A strain of music enchants. Heard a second time it pleases. Heard a tenth, it does not displease. We hear it a twentieth, and ask ourselves why we admired. At the fiftieth it endures ennui at the hundredth disgust.
True passion is prosaic homely.
The excited fancy triumphs the grief is subdued chastened is no longer grief. In this mood we are poetic, and it is clear that a poem now written will be poetic in the exact ratio of its dispassion. Those who object to the proposition that poetry and passion are discordant would, thus, cite Mrs. Welby's poem as an instance of a passionate one. It is precisely similar to the hundred others which have been cited for like purpose. The critics upon this topic display an amusing ignoratio elenchi.