“Is wrought with tumult of acclaim.”
One cannot but feel that were it not for this immortal elegy, its subject would have been long since forgotten, like other promising youths who have died in their Spring.
LXXVI.
“Take wings of fancy,” and imagine that you have the whole “starry heavens of space” revealed to one glance—“sharpen’d to a needle’s end.”[51]
“Take wings of foresight,” and see in the future how thy best poems are dumb, before a yew tree moulders; and though the writings of the great early Poets—“the matin songs that woke the darkness of our planet”—may last, thy songs in fifty years will have become vain; and have ceased to be known by the time when the oak tree has withered into a hollow ruin.[52]
LXXVII.
“What hope is here for modern rhyme?”
Looking at what has already happened,
“These mortal lullabies of pain,”
may bind a book, or line a box, or be used by some girl for curl papers; or before a century has passed, they may be found on a stall, telling of