MY critic Hammond flatters prettily,

And wants another volume like the last.

My critic Belfair wants another book

Entirely different, which will sell (and live?)—

The public blames originalities

(You must not pump spring water unawares

Upon a gracious public, full of nerves),

Good things, not subtle, new, yet orthodox,

As easy reading as the dog-eared page

That’s fingered by said public fifty years,

Since first taught spelling by its grandmother,

And yet a revelation in some sort;

That’s hard, my critic Belfair! So, what next?

My critic Stokes objects to abstract thoughts;

“Call a man John, a woman, Joan,” says he,

“And do not prate so of humanities;”

Whereat I call my critic simply Stokes.

My critic Johnson recommends more mirth,

Because a cheerful genius suits the times,

And all true poets laugh unquenchably,

Like Shakespeare and the gods. That’s very hard.

The gods may laugh, and Shakespeare; Dante smiled

With such a needy heart on two pale lips,

We cry, “Weep, rather, Dante.” Poems are

Men, if true poems; and who dares exclaim

At any man’s door, “Here, ’tis understood

The thunder fell last week and killed a wife,

And scared a sickly husband—what of that?

Get up, be merry, shout, and clap your hands,

Because a cheerful genius suits the times?”

None says so to the man—and why, indeed,

Should any to the poem?