preserving it.

Unless the writer schools himself to keep this conviction out of his
verse, it is likely to flower in self-confident poetry of the classic
type, so characteristic of the Elizabethan age. This has such a long
tradition behind it that it seems almost stereotyped, wherever it
appears in our period, especially when it is promising immortality to a
beloved one. We scarcely heed such verses as the lines by Landor,

Well I remember how you smiled
To see me write your name upon
The soft sea-sand, "O! what a child,
You think you're writing upon stone!"
I have since written what no tide
Shall ever wash away, what men
Unborn shall read, o'er ocean wide,
And find Ianthe's name again,

or Francis Thompson's sonnet sequence, _Ad Amicam_, which expresses
the author's purpose to

Fling a bold stave to the old bald Time,
Telling him that he is too insolent
Who thinks to rase thee from my heart or rhyme,
Whereof to one because thou life hast given,
The other yet shall give a life to thee,
Such as to gain, the prowest swords have striven,
And compassed weaker immortality,

or Yeats' lines _Of Those Who Have Spoken Evil of His Beloved_,