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James Russell Lowell - A Fable For Critics
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	Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree`s shade,
	Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made,
	For the god being one day too warm in his wooing,
	She took to the tree to escape his pursuing;
	Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk,
	And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk;
	And, though `twas a step into which he had driven her,
	He somehow or other had never forgiven her;
	Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic,
	Something bitter to chew when he`d play the Byronic,     
	And I can`t count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over
	By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her.
	`My case is like Dido`s,` he sometimes remarked;
	`When I last saw my love, she was fairly embarked
	In a laurel, as _she_ thought--but (ah, how Fate mocks!)
	She has found it by this time a very bad box;
	Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it,--
	You`re not always sure of your game when you`ve treed it.
	Just conceive such a change taking place in one`s mistress!
	What romance would be left?--who can flatter or kiss trees?     
	And, for mercy`s sake, how could one keep up a dialogue
	With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log,--
	Not to say that the thought would forever intrude
	That you`ve less chance to win her the more she is wood?
	Ah! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves,
	To see those loved graces all taking their leaves;
	Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting but now,
	As they left me forever, each making its bough!
	If her tongue _had_ a tang sometimes more than was right,
	Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite.`     

	  Now, Daphne--before she was happily treeified--
	Over all other blossoms the lily had deified,
	And when she expected the god on a visit
	(`Twas before he had made his intentions explicit),
	Some buds she arranged with a vast deal of care,
	To look as if artlessly twined in her hair,
	Where they seemed, as he said, when he paid his addresses,
	Like the day breaking through, the long night of her tresses;
	So whenever he wished to be quite irresistible,
	Like a man with eight trumps in his hand at a whist-table     
	(I feared me at first that the rhyme was untwistable,
	Though I might have lugged in an allusion to Cristabel),--
	He would take up a lily, and gloomily look in it,
	As I shall at the----, when they cut up my book in it.

	  Well, here, after all the bad rhyme I`ve been spinning,
	I`ve got back at last to my story`s beginning:
	Sitting there, as I say, in the shade of his mistress,
	As dull as a volume of old Chester mysteries,
	Or as those puzzling specimens which, in old histories,
	We read of his verses--the Oracles, namely,--   
	(I wonder the Greeks should have swallowed them tamely,
	For one might bet safely whatever he has to risk,
	They were laid at his door by some ancient Miss Asterisk,
	And so dull that the men who retailed them out-doors
	Got the ill name of augurs, because they were bores,--)
	First, he mused what the animal substance or herb is
	Would induce a mustache, for you know he`s _imberbis;_
	Then he shuddered to think how his youthful position
	Was assailed by the age of his son the physician;
	At some poems he glanced, had been sent to him lately,     
	And the metre and sentiment puzzled him greatly;
	`Mehercle! I`d make such proceeding felonious,--
	Have they all of them slept in the cave of Trophonius?
	Look well to your seat, `tis like taking an airing
	On a corduroy road, and that out of repairing;
	It leads one, `tis true, through the primitive forest,
	Grand natural features, but then one has no rest;
	You just catch a glimpse of some ravishing distance,
	When a jolt puts the whole of it out of existence,--
	Why not use their ears, if they happen to have any?`     
	--Here the laurel leaves murmured the name of poor Daphne.

	  `Oh, weep with me, Daphne,` he sighed, `for you know it`s
	A terrible thing to be pestered with poets!
	But, alas, she is dumb, and the proverb holds good,
	She never will cry till she`s out of the wood!
	What wouldn`t I give if I never had known of her?
	`Twere a kind of relief had I something to groan over:
	If I had but some letters of hers, now, to toss over,
	I might turn for the nonce a Byronic philosopher,
	And bewitch all the flats by bemoaning the loss of her.     
	One needs something tangible, though, to begin on,--
	A loom, as it were, for the fancy to spin on;
	What boots all your grist? it can never be ground
	Till a breeze makes the arms of the windmill go round;
	(Or, if `tis a water-mill, alter the metaphor,
	And say it won`t stir, save the wheel be well wet afore,
	Or lug in some stuff about water "so dreamily,"--
	It is not a metaphor, though, `tis a simile);
	A lily, perhaps, would set _my_ mill a-going,
	For just at this season, I think, they are blowing.     
	Here, somebody, fetch one; not very far hence
	They`re in bloom by the score, `tis but climbing a fence;
	There`s a poet hard by, who does nothing but fill his
	Whole garden, from one end to t`other, with lilies;
	A very good plan, were it not for satiety,
	One longs for a weed here and there, for variety;
	Though a weed is no more than a flower in disguise,
	Which is seen through at once, if love give a man eyes.`

