
"recommending her to avoid the Muses, and seek the society of the Graces
and Loves." An old-fashioned preamble, and of the lengthiest, and how do
you go on?--

Golden hair is fairy gold,
Fairy gold that cannot stay,
Turns to leaflets green and cold,
At the ending of the day!
Laurel-leaves the Muses may
Twine about your golden head.