J.L.T.  PHILLIPS.

[Illustration:  MONUMENT OF LYSICRATES.]

COMMONPLACE.

My little girl is commonplace, you say? 
Well, well, I grant it, as you use the phrase
Concede the whole; although there was a day
When I too questioned words, and from a maze
Of hairsplit meanings, cut with close-drawn line,
Sought to draw out a language superfine,
Above the common, scarify with words and scintillate with pen;
But that time’s over—­now I am content to stand with other men.

It’s the best place, fair youth.  I see your smile—­
The scornful smile of that ambitious age
That thinks it all things knows, and all the while
It nothing knows.  And yet those smiles presage
Some future fame, because your aim is high;
As when one tries to shoot into the sky,
If his rash arrow at the moon he aims, a bolder flight we see,
Though vain, than if with level poise it safely reached the nearest tree.

A common proverb that!  Does it disjoint
Your graceful terms?  One more you’ll understand: 
Cut down a pencil to too fine a point,
Lo, it breaks off, all useless, in your hand! 
The child is fitted for her present sphere: 
Let her live out her life, without the fear
That comes when souls, daring the heights of dread infinity, are tost,
Now up, now down, by the great winds, their little home for ever lost.

My little girl seems to you commonplace
Because she loves the daisies, common flowers;
Because she finds in common pictures grace,
And nothing knows of classic music’s powers: 
She reads her romance, but the mystic’s creed
Is something far beyond her simple need. 
She goes to church, but the mixed doubts and theories that thinkers find
In all religious truth can never enter her undoubting mind.

A daisy’s earth’s own blossom—­better far
Than city gardener’s costly hybrid prize: 
When you’re found worthy of a higher star,
’Twill then be time earth’s daisies to despise;
But not till then.  And if the child can sing
Sweet songs like “Robin Gray,” why should I fling
A cloud over her music’s joy, and set for her the heavy task
Of learning what Bach knew, or finding sense under mad Chopin’s mask?

Then as to pictures:  if her taste prefers
That common picture of the “Huguenots,”
Where the girl’s heart—­a tender heart like hers—­
Strives to defeat earth’s greatest powers’ great plots
With her poor little kerchief, shall I change
The print for Turner’s riddles wild and strange? 
Or take her stories—­simple tales which her few leisure hours beguile—­
And give her Browning’s Sordello, a Herbert Spencer, a Carlyle?