	  Now there happened to be among Phoebus`s followers,
	A gentleman, one of the omnivorous swallowers,     
	Who bolt every book that comes out of the press,
	Without the least question of larger or less,
	Whose stomachs are strong at the expense of their head,--
	For reading new books is like eating new bread,
	One can bear it at first, but by gradual steps he
	Is brought to death`s door of a mental dyspepsy.
	On a previous stage of existence, our Hero
	Had ridden outside, with the glass below zero;
	He had been, `tis a fact you may safely rely on,
	Of a very old stock a most eminent scion,--   
	A stock all fresh quacks their fierce boluses ply on,
	Who stretch the new boots Earth`s unwilling to try on,
	Whom humbugs of all shapes and sorts keep their eye on,
	Whose hair`s in the mortar of every new Zion,
	Who, when whistles are dear, go directly and buy one,
	Who think slavery a crime that we must not say fie on,
	Who hunt, if they e`er hunt at all, with the lion
	(Though they hunt lions also, whenever they spy one),
	Who contrive to make every good fortune a wry one,
	And at last choose the hard bed of honor to die on,     
	Whose pedigree, traced to earth`s earliest years,
	Is longer than anything else but their ears,--
	In short, he was sent into life with the wrong key,
	He unlocked the door, and stept forth a poor donkey.
	Though kicked and abused by his bipedal betters
	Yet he filled no mean place in the kingdom of letters;
	Far happier than many a literary hack,
	He bore only paper-mill rags on his back
	(For It makes a vast difference which side the mill
	One expends on the paper his labor and skill);     
	So, when his soul waited a new transmigration,
	And Destiny balanced `twixt this and that station,
	Not having much time to expend upon bothers,
	Remembering he`d had some connection with authors,
	And considering his four legs had grown paralytic,--
	She set him on two, and he came forth a critic.

	  Through his babyhood no kind of pleasure he took
	In any amusement but tearing a book;
	For him there was no intermediate stage
	From babyhood up to straight-laced middle age;     
	There were years when he didn`t wear coat-tails behind,
	But a boy he could never be rightly defined;
	like the Irish Good Folk, though in length scarce a span,
	From the womb he came gravely, a little old man;
	While other boys` trousers demanded the toil
	Of the motherly fingers on all kinds of soil,
	Red, yellow, brown, black, clayey, gravelly, loamy,
	He sat in the corner and read Viri Romae.
	He never was known to unbend or to revel once
	In base, marbles, hockey, or kick up the devil once;     
	He was just one of those who excite the benevolence
	Of your old prigs who sound the soul`s depths with a ledger,
	And are on the lookout for some young men to `edger-
	cate,` as they call it, who won`t be too costly,
	And who`ll afterward take to the ministry mostly;
	Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious,
	Always keep on good terms with each _mater-familias_
	Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear
	Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a year:
	Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful conditions,     
	Either preach through their noses, or go upon missions.

	In this way our Hero got safely to college,
	Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge;
	A reading-machine, always wound up and going,
	He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing,
	Appeared in a gown, with black waistcoat of satin,
	To spout such a Gothic oration in Latin
	That Tully could never have made out a word in it
	(Though himself was the model the author preferred in it),
	And grasping the parchment which gave him in fee     
	All the mystic and-so-forths contained in A.B.,
	He was launched (life is always compared to a sea)
	With just enough learning, and skill for the using it,
	To prove he`d a brain, by forever confusing it.
	So worthy St. Benedict, piously burning
	With the holiest zeal against secular learning,
	_Nesciensque scienter_, as writers express it,
	_Indoctusque sapienter a Roma recessit_.

	  `Twould be endless to tell you the things that he knew,
	Each a separate fact, undeniably true,   
	But with him or each other they`d nothing to do;
	No power of combining, arranging, discerning,
	Digested the masses he learned into learning;
	There was one thing in life he had practical knowledge for
	(And this, you will think, he need scarce go to college for),--
	Not a deed would he do, nor a word would he utter,
	Till he`d weighed its relations to plain bread and butter.
	When he left Alma Mater, he practised his wits
	In compiling the journals` historical bits,--
	Of shops broken open, men falling in fits,   
	Great fortunes in England bequeathed to poor printers,
	And cold spells, the coldest for many past winters,--
	Then, rising by industry, knack, and address,
	Got notices up for an unbiased press,
	With a mind so well poised, it seemed equally made for
	Applause or abuse, just which chanced to be paid for:
	From this point his progress was rapid and sure,
	To the post of a regular heavy reviewer.

	  And here I must say he wrote excellent articles
	On Hebraical points, or the force of Greek particles;   
	They filled up the space nothing else was prepared for,
	And nobody read that which nobody cared for;
	If any old book reached a fiftieth edition,
	He could fill forty pages with safe erudition:
	He could gauge the old books by the old set of rules,
	And his very old nothings pleased very old fools;
	But give him a new book, fresh out of the heart,
	And you put him at sea without compass or chart,--
	His blunders aspired to the rank of an art;
	For his lore was engraft, something foreign that grew in him,   
	Exhausting the sap of the native and true in him,
	So that when a man came with a soul that was new in him,
	Carving new forms of truth out of Nature`s old granite,
	New and old at their birth, like Le Verrier`s planet,
	Which, to get a true judgment, themselves must create
	In the soul of their critic the measure and weight,
	Being rather themselves a fresh standard of grace,
	To compute their own judge, and assign him his place,
	Our reviewer would crawl all about it and round it,
	And, reporting each circumstance just as he found it,   
	Without the least malice,--his record would be
	Profoundly aesthetic as that of a flea,
	Which, supping on Wordsworth, should print for our sakes,
	Recollections of nights with the Bard of the Lakes,
	Or, lodged by an Arab guide, ventured to render a
	Comprehensive account of the ruins at Denderah.

	  As I said, he was never precisely unkind.
	The defect in his brain was just absence of mind;
	If he boasted, `twas simply that he was self-made,
	A position which I, for one, never gainsaid,   
	My respect for my Maker supposing a skill
	In his works which our Hero would answer but ill;
	And I trust that the mould which he used may be cracked, or he,
	Made bold by success, may enlarge his phylactery,
	And set up a kind of a man-manufactory,--
	An event which I shudder to think about, seeing
	That Man is a moral, accountable being.

