such delicious and unapproachable things have been already whispered.
"Ah! frustrés par les anciens hommes,
Nous sentons le regret jaloux,
Qu'ils aient été ce que nous sommes,
Qu'ils aient eu nos cœurs avant nous."
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
