"For this the righteous Lord of all
Consigns to thee the castle-wall,
When, many a year,
Closed in the chancel-vaults, are eyes
Rainy or sunny at the sighs
Of knight or peer."
Sir Thomas, when I had ended, said unto me,
"No harm herein; but are they over?"
I replied, "Yea, sir!"
"I miss the POSY," quoth he; "there is usually a lump of sugar, or a
smack thereof at the bottom of the glass. They who are
inexperienced in poetry do write it as boys do their copies in the
copy-book, without a flourish at the finis. It is only the master
who can do this befittingly."
I bowed unto his worship reverentially, thinking of a surety he
meant me, and returned my best thanks in set language. But his
worship rebuffed them, and told me graciously that he had an eye on
another of very different quality; that the plain sense of his
discourse might do for me, the subtler was certainly for himself.
He added that in his younger days he had heard from a person of
great parts, and had since profited by it, that ordinary poets are
like adders,--the tail blunt and the body rough, and the whole
reptile cold-blooded and sluggish: "whereas we," he subjoined,
"leap and caracole and curvet, and are as warm as velvet, and as
sleek as satin, and as perfumed as a Naples fan, in every part of
us; and the end of our poems is as pointed as a perch's back-fin,
and it requires as much nicety to pick it up as a needle{38a} at
nine groats the hundred.
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