	  He meant well enough, but was still in the way,
	As dunces still are, let them be where they may;
	Indeed, they appear to come into existence   
	To impede other folks with their awkward assistance;
	If you set up a dunce on the very North pole
	All alone with himself, I believe, on my soul,
	He`d manage to get betwixt somebody`s shins,
	And pitch him down bodily, all in his sins,
	To the grave polar bears sitting round on the ice,
	All shortening their grace, to be in for a slice;
	Or, if he found nobody else there to pother,
	Why, one of his legs would just trip up the other,
	For there`s nothing we read of in torture`s inventions,   
	Like a well-meaning dunce, with the best of intentions.

	  A terrible fellow to meet in society,
	Not the toast that he buttered was ever so dry at tea;
	There he`d sit at the table and stir in his sugar,
	Crouching close for a spring, all the while, like a cougar;
	Be sure of your facts, of your measures and weights,
	Of your time,--he`s as fond as an Arab of dates;
	You`ll be telling, perhaps, in your comical way,
	Of something you`ve seen in the course of the day;
	And, just as you`re tapering out the conclusion,   
	You venture an ill-fated classic allusion,--
	The girls have all got their laughs ready, when, whack!
	The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back!
	You had left out a comma,--your Greek`s put in joint,
	And pointed at cost of your story`s whole point.
	In the course of the evening, you find chance for certain
	Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain:
	You tell her your heart can be likened to _one_ flower,
	`And that, O most charming of women, `s the sunflower,
	Which turns`--here a clear nasal voice, to your terror,   
	From outside the curtain, says, `That`s all an error.`
	As for him, he`s--no matter, he never grew tender,
	Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender,
	Shaping somebody`s sweet features out of cigar smoke
	(Though he`d willingly grant you that such doings are smoke);
	All women he damns with _mutabile semper_,
	And if ever he felt something like love`s distemper,
	`Twas tow`rds a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican,
	And assisted her father in making a lexicon;
	Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious     
	About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius,
	Or something of that sort,--but, no more to bore ye
	With character-painting, I`ll turn to my story.

	  Now, Apollo, who finds it convenient sometimes
	To get his court clear of the makers of rhymes,
	The _genus_, I think it is called, _irritabile_,
	Every one of whom thinks himself treated most shabbily,
	And nurses a--what is it?--_immedicabile_,
	Which keeps him at boiling-point, hot for a quarrel,
	As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel,     
	If any poor devil but look at a laurel;--
	Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting
	(Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a quieting
	Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a
	Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta),
	Kept our Hero at hand, who, by means of a bray,
	Which he gave to the life, drove the rabble away;
	And if that wouldn`t do, he was sure to succeed,
	If he took his review out and offered to read;
	Or, failing in plans of this milder description,     
	He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription,
	Considering that authorship wasn`t a rich craft,
	To print the `American drama of Witchcraft.`
	`Stay, I`ll read you a scene,`--but he hardly began,
	Ere Apollo shrieked `Help!` and the authors all ran:
	And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit,
	And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate,
	He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle
	As calmly as if `twere a nine-barrelled pistol,
	And threatened them all with the judgment to come,     
	Of `A wandering Star`s first impressions of Rome.`
	`Stop! stop!` with their hands o`er their ears, screamed the Muses,
	`He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses,
	`Twas a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying,
	`Tis mere massacre now that the enemy`s flying;
	If he`s forced to `t again, and we happen to be there,
	Give us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong ether.`

	  I called this a `Fable for Critics;` you think it`s
	More like a display of my rhythmical trinkets;
	My plot, like an icicle`s slender and slippery,     
	Every moment more slender, and likely to slip awry,
	And the reader unwilling _in loco desipere_
	Is free to jump over as much of my frippery
	As he fancies, and, if he`s a provident skipper, he
	May have like Odysseus control of the gales,
	And get safe to port, ere his patience quite fails;
	Moreover, although `tis a slender return
	For your toil and expense, yet my paper will burn,
	And, if you have manfully struggled thus far with me,
	You may e`en twist me up, and just light your cigar with me:     
	If too angry for that, you can tear me in pieces,
	And my _membra disjecta_ consign to the breezes,
	A fate like great Ratzau`s, whom one of those bores,
	Who beflead with bad verses poor Louis Quatorze,
	Describes (the first verse somehow ends with _victoire_),
	As _dispersant partout et ses membres et sa gloire;_
	Or, if I were over-desirous of earning
	A repute among noodles for classical learning,
	I could pick you a score of allusions, i-wis,
	As new as the jests of _Didaskalos tis;_     
	Better still, I could make out a good solid list
	From authors recondite who do not exist,--
	But that would be naughty: at least, I could twist
	Something out of Absyrtus, or turn your inquiries
	After Milton`s prose metaphor, drawn from Osiris;
	But, as Cicero says he won`t say this or that
	(A fetch, I must say, most transparent and flat),
	After saying whate`er he could possibly think of,--
	I simply will state that I pause on the brink of
	A mire, ankle-deep, of deliberate confusion,     
	Made up of old jumbles of classic allusion:
	So, when you were thinking yourselves to be pitied,
	Just conceive how much harder your teeth you`d have gritted,
	An `twere not for the dulness I`ve kindly omitted.

