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Question 44: Source?: "Straight is the line of duty..."

Q. Whilst looking through a book of poems and sayings from my husband's family I found the following from Seth Lord who was killed in action in 1917 while serving with the New Zealand Machine Gun Corps:

Straight is the line of duty
Carved is the line of beauty
Walk by the first and you will see
The other always follow thee

At first, I thought it was a regimental motto but the New Zealand
Personnel Archives said it wasn't.  Having put in the first line on the search engine, I came up with Karen's "The Monkey". However, as far as I know, it does differ a little and also of course, "The Monkey" was first published (in Seven Gothic Tales) in 1934.

I just wondered if you could help clear up this mystery.
 

A. According to Bartlett's Quotations, here is the correct reference:

William Maccall (c. 1830):

     Straight is the line of Duty,
     Curved is the line of Beauty,
     Follow the straight line, thou shall see
     The curved line ever follow thee.

It was fashionable among the Romantic writers of the ninteenth century (Karen Blixen's mentors) to use many types of writing in the same work, mixing prose and poetry. This method emphasized the belief that there should be no system, rules, or boundaries in creating a work of art. Karen Blixen frequently quotes other authors without attribution; the game of recognizing the authors was part of the effort to involve the reader in the narrative.

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