Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/252



And, fraught with love, that little brow

Shall wear the wreath of fame.

There are many more stanzas, but these are enough to make us wonder why parents did not let the poet alone. Perhaps, if they had, he would have volunteered his services. We know that when young Fanny Kemble showed him her nosegay at a ball, and asked how she should keep the flowers from fading, he answered hardily: "Give them to me, and I will immortalize them,"—an enviable assurance of renown.

Album verses date from the old easy days, when rhyming was regarded as a gentlemanly accomplishment rather than as a means of livelihood. Titled authors, poets wealthy and well-born—for there were always such—naturally addressed themselves to the ladies of their acquaintance. They could say with Lord Chesterfield that they thanked Heaven they did not have to live by their brains. It was a theory, long and fondly cherished, that poetry was not common merchandise, to be bought and sold like meal and malt; that it was, as Burns admirably said, either above price or worth