UN PAS QUI COÛTE.
I'VE a genius or a talent—I perceive it pretty clearly
In pursuing an ambition or in climbing up a tree—
For never quite attaining, but attaining very nearly
To my aspiration's altitude, whatever it may be.
Tis a faculty that haunts me with an obstinate persistence,
For I felt it in my boyhood, and I feel it in my prime,—
All the efforts and endeavours I have made in my existence
Have invariably ended "but a step from the sublime."
As a boy I made a tender of my tenderest affection,
In a lovely little sonnet to the fairest of the fair:
(Though nothing but a youngster, I've preserved the recollection
Of her tyranny, her beauty, and the way she did her hair.)
She was married, I remember, to a person in the City,—
I consider'd him remarkably obtrusive at the time;
So I quitted my enslaver with a lofty look of pity,
For I felt my situation "but a step from the sublime."
Being confident that Cupid was a little gay deceiver,
I forgot my disappointment in a struggle after Fame;
I had caught the rage of writing as a child may catch a fever,
So I took to making verses as a way to make a name.
When I publish'd a collection of my efforts as a writer—
With a minimum of reason and a maximum of rhyme—
I am proud to say that nobody could well have been politer
Than the critics, for they, call'd it "but a step from the
sublime."
I was laudably ambitious to extend my reputation,
And I plann'd a pretty novel on a pretty novel plan;
I would make it independent both of sin and of "sensation,"
And my villain should be pictured as a persecuted man.
For your Bulwers and your Braddons and your Collinses
may grovel
In an atmosphere of horror and a wilderness of crime;
Twas for me to controvert them, and I did so in a novel
Which was commonly consider'd "but a step from the
sublime."
I have master'd metaphysics—I have mounted on the pinions
Both of Painting and of Music—and I rather think I know
Ev'ry nook and ev'ry corner of Apollo's whole dominions,
From the top of Mount Parnassus down to Paternoster Row.
I have had my little failures, I have had my great successes—
And Parnassus, I assure you, is a weary hill to climb;
But the lowest and the meanest of my enemies confesses
That he very often thinks me "but a step from the sublime."