"O to be in England, now that April's there."

"The mists are on the Oberland,
The Fungfrau's snows look faint and far."

"The word of the Lord by night
To the watching pilgrims came."

"Fear, a forgotten form;
Death, a dream of the eyes;
We were atoms in God's great storm
That raged through the angry skies!"

And with this you may take many other bits of verse which were hammered
out on the anvil of the terrible Civil War.

Perhaps these bits of verse chosen almost at random will not appeal to
your taste. Then find some other verse that does. The range of
literature is as wide as humanity. It touches every feeling, every hope,
every craving of the human heart. Select what you can understand--best,
what you can rise on tiptoe to understand. "It was my duty to have loved
the highest." It is your duty toward poetry to take the highest you can
reach. Then learn it by heart. Learn it when you are young. It will give
you a fresh well of thoughts. It will form your style as a writer. That
is poetry in which truth is expressed in the fewest possible words, in
words which are inevitable, in words which could not be changed without
weakening the meaning or throwing discord into the melody. To choose the
right word and to discard all others, this is the chief factor in good
writing. To learn good poetry by heart is to acquire help toward doing