es; but, as an eminent English
editor observed a few years ago, not enough examples to make a book. And
of course this means that there are very few; for you can make a book of
poetry very well with as little as fifty pages of largely and widely
printed text. However, we may cite a few modern instances.

I think that about the most perfect quatrains we have are those of the
extraordinary man, Walter Savage Landor, who, you know, was a rare Greek
scholar, all his splendid English work being very closely based upon the
Greek models. He made a little epitaph upon himself, which is matchless of
its kind:

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art;
I warmed both hands before the fire of life:
It sinks; and I am ready to depart.

You know that Greeks used the short form a great deal for their exquisite
epitaphs, and that a considerable part of the anthology consists of
epitaphic literature. But the quatrain has a much wider range than this
funereal limitation, and one such example of epitaph will suffice.

Only one English poet of our own day, and that a minor one, has attempted
to make the poem of four lines a specialty--that is William Watson. He has
written a whole volume of such little poems, but very few of them are
successful. As I said before, we have not enough good poems of this sort
for a book; and the reason is not because English poets despise the short
form, but because it is supremely difficult. The Greeks succeeded in it,
but we are still far behind the Greeks in the shaping of any kind of
verse. The best of Watson's pieces take the form of philosophical
suggestions; and this kind of verse is particularly well adapted to
philosophical utterance.

Think not thy wisdom can illume away
The ancient tanglement of night and day.
Enough to acknowledge both, and both revere;
They see not clearliest who see all things clear.

That is to say, do not think that any human knowledge will ever be able to
make you understand the mystery of the universe with its darkness and
light, its joy and pain. It is best to revere the powers that make both
good and evil, and to remember that the keenest, worldly, practical minds
are not the minds that best perceive the great truths and mysteries of
existence. Here is another little bit, reminding us somewhat of Goethe's
quatrain, already quoted.

Lives there whom pain hath evermore passed by
And sorrow shun