	  I`d apologize here for my many digressions.
	Were it not that I`m certain to trip into fresh ones
	(`Tis so hard to escape if you get in their mesh once);
	Just reflect, if you please, how `tis said by Horatius,
	That Maeonides nods now and then, and, my gracious!
	It certainly does look a little bit ominous     
	When he gets under way with _ton d`apameibomenos_.
	(Here a something occurs which I`ll just clap a rhyme to,
	And say it myself, ere a Zoilus have time to,--
	Any author a nap like Van Winkle`s may take,
	If he only contrive to keep readers awake,
	But he`ll very soon find himself laid on the shelf,
	If _they_ fall a-nodding when he nods himself.)

	  Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I--
	When Phoebus expressed his desire for a lily,
	Our Hero, whose homoeopathic sagacity         
	With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity,
	Set off for the garden as fast as the wind
	(Or, to take a comparison more to my mind,
	As a sound politician leaves conscience behind).
	And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps
	O`er his principles, when something else turns up trumps.

	  He was gone a long time, and Apollo, meanwhile,
	Went over some sonnets of his with a file,
	For, of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet
	Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it;     
	It should reach with one impulse the end of its course,
	And for one final blow collect all of its force;
	Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend
	With a wave-like up-gathering to break at the end;
	So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink,
	He was killing the time, when up walked Mr. D----,
	At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses
	Went dodging about, muttering, `Murderers! asses!`
	From out of his pocket a paper he`d take,
	With a proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake,     
	And, reading a squib at himself, he`d say, `Here I see
	`Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy,
	They are all by my personal enemies written;
	I must post an anonymous letter to Britain,
	And show that this gall is the merest suggestion
	Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question,
	For, on this side the water, `tis prudent to pull
	O`er the eyes of the public their national wool,
	By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull
	All American authors who have more or less     
	Of that anti-American humbug--success,
	While in private we`re always embracing the knees
	Of some twopenny editor over the seas,
	And licking his critical shoes, for you know `tis
	The whole aim of our lives to get one English notice;
	My American puffs I would willingly burn all
	(They`re all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal)
	To get but a kick from a transmarine journal!`

	  So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner
	As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner,     
	He came cautiously on, peeping round every corner,
	And into each hole where a weasel might pass in,
	Expecting the knife of some critic assassin,
	Who stabs to the heart with a caricature.
	Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure,
	Yet done with a dagger-o`-type, whose vile portraits
	Disperse all one`s good and condense all one`s poor traits.

	  Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching,
	And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,--
	`Good day, Mr. D----, I`m happy to meet     
	With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat,
	Who through Grub Street the soul of a gentleman carries;
	What news from that suburb of London and Paris
	Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopolize
	The credit of being the New World`s metropolis?`

	  `Why, nothing of consequence, save this attack
	On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack,
	Who thinks every national author a poor one,
	That isn`t a copy of something that`s foreign,     
	And assaults the American Dick--`

	                                Nay, `tis clear
	That your Damon there`s fond of a flea in his ear,
	And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick
	He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click;
	Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan
	Should turn up his nose at the "Poems on Man,"
	(Which contain many verses as fine, by the bye,
	As any that lately came under my eye,)
	Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it,
	Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it;
	As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit     
	The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet;
	Nor would let it rest so, but fire column after column,
	Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something as solemn,
	By way of displaying his critical crosses,
	And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis,
	His broadsides resulting (this last there`s no doubt of)
	In successively sinking the craft they`re fired out of.
	Now nobody knows when an author is hit,
	If he have not a public hysterical fit;
	Let him only keep close in his snug garret`s dim ether,     
	And nobody`d think of his foes--or of him either;
	If an author have any least fibre of worth in him,
	Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him;
	All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban
	One word that`s in tune with the nature of man.`

	  `Well, perhaps so; meanwhile I have brought you a book,
	Into which if you`ll just have the goodness to look,
	You may feel so delighted (when once you are through it)
	As to deem it not unworth your while to review it,
	And I think I can promise your thoughts, if you do,     
	A place in the next Democratic Review.`

	  `The most thankless of gods you must surely have thought me,
	For this is the forty-fourth copy you`ve brought me;
	I have given them away, or at least I have tried,
	But I`ve forty-two left, standing all side by side
	(The man who accepted that one copy died),--
	From one end of a shelf to the other they reach,
	"With the author`s respects" neatly written in each.
	The publisher, sure, will proclaim a Te Deum,
	When he hears of that order the British Museum     
	Has sent for one set of what books were first printed
	In America, little or big,--for `tis hinted
	That this is the first truly tangible hope he
	Has ever had raised for the sale of a copy.
	I`ve thought very often `twould be a good thing
	In all public collections of books, if a wing
	Were set off by itself, like the seas from the dry lands,
	Marked _Literature suited to desolate islands_,
	And filled with such books as could never be read
	Save by readers of proofs, forced to do it for bread,--   
	Such books as one`s wrecked on in small country taverns,
	Such as hermits might mortify over in caverns,
	Such as Satan, if printing had then been invented,
	As the climax of woe, would to Job have presented.
	Such as Crusoe might dip in, although there are few so
	Outrageously cornered by fate as poor Crusoe;
	And since the philanthropists just now are banging
	And gibbeting all who`re in favor of hanging
	(Though Cheever has proved that the Bible and Altar
	Were let down from Heaven at the end of a halter.     
	And that vital religion would dull and grow callous,
	Unrefreshed, now and then, with a sniff of the gallows),--
	And folks are beginning to think it looks odd,
	To choke a poor scamp for the glory of God;
	And that He who esteems the Virginia reel
	A bait to draw saints from their spiritual weal,
	And regards the quadrille as a far greater knavery
	Than crushing his African children with slavery,--
	Since all who take part in a waltz or cotillon
	Are mounted for hell on the Devil`s own pillion,     
	Who, as every true orthodox Christian well knows,
	Approaches the heart through the door of the toes,--
	That He, I was saying, whose judgments are stored
	For such as take steps in despite of his word,
	Should look with delight on the agonized prancing
	Of a wretch who has not the least ground for his dancing,
	While the State, standing by, sings a verse from the Psalter
	About offering to God on his favorite halter,
	And, when the legs droop from their twitching divergence,
	Sells the clothes to a Jew, and the corpse to the surgeons;--
	Now, instead of all this, I think I can direct you all     
	To a criminal code both humane and effectual;--
	I propose to shut up every doer of wrong
	With these desperate books, for such term, short or long,
	As, by statute in such cases made and provided,
	Shall be by your wise legislators decided:
	Thus: Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler,
	At hard labor for life on the works of Miss----;
	Petty thieves, kept from flagranter crimes by their fears,
	Shall peruse Yankee Doodle a blank term of years,--   
	That American Punch, like the English, no doubt,--
	Just the sugar and lemons and spirit left out.

