These little conceits aren't so easy to
write, after all, even when they contain no ideas. Of course, it isn't
hard to say:
"'Sweet month of May, time of the violet wild,
The dandelion golden, and the mild
Ethereal sweetness of the blossoming trees,
The soft suggested calor of the breeze,
The ruby-breasted robin on the lawn,
The thrushes piping sweetly at the dawn,
The gently splashing waters by the weir,
The rose- and lilac-laden atmosphere'--
"because, after all, it's nothing but a catalogue of the specialties of
May; but how the dickens to wind the thing up is what puzzles me. It's
too beautiful and truly poetic to be spoiled by a completing couplet
like:
"'And in the distant dam the croaking frog
Completes, O May, thy wondrous catalogue.'
"Nobody would take a thing like that--and pay for it; but what else can
be said? What do the violets wild, the dandelion, the ruby-breasted robin,
and the lilac-laden atmosphere and other features all do, I'd like to
know? What one of many verbs--oh, tut! Poetry very evidently is not in
my line, after all. I'll turn the vials of my vocabulary upon
essay-writing."
Which Partington, as his friends called him, proceeded at once to do. He
applied himself closely to his desk for one whole morning, and wrote a
very long paper on "The Tendency of the Middle Ages Towards
Artificialism." Hardly one of the fifteen thousand words employed by him
in the construction of this paper held fewer than five syllables, and
one or two of them got up as high as ten, a fact which led Partington to
think that the editor of the _South American Quarterly Review_ ought at
least to have the refusal of it.
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