Still, dreaming is so sweet! Still, let me dream!
Though true, to love may be definéd thus:
To open wide your safe defenceless hall
To some great guest full-armed and dangerous,
With power to ravage, to deface it all,
A cast at dice, whether or no he will,—
Still, loving is so sweet! Let me love still!
XVIII
ARTHUR UPSON
WHEN a volume of verse by Mr. Arthur Upson, entitled Octaves In An Oxford Garden, was first brought to my notice by a poet friend with what seemed before reading it a somewhat extravagant comment as to its art, it evoked a certain scepticism as to whether the poet in question would be equally enthusiastic, had he read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested some eighty or more volumes of verse within a given period, thus rendering a more rarely flavored compound necessary to excite anew the poetry-sated appetite; but Mr. Upson’s Octaves proved to be a brew into which had fallen this magic drop, and moments had gone the way of oblivion until the charm was drained.