Page:Collected poems of Flecker.djvu/30

 "linnet" is substituted; and the superfluous adjective is cut out, like several subsequent ones. "Gravis Dulcis Immutabilis" was originally written as a sonnet; the "Invitation to a Young but Learned Friend" was considerably lengthened after an interval of years; and the poet's own copies of his printed volumes are promiscuously marked with minor alterations and re-alterations. One of the most curious is that by which the sexes are transposed in the song printed first as "The Golden Head" and then as "The Queen's Song." The last four lines of the first stanza originally ran:


 * I then might touch thy face
 * Delightful Maid,
 * And leave a metal grace,
 * A graven head.

This was altered into:


 * I then might touch thy face
 * Delightful boy,
 * And leave a metal grace,
 * A graven joy.

The reasons for the alteration are evident. The sounds "ace" and "aid" are uncomfortably like each other; the long, lingering "oy" makes a much better ending of the stanza than the sound for which it was substituted; and the false parallelism of "metal grace" and "graven head" was remedied by eliminating the concrete word and replacing it by another abstract one on the same plane as "grace." Such a substitution of the abstract for the concrete word, sound enough here, is very rare with him; xxvi