Of leaves of roses, _white and red_, Shall be the covering of the bed; The curtains, vallens, tester all, Shall be the flower imperial; And for the fringe it all along _With azure hare-bells shall be hung. Of lilies shall the pillows be, With down stuft of the butterfly._ Of fancy, so full of gusto as to border on imagination, Sir John Suckling, in his _Ballad on a Wedding_, has given some of the most playful and charming specimens in the language. They glance like twinkles of the eye, or cherries bedewed: _Her feet beneath her petticoat, Like little mice stole in and out, As if they fear’d the light:_ But oh! she dances such a way! _No sun upon an Easter day_ Is half so fine a sight. It is very daring, and has a sort of playful grandeur, to compare a lady’s dancing with the sun. But as the sun has it all to himself in the heavens, so she, in the blaze of her beauty, on earth. This is imagination fairly displacing fancy. The following has enchanted everybody: Her lips were red, _and one was thin_ _Compared with that was next her chin, Some bee had stung it newly._ Every reader has stolen a kiss at that lip, gay or grave. With regard to the principle of Variety in Uniformity by which verse ought to be modulated, and oneness of impression diversely produced, it has been contended by some, that Poetry need not be written in verse at all; that prose is as good a medium, provided poetry be conveyed through it; and that to think otherwise is to confound letter with spirit, or form with essence. But the opinion is a prosaical mistake. Fitness and unfitness for _song_, or metrical excitement, just make all the difference between a poetical and prosaical subject; and the reason why verse is necessary to the form of poetry, is, that the perfection of poetical spirit demands it;--that the circle of its enthusiasm, beauty and power, is incomplete without it. I do not mean to say that a poet can never show himself a poet in prose; but that, being one, his desire and necessity will be to write in verse; and that, if he were unable to do so, he would not, and could not, deserve his title. Verse to the true poet is no clog. It is idly called a trammel and a difficulty. It is a help. It springs from the same enthusiasm as the rest of his impulses, and is necessary to their satisfaction and effect. Verse is no more a clog than the condition of rushing upward is a clog to fire, or than the roundness and order of the globe we live on is a clog to the freedom and variety that abound within its sphere. Verse is no dominator over the poet, except inasmuch as the bond is reciprocal, and the poet dominates over the verse. They are lovers, playfully challenging each other’s rule, and delighted equally to rule and to obey. Verse is the final proof to the poet that his mastery over his art is complete. It is the shutting up of his powers in ‘_measureful_ content’; the answer of form to his