'Here, at your delicate bosom, let death Come to me Where night has made a warm Elysium, Lulled by a soft, invisible sea. 'Now in the porches of your soul I stand Where once I stood; Fed and forgiven by a liberal hand, My broken boyhood is renewed. 'You are my bread and honey, set among A grove of spice; An ever brimming cup; a lyric sung After the thundering battle-cries. 'You are my well-loved earth, forever fresh, Forever prodigal, forever fond, As, from the sweet fulfilment of the flesh, I reach beyond.'” Noting that Warble was still awake, Petticoat discoursed: “In the first line, we note the influence of Swinburne. There could be no better start out. The Swinburne collocation of delicate bosom and death is both arrestive and interesting. The third and fourth lines denote the influence of Poe. To be sure, 'a warm Elysium' sounds like a new and appetizing soft drink, but that is not what is meant; and the sea is indubitably the one that sounded around the tomb of Miss Annabel Lee. “The second stanza opens under pure Tennysonian influences. This may not be clear at first to the beginner in influence tracing, but it is unmistakably so to the expert. The recurring sibilants, the sound without sense, the fine architectural imagery, all point to the great Lady Alfred. The latter half of this stanza is due entirely to the strong influence of D. W. Griffith. The poem was, without doubt, written after the poet had been to see 'Broken Blossoms,' and the liberal hand from which that production was flung to a waiting world left its ineffaceable finger-prints on his polished mind. “Now we come to stanza three. The first line shows the influence of Mother Goose; the second is an unconscious echo of Solomon's Song; the ever-brimming cup owes itself to Omar; and the rest of the stanza to Rupert Brooke. “Thus we see the importance of widespread reading, and a catholicity of influences. “Influence is wonderful! To invent a new simile, it is like a pebble dropped into a placid lake; the ripples form ever-widening circles, and the influence of an influence is never wholly lost. “Perhaps--and this is quite as it should be--the final stanza is the finest of all. It starts out under the influences of Walt Whitman. Had Walt been omitted, the whole structure would have tumbled to the ground! No self-respecting poet now-a-days writes without being influenced by Whitman. It isn't done. It would be as indiscreet as to appear in one's shirt-sleeves. The influence of the good, gray Poet _must_ be felt, must be _shown_, or the budding bard is out of the running. Only a dash of Whitman is needed--'my well-loved earth' and 'prodigal' are quite sufficient. “'The sweet fulfilment of the flesh' is a final roundup that gracefully blends Whitman's and Ella Wheeler Wilcox's influential powers--and, incidentally, justifies the magnificent title of the poem.