Gnawing what? surely not distresses; though the bar of a comma can hardly
keep them apart. In order to give it any decent meaning, a tortuous
ellipsis is necessary; to pursue which, gives the reader too much toil.
Rejecting the first horse in the team, the three last are beautiful
animals.

To the last line in the third stanza, I rather object; 'With a wiser
innocence.' The meaning, it appears to me, would be more definite and in
character, if you were to say, as you do not represent her utterly
debased, 'With thy wreck of innocence.' The apostrophe to the 'Weeping
mother's cot,' is then impressive. In the fourth stanza, why do you
introduce the old word 'Lavrac' a word requiring an explanatory note? Why
not say at once, sky-lark? A short poem, _you_ know better than _I_,
should be smooth as oil, and lucid as glass. The two last stanzas, with
their associates, will require a few of your delicate touches, before you
mount them on the nautilus which is to bear them buoyant round the world.
These two last stanzas, about the 'Lavrac' though good in themselves,
(with the exception of one line, which I will not point out, its
roughness absolutely reminds one of 'Bowling-green Lane!') appear to me
to be awkward appendages. The illustration is too much extended. It is
laboured; far-fetched. It is an infelicitous attempt to blend sportive
fancy with fact that has touched the heart, and which, in this its
sobered mood, shrinks from all idle play of imagination. The transition
is too abrupt from truth to fancy. This simile of two stanzas, also, out
of five, is a tail disproportioned to the size of so small a body:--A
thought elongated, ramified, attenuated, till its tendril convolutions
have almost escaped from their parent stem. I would recommend you to let
this Lavrac fly clean away, and to conclude the Poem with the third
affecting stanza, unless you can continue the same train of feeling. This
you might readily effect, by urging the 'unfortunate' in seeking her