	  `But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, and leads on
	The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and then feeds on,--
	A loud-cackling swarm, in whose leathers warm drest,
	He goes for as perfect a--swan as the rest.

	  `There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,
	Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on,
	Whose prose is grand verse, while his verse, the Lord knows,
	Is some of it pr---- No, `tis not even prose;     
	I`m speaking of metres; some poems have welled
	From those rare depths of soul that have ne`er been excelled;
	They`re not epics, but that doesn`t matter a pin,
	In creating, the only hard thing`s to begin;
	A grass-blade`s no easier to make than an oak;
	If you`ve once found the way, you`ve achieved the grand stroke;
	In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter,
	But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter;
	Now it is not one thing nor another alone
	Makes a poem, but rather the general tone,     
	The something pervading, uniting the whole,
	The before unconceived, unconceivable soul,
	So that just in removing this trifle or that, you
	Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue;
	Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly perfect may be,
	But, clapt hodge-podge together, they don`t make a tree.

	  `But, to come back to Emerson (whom, by the way,
	I believe we left waiting),--his is, we may say,
	A Greek head on right Yankee shoulders, whose range
	Has Olympus for one pole, for t`other the Exchange;     
	He seems, to my thinking (although I`m afraid
	The comparison must, long ere this, have been made),
	A Plotinus-Montaigne, where the Egyptian`s gold mist
	And the Gascon`s shrewd wit cheek-by-jowl coexist;
	All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he`s got
	To I don`t (nor they either) exactly know what;
	For though he builds glorious temples, `tis odd
	He leaves never a doorway to get in a god.
	`Tis refreshing to old-fashioned people like me
	To meet such a primitive Pagan as he,     
	In whose mind all creation is duly respected
	As parts of himself--just a little projected;
	And who`s willing to worship the stars and the sun,
	A convert to--nothing but Emerson.
	So perfect a balance there is in his head,
	That he talks of things sometimes as if they were dead;
	Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort,
	He looks at as merely ideas; in short,
	As if they were fossils stuck round in a cabinet,
	Of such vast extent that our earth`s a mere dab in it;     
	Composed just as he is inclined to conjecture her,
	Namely, one part pure earth, ninety-nine parts pure lecturer;
	You are filled with delight at his clear demonstration,
	Each figure, word, gesture, just fits the occasion,
	With the quiet precision of science he`ll sort `em,
	But you can`t help suspecting the whole a _post mortem_.

	  `There are persons, mole-blind to the soul`s make and style,
	Who insist on a likeness `twixt him and Carlyle;
	To compare him with Plato would be vastly fairer,
	Carlyle`s the more burly, but E. is the rarer;     
	He sees fewer objects, but clearlier, truelier,
	If C.`s as original, E.`s more peculiar;
	That he`s more of a man you might say of the one,
	Of the other he`s more of an Emerson;
	C.`s the Titan, as shaggy of mind as of limb,--
	E. the clear-eyed Olympian, rapid and slim;
	The one`s two thirds Norseman, the other half Greek,
	Where the one`s most abounding, the other`s to seek;
	C.`s generals require to be seen in the mass,--
	E.`s specialties gain if enlarged by the glass;     
	C. gives nature and God his own fits of the blues,
	And rims common-sense things with mystical hues,--
	E. sits in a mystery calm and intense,
	And looks coolly around him with sharp common-sense;
	C. shows you how every-day matters unite
	With the dim transdiurnal recesses of night,--
	While E., in a plain, preternatural way,
	Makes mysteries matters of mere every day;
	C. draws all his characters quite _a la_ Fuseli,--
	Not sketching their bundles of muscles and thews illy,     
	He paints with a brush so untamed and profuse,
	They seem nothing but bundles of muscles and thews;
	E. is rather like Flaxman, lines strait and severe,
	And a colorless outline, but full, round, and clear;--
	To the men he thinks worthy he frankly accords
	The design of a white marble statue in words.
	C. labors to get at the centre, and then
	Take a reckoning from there of his actions and men;
	E. calmly assumes the said centre as granted,
	And, given himself, has whatever is wanted.     

