or, if Nature has blest her with a “pug-nose,” you should, like Tennyson, describe it as
“Tip-tilted like the petal of a flower”
For similar reasons words of mean significance have to be avoided. For instance, for “dead drunk,” use “spirituously disguised”; for “thirty days in quad,” “one moon in durance vile.” You may now be said to have mastered the rudiments of modern poetry, and your future course is easy.
You may now choose, although it is not at all essential, to write on a subject conveying some meaning to your reader’s mind. You would do well to try one of a familiar kind, or of personal or everyday interest, of which the following are specimens:—“Lines on beholding a dead rat in the street”; “Impromptu on being asked to have a drink”; “Reverie on being asked to stand one”; “Epitaph on my mother-in-law”; “Ode to my creditors”; “Morning soliloquy in a police cell”; “Acrostic on a shillelah.” Through pieces of this character the soul of the writer permeates. Hence their abiding value and permanency on second-hand bookstalls; Then you may seek “fresh woods and pastures new,” and weave garlands in fields untrod by the ordinary bard. One of these is “Spring.” Conceive the idea of that season in your mind. Winter gone, Summer coming, coughs being cured, overcoats put up the spout, streets dryer, coals cheaper, or—if you love nature—the strange facts of the leaves budding, winds surging, etc. Then probably the spirit (waterproof) of poesy will take possession of you, and you will blossom into song as follows:—
“’Tis the Spring! ’Tis the Spring!
Little birds begin to sing.
See! the lark is on the wing,
The sun shines out like anything;
And the sweet and tender lamb
Skips beside his great big dam,