"Nay," says she, "I think no better of that trope than the first. It wants a poet to give an originality, a point and grace, to things of this sort."
"But every lover is a poet," says I triumphantly.
"I am deluded then," says Cynthia, "for if your love is measured by your poetry I am like to die of a broken heart. But after all, that last glib phrase of yours is but a poor sort of speech for a man to make to his mistress. A poet, as all the world knows, is but an embellisher of common things."
"A poet is more than that," says I. "A thousand times more. A poet is—— A poet is——"
"A poet is?" says Cynthia archly.
"The human mind cannot express what a poet is," says I. "He is all, and he is nothing. He weaves a sovereign spell about material things. He can put a new glamour in the stars, although he cannot hold a candle to the sun. He is the airy nothing that can reveal the face of God to simple men."
"But what hath all this to do with Love?" says Cynthia. "And I confess I never suspected this phase to your character. I always held you for a common four-square kind of a fellow enough, by no means given to these sudden heats and violences, these sudden whimsies and nonsensicals."
"No more did I," says I ruefully. "But it is so like this wretched passion to take us in our weakest part, which in me, as you are ever the first to remind me, is the head."
"It is not such a wretched passion neither," says Cynthia, "if it is but left to itself. It is these low poets and people that debase it. Love is the noblest thing in the world, until your puny twopenny poets and the like sing of it, and prate of it, and write an advertisement of it, that they may earn enough to spend at the nearest tavern."
"Alas! mistress," says I, "you are too severe on the muse. There have been elegies composed to Love that could dignify even that sacred passion."