Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant’s price: I think they love not art,
Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat!
Is it not said that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began
To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of a wretched man,
Not knowing the God’s wonder, or his woe.
I wish I could grave my sonnets on an ivory tablet—Quill pens and note-paper are only good enough for bills of lading. A sonnet should always look well. Don’t you think so?
O. W.
The success of the volume was immediate, and a second edition followed quickly. For it I begged that the Editor would include some sonnets of his own. He had refused to do so for the 1st Edition, but he now yielded to my wish and included two, “Spring Wind” and “A Midsummer Hour.” In later editions, however, he took them out again and left only the two dedicatory sonnets to D. G. Rossetti, for he considered that the Editor should not be represented in the body of the book. The volume was generously welcomed by contemporary writers. George Meredith considered it the best exposition of the Sonnet known to him; to Walter Pater the Introductory Essay was “most pleasant and informing,” and “Your own beautiful dedication to D. G. R. seems to me perfect, and brought back, with great freshness, all I have felt, and so sincerely, about him and his work.”
Robert Louis Stevenson expressed his views on the sonnet in a letter to the Editor:
Skerrymore (Bournemouth).