While the rough and horny ram
Thinketh single life a sham.
Now the East is in the breeze,
Now old maids begin to sneeze,
Now the leaves are on the trees,
Now I cannot choose but sing:
Oh, ’tis Spring! ’tis Spring! ’tis Spring!”
Verses like the above have an intrinsic charm, but if you should think them too trivial, you may soar into the higher regions of thought, and expand your soul in epics on, say, “The Creation,” “The Deluge,” “The Fall of Rome,” “The Future of Man.” You possibly know nothing whatever of those subjects, but that is an advantage, as you will bring a fresh unhackneyed mind to bear upon them.
I need hardly tell you that there is one subject above all others whose most fitting garb is poetry, and that is—Love. Fall in love if you can. It is easy—nothing easier to a poet. He is mostly always in love, and with ten at a time. But if you cannot, or (hapless wretch!) if you find it an entirely one-sided affair—very little free trade, and no reciprocity—ay, even if you be a married man who walketh the floor of nights, and vainly seeketh to soothe the seventh olive-branch—despair not. To write of Love, needeth not to feel it. If not in love, imagine you are. Extol in unmeasured terms the beauty of your adored one—matchless, as the pipe-bearing stranger in the street—peerless, as the American House of Representatives. Safely call on mankind to produce her equal, and inform the world that you would give up all its honours and riches (of which you own none) for the sake of your Dulcinea; but tell them not the fact that you would not forego your nightly pipe and glass of rum punch for the best woman that ever breathed. Cultivate a melancholy mood. Call the fair one all sorts of names, heartless, cold, exacting—yourself, a miserable wight, hurrying hot haste to an early grave, and bid her come and shed unavailing tears there. At the same time keep your strength up, and don’t forget your four meals a day and a collation.
I need not touch on the number of feet required in the various kinds of verse, as if a verse lacks a foot anywhere you are almost sure to put yours in it.