THE FLOWER OF THE MIND
Page: 13

the inspiration, and the poet's absolute disregard of the moment of
its flight and departure. A few splendid lines may be reason
enough for extracting a short poem, but must not be made to bear
too great a burden.


WHEN THOU MUST HOME


Of the quality of this imaginative lyric there is no doubt. It is
fine throughout, as we confess even after the greatness of the
opening:-

"When thou must home to shades of underground,
And there arrived, a new admired guest--"

It is as solemn and fantastic at the close as at this dark and
splendid opening, and throughout, past description, Elizabethan.
This single poem must bind Campion to that period without question;
and as he lived thirty-six years in the actual reign of Elizabeth,
and printed his Book of Airs with Rosseter two years before her
death, it is by no violence that we give him the name that covers
our earlier poets of the great age. When thou must Home is of the
day of Marlowe. It has the qualities of great poetry, and
especially the quality of keeping its simplicity; and it has a
quality of great simplicity not at all child-like, but adult,
large, gay, credulous, tragic, sombre, and amorous.


THE FUNERAL


Donne, too, is a poet of fine onsets. It was with some hesitation
that I admitted a poem having the middle stanza of this Funeral;
but the earlier lines of the last are fine.


CHARIS' TRIUMPH


The freshest of Ben Jonson's lyrics have been chosen. Obviously it
is freshness that he generally lacks, for all his vigour, his
emphatic initiative, and his overbearing and impulsive voice in
verse. There is a stale breath in that hearty shout. Doubtless it
is to the credit of his honesty that he did not adopt the country-
phrases in vogue; but when he takes landscape as a task the effect
is ill enough. I have already had the temerity to find fault for a
blunder of meaning, with the passage of a most famous lyric, where
it says the contrary of what it would say -

"But might I of Jove's nectar sup
I would not change for thine;"

and for doing so have encountered the anger rather than the
argument of those who cannot admire a pretty lyric but they must