“Read it and you’ll see. I like it very much,” returned Frere, slightly nettled at the reception his protégées productions appeared likely to meet with.
“Oh! it’s a sermon clearly,” continued Bracy; “here’s something about vanity and the grave. I heard it all last Sunday at St. Chrysostom’s, only the fellow called it gwave and gwace. He’d picked up some conscientious scruple against the use of the letter R, I suppose. It’s quite wonderful, the new-fangled doctrines they develop nowadays. Hum—ha—‘Making the desert home,’—rather a young idea, eh? ‘Happy birds,’—don’t like that, it puts one too much in mind of ‘jolly dogs’ or ‘odd fish.’ I should have said dicky birds, if it had been me; that’s a very safe expression, and one that people are accustomed to. ‘The joy of flowers,’—what on earth does she mean by that, now? I should say nobody could understand that; for which reason, by the way, it’s the best expression I’ve seen yet. Poetry, to be admired in the present day, must be utterly incomprehensible. We insert very little, but that’s the rule I go by. If I can’t understand one word of a thing, I make a point of accepting it; it’s safe to become popular. ‘Love for time, Heaven for eternity,’—well, that’s all very, nice and pretty, but I’m sorry to say it won’t do; it’s not suited to the tone of the Magazine, you see.”
“I can’t say I do see very clearly at present,” returned Frere; “what kind of poetry is it that you accept?”
“Oh, there are different styles. Now here’s a little thing I’ve got in the June part, ‘The Homeless Heart, by L. O. V. E.’ Her real name is Mary Dobbs, but she couldn’t very well sign herself M.D.; people would think she was a physician. She’s a very respectable young woman (such a girl to laugh), and engaged to an opulent stockbroker. Now listen:
“‘Homeless, forsaken,
Deeply oppress’d,
Raving, yet craving
Agony’s rest;
Bitterly hating,
Fondly relenting,