In forfeit-kisses, passed from lip to lip.
We were once witnesses of a scene of this description, where an aged, white-haired son of “Auld Scotia” was called upon to make an osculatory impress upon the damask cheek of a maiden of sixteen summers, and when the performance was over, the octogenarian turned to the assembled multitude and said: “Aye, but isn’t that refreshing.” We do not agree with the writer of “Life and Times of Sir John A. Macdonald,” when he says, with ill-advised harshness, that Mr. Sangster’s verse “is not worth a brass farthing.” In 1856, when Mr. Sangster published his first volume, Canadian literature was in its infancy; and we have not yet advanced so far that we can afford to scoff at his unassuming efforts to aid in a good cause. We think (Mr. Collins to the contrary) that there is much of Mr. Sangster’s work that is worth a great deal, as all writing must be that tends to elevate the soul of man; and Mr. Sangster’s work, however faulty it may be as poetry, is decidedly elevating. There has in the past been much poetry written that is gross and sensual; let us turn our backs on that, and foster the pure and true, until our country has a poetic literature without spot or blemish. Mr. Sangster has written much good verse in aid of this achievement. His “Falls of the Chaudière” is very good, and we must do his ungenerous critic the justice to suppose that he never saw “The Light in the Window Pane,” or he could not have made such an uncalled-for assertion. We give the following: —
A joy from my soul’s departed,
A bliss from my heart is flown,
As weary, weary-hearted,
I wander alone, alone;
The night wind sadly sigheth
A withering, wild refrain;
And my heart within me dieth,
For the light in the window-pane.