I shall not have thee here:
And, therefore, I will come to thee,
And take my fortune there.
I must be won that cannot win,
Yet lost were I not won;
For beauty hath created been
T'undo or be undone."

To speak familiarly, this is as easy as an old shoe. To speak yet more
familiarly, it looks as if any fool could turn off lines like these.
Let the fool try.

And yet to how many anthologies do we not turn in vain for "Ulysses
and the Siren"; or for the exquisite spring song, beginning--

"Now each creature joys the other,
Passing happy days and hours;
One bird reports unto another
In the fall of silver showers ..."

--or for that lofty thing, the "Epistle to the Countess of
Cumberland"?--which Wordsworth, who quoted it in his "Excursion,"
declares to be "an admirable picture of the state of a wise man's mind
in a time of public commotion." Certainly if ever a critic shall arise
to deny poetry the virtue we so commonly claim for her, of fortifying
men's souls against calamity, this noble Epistle will be all but the
last post from which he will extrude her defenders.

FOOTNOTES: