True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
  As those move easiest who have learned to dance. 
  ’T is not enough no harshness gives offence;
  The sound must seem an echo to the sense. 
  Soft is the strain when zephyr gently blows,
  And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
  But when loud surges lash the sounding shore. 
  The hoarse rough verse should like the torrent roar. 
  When Ajax strives some rock’s vast weight to throw
  The line too labors, and the words move slow;
  Not so when swift Camilla scours the plain,
  Flies o’er th’ unbending corn, and skims along the main.

* * * * *

  Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
  With some unmeaning thing they call a thought,
  A needless Alexandrine ends the song. 
  That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Essay on Criticism, Part II.  A. POPE.

  Abstruse and mystic thought you must express
  With painful care, but seeming easiness;
  For truth shines brightest thro’ the plainest dress.
Essay on Translated Verse.  W. DILLON.

  It may be glorious to write
  Thoughts that shall glad the two or three
  High souls, like those far stars that come in sight
  Once in a century.
Incident in a Railroad Car.  J.R.  LOWELL.

  E’en copious Dryden wanted, or forgot,
  The last and greatest art—­the art to blot.
Horace, Bk.  II.  Epistle I.  A. POPE.

  Whatever hath been written shall remain,
  Nor be erased nor written o’er again;
  The unwritten only still belongs to thee: 
  Take heed, and ponder well, what that shall be.
Morituri Salutamus.  H.W.  LONGFELLOW.

BABY.

  A sweet, new blossom of Humanity,
  Fresh fallen from God’s own home to flower on earth.
Wooed and Won.  G. MASSEY.

  The hair she means to have is gold,
  Her eyes are blue, she’s twelve weeks old,
      Plump are her fists and pinky. 
  She fluttered down in lucky hour
  From some blue deep in yon sky bower—­
      I call her “Little Dinky.”
Little Dinky.  F. LOCKER-LAMPSON.

As living jewels dropped unstained from heaven. Course of Time, Bk.  V.  R. POLLOK.

             God mark thee to his grace! 
  Thou wast the prettiest babe that e’er I nursed: 
  An I might live to see thee married once,
  I have my wish.
Romeo and Juliet, Act i. So. 3.  SHAKESPEARE.

Suck, baby! suck! mother’s love grows by giving: 
Drain the sweet founts that only thrive by wasting!
The Gypsy’s Malison.  C. LAMB.

BATTLE.

  Now the storm begins to lower,
    (Haste, the loom of hell prepare,)
  Iron sleet of arrowy shower
    Hurtles in the darkened air.