THE bard who would the storied past rehearse,
What things the spirit wrought in word and deed,
Should strike a note unerring in his verse,
A cypher give that he who runs may read.
How answers then the sonnet to his need,
Its meter strained, its tangled sleave of rhyme,
The structural artifice true art must heed
Where stringent form and soaring thought should chime?
Art hath its phases; now it stands sublime
In Milton's marvellous imaginings;
Dryden's sonorous line stales not with time;
In woodnotes wild the Ayrshire ploughman sings:
So none need scorn the pipe as small for fame
By Petrarch blown and Browning's gentle dame.