“Nor yet by his feet,” interrupted Longfellow; “although if a poet looks well to his feet there are no heights to which he cannot climb.”
“I accept the measure of your judgment,” went on Anon calmly. “As for the lady, Delilah’s barber stunt convinced Samson it isn’t wise to tell the truth to a woman.”
“Yet I must insist,” continued Lord Bacon, “that Shakespeare is rather shy of hair to be a real poet. Of course, I have heard the story that Anne Hathaway, after a conference with Delilah, sought to reduce the strength of the Samson of letters by cutting his name from Shakespeare to Shakspeare and trimming his hair to make assurance doubly sure, but Lot’s wife, in looking backward, has recommended that the pig-tale be swallowed with a grain of salt. My dear Willie, your poetry has pains in its feet, your rhyme has received the absent treatment, and your rythm, like your hair, is lacking.”
“Oh, well, hair doesn’t grow on brains,” retorted the claimant to “Hamlet.”
But Anon was not to be out-argued, and continued:
“A hirsute chrysanthemum growing on a man’s head is more likely to indicate a quarterback Freshman on the gridiron than a hunchback poet on the Mount of Parnassus. As for the poet’s other extreme, metrical feet are not always symmetrical.”
“You’ve told it all—so for a spell
For more rhymes where’s the reason?
Besides, just now we are in h—”
“That’s blank verse,” interrupted Shakespeare.