Flower Of The Mind

Colonel Richard Lovelace, an enchanting poet, is hardly read, except for two poems which are as famous as any in our language. Perhaps the rumour of his conceits has frightened his reader. It must be granted they are now and then daunting; there is a poem on "Princess Louisa Drawing" which is a very maze; the little paths of verse and fancy turn in upon one another, and the turns are pointed with artificial shouts of joy and surprise. But, again, what a reader unused to a certain living symbolism will be apt to take for a careful and cold conceit is, in truth, a rapture--none graver, none more fiery or more luminous.