Dear authors! suit your topics to your strength,
And ponder well your subject, and its length;
Nor read more

Dear authors! suit your topics to your strength,
And ponder well your subject, and its length;
Nor lift your lad, before you're quite aware
What weight your shoulders will, or will not, bear.

Will you have all in all for prose and verse? Take the miracle
of our age, Sir Philip Sidney.

Will you have all in all for prose and verse? Take the miracle
of our age, Sir Philip Sidney.

As so I penned
It down, until at last it came to be,
For length and breadth, read more

As so I penned
It down, until at last it came to be,
For length and breadth, the bigness which you see.

Smelling of the lamp.

Smelling of the lamp.

No call has ever poisoned by pen.
[Fr., Aucun fiel n'a jamais empoisonne ma plumme.]

No call has ever poisoned by pen.
[Fr., Aucun fiel n'a jamais empoisonne ma plumme.]

Apt Alliteration's artful aid.

Apt Alliteration's artful aid.

Oh! rather give me commentators plain,
Who with no deep researches vex the brain;
Who from the read more

Oh! rather give me commentators plain,
Who with no deep researches vex the brain;
Who from the dark and doubtful love to run,
And hold their glimmering tapers to the sun.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
read more

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.

And force them, though it was in spite
Of Nature and their stars, to write.

And force them, though it was in spite
Of Nature and their stars, to write.