I have no silver either....'

Copper! silver even! The goblin-men were more artistic than that; they
realised the absurdity of paying for immortal things in coin of mere
mortality. So--

'You have much gold upon your head,'
They answered all together:
'Buy from us with a golden curl.'

Yes, those are the ideal rates at which poetry should be paid. We should,
of course, pay for fairy goods in fairy-gold.

One of the few such appropriate transactions I remember was Queen
Elizabeth's buying a poem from Sir Philip Sidney, literally, with a lock
of her 'gowden hair.' Poem and lock now lie together at Wilton, both
untouched of time. Or was it that Sir Philip Sidney paid for the lock with
his poem? However it was, the exchange was appropriate. The ratio between
the thing sold and the price given was fairly equal. And, at all times, it
is far less absurd for a poet to pay for the earthly thing with his poem
(thus leaving us to keep the change), than that we should think to pay him
for his incorruptible with our corruptible. There would, no doubt, be a
subtle element of absurdity in a poet consenting to pay his tailor for a
suit with a sonnet, while it would obviously be beyond all proportion
monstrous for a tailor to think to buy a sonnet with a suit. Yet a poet
might, perhaps, be brought to consider the transaction, if he chanced to
be of a gentle disposition.

Yes, the true, the tasteful way to pay a poet is by the exchange of some
other beautiful thing: by beautiful praise, by a beautiful smile, by a