CRITICS

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?)— A striking book, yet not a startling book. 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? Elizabeth Barrett Browning.