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.