e more impossible will
it be to read your work. Never notice people's manner, conduct, nor even
dress, in real life. Walk through the world with your eyes and ears
closed, and embody the negative results in a story or a poem. As to
Poetry, with a fine instinct we generally begin by writing verse, because
verse is the last thing that the public want to read. The young writer
has usually read a great deal of verse, however, and most of it bad. His
favourite authors are the bright lyrists who sing of broken hearts,
wasted lives, early deaths, disappointment, gloom. Without having even
had an unlucky flirtation, or without knowing what it is to lose a
favourite cat, the early author pours forth laments, just like the
laments he has been reading. He has too a favourite manner, the old
consumptive manner, about the hectic flush, the fatal rose on the pallid
cheek, about the ruined roof tree, the empty chair, the rest in the
village churchyard. This is now a little _rococo_ and forlorn, but
failure may be assured by travelling in this direction. If you are
ambitious to disgust an editor at once, begin your poem with "Only." In
fact you may as well head the lyric "Only." {4}

ONLY.

Only a spark of an ember,
Only a leaf on the tree,
Only the days we remember,
Only the days without thee.
Only the flower that thou worest,
Only the book that we read,
Only that night in the forest,
Only a dream of the dead,
Only the troth that was broken,
Only the heart that is lonely,
Only the sigh and the token
That sob in the saying of Only!

In literature this is a certain way of failing, but I believe a person
might make a livelihood by writing verses like these--for music. Another
good way is to be very economical in your rhymes, only two to the four
lines, and regretfully vague. Thus:

SHADOWS.

In the slumber of the winter,
In the secret of the snow,
What is the voice that is crying
Out of the long ago?

When the accents of the children
Are silent on the stairs,
When the poor forgets his troubles,
And the rich forgets his cares.

What is the silent whisper
That echoes in the room,
When the days are full of darkness,
And the night is hushed in gloom?

'Tis the voice of the departed,
Who will never come again,
Who has left the weary tumult,
And the struggle and the pain. {5}