If you wish it put succinctly,
Gone are all our little games;
But I thought I 'd say distinctly
What I feel about it, James.



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