	  `He has imitators in scores, who omit
	No part of the man but his wisdom and wit,--
	Who go carefully o`er the sky-blue of his brain,
	And when he has skimmed it once, skim it again;
	If at all they resemble him, you may be sure it is
	Because their shoals mirror his mists and obscurities,
	As a mud-puddle seems deep as heaven for a minute,
	While a cloud that floats o`er is reflected within it.

	  `There comes----, for instance; to see him`s rare sport,
	Tread in Emerson`s tracks with legs painfully short;     
	How he jumps, how he strains, and gets red in the face.
	To keep step with the mystagogue`s natural pace!
	He follows as close as a stick to a rocket,
	His fingers exploring the prophet`s each pocket.
	Fie, for shame, brother bard; with good fruit of your own,
	Can`t you let Neighbor Emerson`s orchards alone?
	Besides, `tis no use, you`ll not find e`en a core,--
	---- has picked up all the windfalls before.
	They might strip every tree, and E. never would catch `em,
	His Hesperides have no rude dragon to watch `em;     
	When they send him a dishful, and ask him to try `em,
	He never suspects how the sly rogues came by `em;
	He wonders why `tis there are none such his trees on,
	And thinks `em the best he has tasted this season.

	  `Yonder, calm as a cloud, Alcott stalks in a dream,
	And fancies himself in thy groves, Academe,
	With the Parthenon nigh, and the olive-trees o`er him,
	And never a fact to perplex him or bore him,
	With a snug room at Plato`s when night comes, to walk to,
	And people from morning till midnight to talk to,     
	And from midnight till morning, nor snore in their listening;--
	So he muses, his face with the joy of it glistening,
	For his highest conceit of a happiest state is
	Where they`d live upon acorns, and hear him talk gratis;
	And indeed, I believe, no man ever talked better,--
	Each sentence hangs perfectly poised to a letter;
	He seems piling words, but there`s royal dust hid
	In the heart of each sky-piercing pyramid.
	While he talks he is great, but goes out like a taper,
	If you shut him up closely with pen, ink, and paper;     
	Yet his fingers itch for `em from morning till night,
	And he thinks he does wrong if he don`t always write;
	In this, as in all things, a lamb among men,
	He goes to sure death when he goes to his pen.

	  `Close behind him is Brownson, his mouth very full
	With attempting to gulp a Gregorian bull;
	Who contrives, spite of that, to pour out as he goes
	A stream of transparent and forcible prose;
	He shifts quite about, then proceeds to expound
	That `tis merely the earth, not himself, that turns round,
	And wishes it clearly impressed on your mind     
	That the weathercock rules and not follows the wind;
	Proving first, then as deftly confuting each side,
	With no doctrine pleased that`s not somewhere denied,
	He lays the denier away on the shelf,
	And then--down beside him lies gravely himself.
	He`s the Salt River boatman, who always stands willing
	To convey friend or foe without charging a shilling,
	And so fond of the trip that, when leisure`s to spare,
	He`ll row himself up, if he can`t get a fare.     
	The worst of it is, that his logic`s so strong,
	That of two sides he commonly chooses the wrong;
	If there is only one, why, he`ll split it in two,
	And first pummel this half, then that, black and blue.
	That white`s white needs no proof, but it takes a deep fellow
	To prove it jet-black, and that jet-black is yellow.
	He offers the true faith to drink in a sieve,--
	When it reaches your lips there`s naught left to believe
	But a few silly-(syllo-, I mean,)-gisms that squat `em
	Like tadpoles, o`erjoyed with the mud at the bottom.     

	  `There is Willis, all _natty_ and jaunty and gay,
	Who says his best things in so foppish a way,
	With conceits and pet phrases so thickly o`erlaying `em,
	That one hardly knows whether to thank him for saying `em;
	Over-ornament ruins both poem and prose,
	Just conceive of a Muse with a ring in her nose!
	His prose had a natural grace of its own,
	And enough of it, too, if he`d let it alone;
	But he twitches and jerks so, one fairly gets tired,
	And is forced to forgive where one might have admired;     
	Yet whenever it slips away free and unlaced,
	It runs like a stream with a musical waste,
	And gurgles along with the liquidest sweep;--
	`Tis not deep as a river, but who`d have it deep?
	In a country where scarcely a village is found
	That has not its author sublime and profound,
	For some one to be slightly shallow`s a duty,
	And Willis`s shallowness makes half his beauty.
	His prose winds along with a blithe, gurgling error,
	And reflects all of Heaven it can see in its mirror:     
	`Tis a narrowish strip, but it is not an artifice;
	`Tis the true out-of-doors with its genuine hearty phiz;
	It is Nature herself, and there`s something in that,
	Since most brains reflect but the crown of a hat.
	Few volumes I know to read under a tree,
	More truly delightful than his A l`Abri,
	With the shadows of leaves flowing over your book,
	Like ripple-shades netting the bed of a brook;
	With June coming softly your shoulder to look over,
	Breezes waiting to turn every leaf of your book over,     
	And Nature to criticise still as you read,--
	The page that bears that is a rare one indeed.

	  `He`s so innate a cockney, that had he been born
	Where plain bare-skin`s the only full-dress that is worn,
	He`d have given his own such an air that you`d say
	`T had been made by a tailor to lounge in Broadway.
	His nature`s a glass of champagne with the foam on `t,
	As tender as Fletcher, as witty as Beaumont;
	So his best things are done in the flush of the moment;
	If he wait, all is spoiled; he may stir it and shake it,     
	But, the fixed air once gone, he can never re-make it.
	He might be a marvel of easy delightfulness,
	If he would not sometimes leave the _r_ out of sprightfulness;
	And he ought to let Scripture alone--`tis self-slaughter,
	For nobody likes inspiration-and-water.
	He`d have been just the fellow to sup at the Mermaid,
	Cracking jokes at rare Ben, with an eye to the barmaid,
	His wit running up as Canary ran down,--
	The topmost bright bubble on the wave of The Town.

