Finds but a friendly ministrant
In Reason’s helpmate, Rhyme.”
Pithy and pertinent too are Mr. Coventry Patmore’s lines on those who
“Live by law, not like the fool,
But like the bard, who freely sings
In strictest bonds of rhyme and rule,
And finds in them, not bonds, but wings.”
They who so live are in every sense the happier, without an “except these bonds,” but because of them. They find in them not bonds, but wings; and thenceforth have free course, and go on their way rejoicing. They, like the repentant rebels in Shakspeare’s “King John,” and by the same river metaphor,
“Leaving their rankness and irregular course,
Stoop low within those bounds they had o’erlook’d,