Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems including a Reprint of Echoes from Theocritus: By Wilfred Austin Gill: With a Critical Estimate of the Sonnets by the late John Addington Symonds |
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 | Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems |  |
95
I
TO CERTAIN KIND CRITICS
O stalwart friends, O strong-souled flatterers,
Who bid me shape my verse in ampler mode,
And trumpet forth a ballad, epic, ode,—
How shall I answer you? When impulse stirs
The genuine Bard, he soars unasked: but, sirs,
What power can lift the meaner sort? Why goad
My ambling Muse along an upland road
Which leadeth not to any haunt of hers?
She hath no mind for “freaks upon the fells,”
No wish to hear the storm-wind rattling by;
She loves her cowslips more than immortelles,
Her garden-closes than the abysmal sky:
In a green dale her chosen sweetheart dwells:
The mountain-height she must not, dare not, try.
| Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems | |