George Herbert's work is so perfectly a box where thoughts
"compacted lie," that no one is moved, in reading his rich poetry,
to detach a line, so fine and so significant are its neighbours;
nevertheless, it may be well to stop the reader at such a lovely
passage as this -

"He was a garden in a Paradise."


THE ROSE


There is nothing else of Waller's fine enough to be admitted here;
and even this, though unquestionably a beautiful poem, elastic in
words and fresh in feeling, despite its wearied argument, is of the
third-class. Greatness seems generally, in the arts, to be of two
kinds, and the third rank is less than great. The wearied argument
of The Rose is the almost squalid plea of all the poets, from
Ronsard to Herrick: "Time is short; they make the better bargain
who make haste to love." This thrifty business and essentially
cold impatience was--time out of mind--unknown to the truer love;
it is larger, illiberal, untender, and without all dignity. The
poets were wrong to give their verses the message of so sorry a
warning. There is only one thing that persuades you to forgive the
paltry plea of the poet that time is brief--and that is the
charming reflex glimpse it gives of her to whom the rose and the
verse were sent, and who had not thought that time was brief.