	  `Here comes Parker, the Orson of parsons, a man     
	Whom the Church undertook to put under her ban
	(The Church of Socinus, I mean),--his opinions
	Being So-(ultra)-cinian, they shocked the Socinians:
	They believed--faith, I`m puzzled--I think I may call
	Their belief a believing in nothing at all,
	Or something of that sort; I know they all went
	For a general union of total dissent:
	He went a step farther; without cough or hem,
	He frankly avowed he believed not in them;
	And, before he could be jumbled up or prevented,     
	From their orthodox kind of dissent he dissented.
	There was heresy here, you perceive, for the right
	Of privately judging means simply that light
	Has been granted to _me_, for deciding on _you;_
	And in happier times, before Atheism grew,
	The deed contained clauses for cooking you too:
	Now at Xerxes and Knut we all laugh, yet our foot
	With the same wave is wet that mocked Xerxes and Knut,
	And we all entertain a secure private notion,
	That our _Thus far!_ will have a great weight with the ocean,
	`Twas so with our liberal Christians: they bore     
	With sincerest conviction their chairs to the shore;
	They brandished their worn theological birches,
	Bade natural progress keep out of the Churches,
	And expected the lines they had drawn to prevail
	With the fast-rising tide to keep out of their pale;
	They had formerly dammed the Pontifical See,
	And the same thing, they thought, would do nicely for P.;
	But he turned up his nose at their mumming and shamming,
	And cared (shall I say?) not a d---- for their damming;     
	So they first read him out of their church, and next minute
	Turned round and declared he had never been in it.
	But the ban was too small or the man was too big,
	For he recks not their bells, books, and candles a fig
	(He scarce looks like a man who would _stay_ treated shabbily,
	Sophroniscus` son`s head o`er the features of Rabelais);--
	He bangs and bethwacks them,--their backs he salutes
	With the whole tree of knowledge torn up by the roots;
	His sermons with satire are plenteously verjuiced,
	And he talks in one breath of Confutzee, Cass, Zerduscht,     
	Jack Robinson, Peter the Hermit, Strap, Dathan,
	Cush, Pitt (not the bottomless, _that_ he`s no faith in),
	Pan, Pillicock, Shakespeare, Paul, Toots, Monsieur Tonson,
	Aldebaran, Alcander, Ben Khorat, Ben Jonson,
	Thoth, Richter, Joe Smith, Father Paul, Judah Monis,
	Musaeus, Muretus, _hem_,--[Greek: m] Scorpionis,
	Maccabee, Maccaboy, Mac--Mac--ah! Machiavelli,
	Condorcet, Count d`Orsay, Conder, Say, Ganganelli,
	Orion, O`Connell, the Chevalier D`O,
	(See the Memoirs of Sully,) [Greek: to pan], the great toe     
	Of the statue of Jupiter, now made to pass
	For that of Jew Peter by good Romish brass,
	(You may add for yourselves, for I find it a bore,
	All the names you have ever, or not, heard before,
	And when you`ve done that--why, invent a few more).
	His hearers can`t tell you on Sunday beforehand,
	If in that day`s discourse they`ll be Bibled or Koraned,
	For he`s seized the idea (by his martyrdom fired)
	That all men (not orthodox) _may be_ inspired;
	Yet though wisdom profane with his creed he may weave in,
	He makes it quite clear what he _doesn`t_ believe in,     
	While some, who decry him, think all Kingdom Come
	Is a sort of a, kind of a, species of Hum,
	Of which, as it were, so to speak, not a crumb
	Would be left, if we didn`t keep carefully mum,
	And, to make a clean breast, that `tis perfectly plain
	That _all_ kinds of wisdom are somewhat profane;
	Now P.`s creed than this may be lighter or darker,
	But in one thing, `tis clear, he has faith, namely--Parker;
	And this is what makes him the crowd-drawing preacher,     
	There`s a background of god to each hard-working feature,
	Every word that he speaks has been fierily furnaced
	In the blast of a life that has struggled in earnest:
	There he stands, looking more like a ploughman than priest,
	If not dreadfully awkward, not graceful at least,
	His gestures all downright and same, if you will,
	As of brown-fisted Hobnail in hoeing a drill;
	But his periods fall on you, stroke after stroke,
	Like the blows of a lumberer felling an oak,
	You forget the man wholly, you`re thankful to meet     
	With a preacher who smacks of the field and the street,
	And to hear, you`re not over-particular whence,
	Almost Taylor`s profusion, quite Latimer`s sense.

	  `There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified,
	As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified,
	Save when by reflection `tis kindled o` nights
	With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights.
	He may rank (Griswold says so) first bard of your nation
	(There`s no doubt that he stands in supreme iceolation),
	Your topmost Parnassus he may set his heel on,     
	But no warm applauses come, peal following peal on,--
	He`s too smooth and too polished to hang any zeal on:
	Unqualified merits, I`ll grant, if you choose, he has `em,
	But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm;
	If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul,
	Like being stirred up with the very North Pole.

