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40 such delicious and unapproachable things have been already whispered.

The best love-poems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries amply fulfill the requirements suggested by Southey: their sentiment is always "necessary, and voluptuous, and right." They are no "made-dishes at the Muses' banquet," but each one appears as the embodiment of a passing emotion. In those three faultless little verses "Going to the Wars," a single thought is presented us,—regretful love made heroic by the loyal farewell of the soldier suitor:

"Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,

That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind

To war and arms I flee.

"True, a new mistress now I chase,

The first foe in the field,

And, with a stronger faith, embrace

A sword, a horse, a shield.

"Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore,—