And hold it out for ever."

Lovelace is even a better type in his rare good things of the military
amorist and poet. What apology of Lauzun's, or Bussy Rabutin's for
faithlessness could equal this?--

"Why dost thou say I am forsworn,
Since thine I vowed to be?
Lady, it is already morn;
It was last night I swore to thee
That fond impossibility."

Has "In Memoriam" nobler numbers than the poem, from exile, to Lucasta?--

"Our Faith and troth
All time and space controls,
Above the highest sphere we meet,
Unseen, unknown, and greet as angels greet."

How comes it that in the fierce fighting days the soldiers were so
tuneful, and such scholars? In the first edition of Lovelace's "Lucasta"
there is a flock of recommendatory verses, English, Latin, even Greek, by
the gallant Colonel's mess-mates and comrades. What guardsman now writes
like Lovelace, and how many of his friends could applaud him in Greek?
You, my Gifted, are happily of a pacific disposition, and tune a gentle
lyre. Is it not lucky for swains like you that the soldiers have quite
forsworn sonneting? When a man was a rake, a poet, a warrior, all in
one, what chance had a peaceful minor poet like you or me, Gifted,
against his charms? Sedley, when sober, must have been an invincible
rival--invincible, above all, when he pretended constancy: