A MISLAID POET.


In the closing years of my favourite last century, when poetry was more
discussed than it is now (at all events as a marketable commodity), few
verse-writers were overlooked. Bosola's observation about 'the neglected
poets of your time' could not be quoted with any propriety. Mr. John
Lane would make long and laborious journeys on the District Railway,
armed _bag-a-pied_, in order to discover the new and unpublished. Now he
has shot over all the remaining preserves; laurels and bays, so necessary
for the breed 'of men and women over-wrought,' have withered in the
London soot. There was one bright creature, however, who escaped his
rifle; she was brought down by another sportsman, and thus missed some of
the fame which might have attached to her had she been trussed and hung
in the Bodley Head. Poaching in the library at Thelema, I came across
her by accident. Her song is not without significance.

In 1878 Georgiana Farrer mentioned on page 190 of her _Miscellaneous
Poems_, 'I am old by sin entangled;' but this was probably a pious
exaggeration. Only some one young and intellectually very vigorous could
have penned her startling numbers. I suggest that she retained more of
her youth than, from religious motives, she thought it proper to admit.
In the 'eighties, when incense was burned in drawing-rooms, and people
were talking about 'The Blessed Damozel,' she could write of Paradise:--

A home where Jesus Christ is King,
A home where e'en Archangels sing,
Where common wealth is shared by all,
And God Himself lights up the Hall.