A caramel has disagreed with her, or she would not
have written in this despondent vein. The young man who seeks to inform
the world in eleven anaemic stanzas of _terze rime_ that the cup of
happiness has been forever dashed from his lip (he appears to have but
one) and darkly intimates that the end is "nigh" (rhyming affably with
"sigh"), will probably be engaged a quarter of a century from now in
making similar declarations. He is simply echoing some dysthymic poet of
the past--reaching out with some other man's hat for the stray nickel of
your sympathy.
This morbidness seldom accompanies genuine poetic gifts. The case of
David Gray, the young Scottish poet who died in 1861, is an instance
to the contrary. His lot was exceedingly sad, and the failure of
health just as he was on the verge of achieving something like success
justified his profound melancholy; but that he tuned this melancholy and
played upon it, as if it were a musical instrument, is plainly seen in
one of his sonnets.
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