Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/93

A BELT OF ASTEROIDS steal upon an unguarded moment to catch certain echoes of her voice; all this is nothing in behalf of amateur art—nor are they to be placed on a level with the consecrated poets. For the latter can, with certainty, again and again, excel the random work of those who come not in by the appointed door. A large proportion of the minor art of our most approved poets is made up of pieces, each of which, if the only specimen of its author, might have received preservation as an attractive fugitive poem. We need not mention the great names of the past, but can any doubt that such would be the case with Browning's "Evelyn Hope," and "How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix"; with Tennyson's "May Queen," "Bugle Song," "Come into the Garden, Maud"; with Longfellow's "Excelsior"; Lowell's "The Courtin'," and "To a Dandelion" ; Bryant's "The Battle-Field"; wath those exquisite quatrains by Aldrich, "Ah, sad are they who know not love!" with Boker's "Dirge for Phil Kearny," Winter's beautiful lyric, "Love's Queen," Taylor's "Bedouin Song," and "Daughter of Egypt"; with Swinburne's "If love were what the rose is"; or, indeed, with scores of other imaginative and finished specimens of these and other master-hands? For I have mentioned the foregoing at merest hap-hazard, as minor productions likely, from one cause or another, to have become endeared to the people or the critical few, and each for itself to have preserved an author's name.

Hereafter, more than ever, there will be no royal [79]