As far’s the pole and line;
Her dear idea round my heart
Should tenderly entwine.
Tho’ mountains frown and deserts howl,
And oceans roar between;
Yet, dearer than my deathless soul,
I still would love my Jean.
The spectacle of a gentleman having somebody’s “dear idea” entwined, whether tenderly or otherwise, round his heart would surely set a cat laughing. And the loving of Jean, though mountains frown and deserts howl and oceans roar between, is clearly the merest fustian. Follows I Dreamed I Lay Where Flowers were Springing—a stupid sort of dream to say the least of it. The flowers, it seems, were springing “gaily in the sunny beam,” and the poet, it seems, not only “dreamed that he lay among them” but, that he was “list’ning to the wild birds singing by a falling crystal stream,” which is a very common and hackneyed thing for a tenth-rate poet to do. But mark:
Straight the sky grew black and daring;
Thro’ the woods the whirlwinds rave;