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Vincent Millay, _To a Poet that Died
Young_.] _Optima dies_ ... _prima fugit_; the note echoes and reechoes
through English poetry. Hear it in Arnold's _Progress of Poetry_:
Youth rambles on life's arid mount,
And strikes the rock and finds the vein,
And brings the water from the fount.
The fount which shall not flow again.
The man mature with labor chops
For the bright stream a channel grand,
And sees not that the sacred drops
Ran off and vanished out of hand.
And then the old man totters nigh
And feebly rakes among the stones;
The mount is mute, the channel dry,
And down he lays his weary bones.
But the strangle hold of complimentary verse upon English poetry, if
nothing else, would prevent this view being unanimously expressed there.
For in the Victorian period, poets who began their literary careers by
prophesying their early decease lived on and on. They themselves might
bewail the loss of their gift in old age--in fact, it was usual for them
to do so [Footnote: See Scott, _Farewell to the Muse_; Landor, _Dull is
my Verse_; J.


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