No pitted toad behind a stoneIn the penultimate line, "kind" is a noun (with "angel kind" cf. "mankind"), not an adjective.
But hoards some secret grace;
The meanest slug with midnight gone
Has left a silver trace.
No dullest eyes to beauty blind,
Uplifted to the beast,
But prove some kin with angel kind,
Though lowliest and least.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Sunday, October 30, 2011
All Creatures Great and Small
George Orwell, in his essay Some Thoughts on the Common Toad, wrote, "The toad, unlike the skylark and the primrose, has never had much of a boost from poets." One exception is Ralph Hodgson, Lines: