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James Russell Lowell, Among my books, Spenser (search)
least freely and simply, twining the bare stem of old tradition with graceful sentiment and lively natural sympathies. I find a few sweet and flowing verses in Dunbar's Merle and Nightingale,—indeed one whole stanza that has always seemed exquisite to me. It is this:— Ne'er sweeter noise was heard by living man Than made there is none, For both are lost,—the time and the travail Of every love but upon God alone. But except this lucky poem, I find little else in the serious verses of Dunbar that does not seem to me tedious and pedantic. I dare say a few more lines might be found scattered here and there, but I hold it a sheer waste of time to hunt award diviner air, and not in the grovelling fashion of the potato. Any verse that makes you and me foreigners is not only not great poetry, but no poetry at all. Dunbar's works were disinterred and edited some thirty years ago by Mr. Laing, and whoso is national enough to like thistles may browse there to his heart's content. I <