THE SONNET
Poet, beware! The sonnet's primrose path
Is all too tempting for thy feet to tread.
Not on this journey shalt thou earn thy bread,
Because the sated reader roars in wrath:
'Little indeed to say the singer hath,
And little sense in all that he hath said;
Such rhymes are lightly writ but hardly read,
And naught but stubble is his aftermath!'
Then shall he cast that bonny book of thine
Where the extreme waste-paper basket gapes,
There shall thy futile fancies peak and pine,
With other minor poets, pallid shapes,
Who come a long way short of the divine,
Tormented souls of imitative apes.
THE TOURNAY OF THE HEROES
Ho, warders, cry a tournay! ho, heralds, call the knights!
What gallant lance for old Romance 'gainst modern fiction fights?
The lists are set, the Knights are met, I ween, a dread array,
St. Chad to shield, a stricken field shall we behold to-day!
First to the Northern barriers pricks Roland of Roncesvaux,
And by his side, in knightly pride, Wilfred of Ivanhoe,
The Templar rideth by his rein, two gallant foes were they;
And proud to see, le brave Bussy his colours doth display.
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