	  `He is very nice reading in summer, but _inter
	Nos_, we don`t want _extra_ freezing in winter;
	Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is,
	When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices.     
	But, deduct all you can, there`s enough that`s right good in him,
	He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him;
	And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where`er it is,
	Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities--
	To you mortals that delve in this trade-ridden planet?
	No, to old Berkshire`s hills, with their limestone and granite.
	If you`re one who _in loco_ (add _foco_ here) _desipis_,
	You will get out of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece;
	But you`d get deeper down if you came as a precipice,
	And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain,     
	If you only could palm yourself off for a mountain.
	Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning,
	Some scholar who`s hourly expecting his learning,
	Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth
	May be rated at more than your whole tuneful herd`s worth.
	No, don`t be absurd, he`s an excellent Bryant;
	But, my friends, you`ll endanger the life of your client,
	By attempting to stretch him up into a giant;
	If you choose to compare him, I think there are two per-
	-sons fit for a parallel--Thomson and Cowper;     
	I don`t mean exactly,--there`s something of each,
	There`s T.`s love of nature, C.`s penchant to preach;
	Just mix up their minds so that C.`s spice of craziness
	Shall balance and neutralize T.`s turn for laziness,
	And it gives you a brain cool, quite frictionless, quiet,
	Whose internal police nips the buds of all riot,--
	A brain like a permanent strait-jacket put on
	The heart that strives vainly to burst off a button,--
	A brain which, without being slow or mechanic,
	Does more than a larger less drilled, more volcanic;     
	He`s a Cowper condensed, with no craziness bitten,
	And the advantage that Wordsworth before him had written.

	  `But, my dear little bardlings, don`t prick up your ears
	Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers;
	If I call him an iceberg, I don`t mean to say
	There is nothing in that which is grand in its way;
	He is almost the one of your poets that knows
	How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose;
	If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar
	His thought`s modest fulness by going too far;     
	`T would be well if your authors should all make a trial
	Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial,
	And measure their writings by Hesiod`s staff,
	Which teaches that all has less value than half.

	  `There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart
	Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart,
	And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect,
	Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect;
	There was ne`er a man born who had more of the swing
	Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing;     
	And his failures arise (though he seem not to know it)
	From the very same cause that has made him a poet,--
	A fervor of mind which knows no separation
	`Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration,
	As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing
	If `twere I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing;
	Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction
	And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection,
	While, borne with the rush of the metre along,
	The poet may chance to go right or go wrong,     
	Content with the whirl and delirium of song;
	Then his grammar`s not always correct, nor his rhymes,
	And he`s prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes,
	Not his best, though, for those are struck off at white-heats
	When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats,
	And can ne`er be repeated again any more
	Than they could have been carefully plotted before:
	Like old what`s-his-name there at the battle of Hastings
	(Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings),
	Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights     
	For reform and whatever they call human rights,
	Both singing and striking in front of the war,
	And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor;
	_Anne haec_, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks,
	_Vestis filii tui_, O leather-clad Fox?
	Can that be thy son, in the battle`s mid din,
	Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in
	To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin,
	With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly`s spring
	Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling?     

	  `All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard
	Who was true to The Voice when such service was hard,
	Who himself was so free he dared sing for the slave
	When to look but a protest in silence was brave;
	All honor and praise to the women and men
	Who spoke out for the dumb and the down-trodden then!
	It needs not to name them, already for each
	I see History preparing the statue and niche;
	They were harsh, but shall _you_ be so shocked at hard words
	Who have beaten your pruning-hooks up into swords,     
	Whose rewards and hurrahs men are surer to gain
	By the reaping of men and of women than grain?
	Why should _you_ stand aghast at their fierce wordy war, if
	You scalp one another for Bank or for Tariff?
	Your calling them cut-throats and knaves all day long
	Doesn`t prove that the use of hard language is wrong;
	While the World`s heart beats quicker to think of such men
	As signed Tyranny`s doom with a bloody steel-pen,
	While on Fourth-of-Julys beardless orators fright one
	With hints at Harmodius and Aristogeiton,               
	You need not look shy at your sisters and brothers
	Who stab with sharp words for the freedom of others;--
	No, a wreath, twine a wreath for the loyal and true
	Who, for sake of the many, dared stand with the few,
	Not of blood-spattered laurel for enemies braved,
	But of broad, peaceful oak-leaves for citizens saved!

	  `Here comes Dana, abstractedly loitering along,
	Involved in a paulo-post-future of song,
	Who`ll be going to write what`ll never be written
	Till the Muse, ere he think of it, gives him the mitten,-- 
	Who is so well aware of how things should be done,
	That his own works displease him before they`re begun,--
	Who so well all that makes up good poetry knows,
	That the best of his poems is written in prose;
	All saddled and bridled stood Pegasus waiting,
	He was booted and spurred, but he loitered debating;
	In a very grave question his soul was immersed,--
	Which foot in the stirrup he ought to put first:
	And, while this point and that he judicially dwelt on,
	He, somehow or other, had written Paul Felton,             
	Whose beauties or faults, whichsoever you see there,
	You`ll allow only genius could hit upon either.
	That he once was the Idle Man none will deplore,
	But I fear he will never be anything more;
	The ocean of song heaves and glitters before him,
	The depth and the vastness and longing sweep o`er him.
	He knows every breaker and shoal on the chart,
	He has the Coast Pilot and so on by heart,
	Yet he spends his whole life, like the man in the fable,
	In learning to swim on his library table.             
Source
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