Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/259

 Rh Moore's self-esteem would have been deeply wounded; but the poet was by now a man of mark, and could afford to laugh at his own discomfiture.

Moore's album verses may be said to make up in warmth what they lack in address. Minor poets—minims like William Robert Spencer—surpassed him easily in adroitness; and sometimes won for themselves slender but abiding reputations by expressing with consummate ease sentiments they did not feel. Spencer's pretty lines beginning,—

—lines which all our grandmothers had by heart—may still be found in compilations of English verse. Their dexterous allusions to the diamond sparks in Time's hour-glass, and to the bird-of-paradise plumage in his grey wings, their veiled and graceful flattery, contrast pleasantly with Moore's Hibernian boldness, with his offhand demand to be paid in kisses for his songs—