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though you well know I never could, but I gave it up entirely long ago. Do not know as I have tried to write a rhyme since my first year at Bowdoin, Do not know as I ever shall -- without I should happen to fall in love -- However, I think those pieces of yours really have considerable merit. The thought is good, thought should never be sacrificed to rhyme. I have lost my taste for rhyme in a great measure. it should poetry to have a line put in merely to make a rhyme, as is too frequently the case. My taste in these matters is very different now from formerly. It is now only thought & metre I care for. The longest of those pieces I like. Its moral is good, as well as its intellectual, & harmonic. "Slaughtered sons,Victims of Janus" that expression, though it may be strictly correct, would hardly seem so at first to most. Mars has acquired so much notoriety as a War God, that people generally look with distrust upon the pretentions of any other, except it be some old Scandinavian Scamp or other. I believe I like the same verses near the end best of that piece, or part of the long ones before. One or two line I marked. Leaving out 4 or 5 lines, the long lines with the short ones, and the last 12 for a moral, I like very well. "The Gray Horse" is quite smooth and pretty, is of that class of poetry where melody & beauty of expression should be sought rather than thought: pleasure rather than instruction, You know too I am in favor of such things. It is in good taste, too, without she makes too much fuss about it. The other piece, would perhaps by some be called the best. The first stanza reminds me of something of Longfellow's, I cannot now tell what, perhaps it would be better without the last two lines though