When he wasn't hobnobbing with the aristocracy or writing treaties he
was sitting in inns and drinking with teamsters ... had a long love
affair with a cobbler's wife, and married the lady after the cobbler
died....
There was Skelton and his rough-running, irregular rhythmic rather than
strictly metrical verses ... mad and ribald ... often tedious ... but
with wild flashes of beauty interwoven through his poems ... the poem
about his mistress's sparrow ... the elegy on its death ... where he
prayed God to give it the little wren of the Virgin Mary, as a wife, in
heaven--"to tread, for _solas_!"
And Gay, the author of many delightful fables ... who must wait still
longer for his proper niche, because he showed gross levity on the
subject of death and life ... he who wrote for his own epitaph:
"Life is a jest, and all things show it;
I thought so once, but now I know it."
For all those who would not keep step, who romped out of the regular
procedure and wantoned by the way, picking what flowers they chose, I
held feeling and sympathy.
* * * * *
The _Annual_, a book published by the seniors each spring, now
advertised a prize for the best poem submitted by any student ... a
prize of twenty-five dollars. I had no doubt but that the prize was mine
already. Not that I had become as yet the poet I desired, but that the
average level of human endeavour in any art is so low that I knew my
assiduity and application and fair amount of inspiration would win.
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