Word: stanzas
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According to most poets, "eventide" is "betokened" by a stillness. The third stanza informs us that "The robins all are still." My own experience has been that at the time of twilight the robins are the only creatures that are not still. A short piece entitled "In May Days" has a somewhat peculiar construction. The writer begins by enumerating some of the features of spring, and in the first three stanzas rolls up a ponderous compound subject, containing, among other things, a relative clause attached to a relative clause, but as yet brings in no predicate; in the fourth stanza...
...glassy" floor? A surface of hard sand is not well described by "glassy." To be sure, sand is a necessary ingredient of glass, could the poet have been thinking of any thing so practical. The stanza before the last is as follows...
...must the editorial waste-baskets contain! Undergraduate poets seem to have a poor command of language, and this gives rise to repetitions, and gives an air of awkwardness and carelessness to many of their compositions; we often find words put in merely for rhymes or to fill out the stanza, and a general lack of careful revision is painfully evident. I have noticed that the last stanza, - often the last line of the last stanza, - contains the worst faults in the piece, as though the "divine afflatus" had all escaped before the poet reached his period...
...more serious vein is a piece called "Forebodings;" it is full of fine feeling, and called forth an answer from one of the professors. "The Old Professor" is a pathetic poem, and is well worth reading. "The Bells of Venice" is a fine piece. I will quote the last stanza...
...Cigarette" is a light piece, and very pretty. I will quote the opening lines and the last stanza...