upon;

And the voice that was softer than silence said,

"Lo, it is I, be not afraid!

In many climes, without avail,

Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail;

Behold, it is here,-this cup which thou Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now;

This crust is my body broken for thee, 320 This water his blood that died on the tree;

The Holy Supper is kept, indeed,

In whatso we share with another's need; Not what we give, but what we share, For the gift without the giver is bare; Who gives himself with his alms feeds three,

Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me."

Reader! walk up at once (it will soon be too late), and buy at a perfectly ruinous rate

A FABLE FOR CRITICS:

OR, BETTER,

(I LIKE, AS A THING THAT THE READER'S FIRST FANCY MAY STRIKE, AN OLD-FASHIONED TITLE-PAGE, SUCH AS PRESENTS A TABULAR VIEW OF THE VOLUME'S CONTENTS),

Set forth in October, the 31st day, In the year '48, G. P. Putnam, Broadway.

"There comes Emerson first, whose rich words, every one,

Are like gold nails in temples to hang trophies on,

Whose prose is grand verse, while hi verse, the Lord knows,

Is some of it pr- No, 't is not even prose;

I'm speaking of metres; some poem have welled

From those rare depths of soul that hav ne'er been excelled;

They 're not epics, but that does n't matter a pin,

In creating, the only hard thing 's to begin; A grass-blade 's no easier to make than an oak;

If you 've once found the way, you 've achieved the grand stroke;

ΤΟ

1 This jeu d'esprit was extemporized, I may fairly say, so rapidly was it written, purely for my own amusement and with no thought of publication. I sent daily instalments of it to a friend in New York, the late Charles F. Briggs. He urged me to let it be printed, and I at last consented to its anonymous publication. The secret was kept till after several persons had laid claim to its authorship. (Author's Note.)

See Scudder's Life of Lowell, vol. i, pp. 238255.

For though he builds glorious temples, 't is odd

He leaves never a doorway to get in a god.

'T is refreshing to old-fashioned people like me

To meet such a primitive Pagan as he, In whose mind all creation is duly respected

As parts of himself-just a little projected;

And who's willing to worship the stars and the sun,

A convert to nothing but Emerson.
So perfect a balance there is in his head,
That he talks of things sometimes as if
they were dead;

40

Life, nature, love, God, and affairs of that sort,

But he lacks the one merit of kindling enthusiasm ;

If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, Like being stirred up with the very North Pole.

"He is very nice reading in summer, but inter

Nos, we do n't want extra freezing in winter;

Take him up in the depth of July, my advice is,

When you feel an Egyptian devotion to ices.

But, deduct all you can, there's enough that 's right good in him,

110

He has a true soul for field, river, and wood in him;

And his heart, in the midst of brick walls, or where'er it is,

Glows, softens, and thrills with the tenderest charities

To you mortals that delve in this traderidden planet?

No, to old Berkshire's hills, with their limestone and granite.

If you 're one who in loco (add foco here) desipis,

You will get of his outermost heart (as I guess) a piece;

But you 'd get deeper down if you came as a precipice,

And would break the last seal of its inwardest fountain,

If you only could palm yourself off for a mountain.

120

Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning,

Some scholar who 's hourly expecting his learning,

Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth

May be rated at more than your whole tuneful herd's worth.

No, don't be absurd, he 's an excellent Bryant;

But, my friends, you'll endanger the life of your client,

By attempting to stretch him up into a giant :

If you choose to compare him, I think there are two per

-sons fit for a parallel-Thomson and Cowper; 1

1 To demonstrate quickly and easily how perversely absurd 't is to sound this name Cowper, As people in general call him named super,

I remark that he rhymes it himself with horsetrooper.

There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing

Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing;

And his failures arise (though he seem not to know it)

160

From the very same cause that has made him a poet,

A fervor of mind which knows no separation

'Twixt simple excitement and pure inspiration,

As my Pythoness erst sometimes erred from not knowing

If 't were I or mere wind through her tripod was blowing;

Let his mind once get head in its favorite direction

And the torrent of verse bursts the dams of reflection,

While, borne with the rush of the metre along,

The poet may chance to go right or go wrong,

Content with the whirl and delirium of

song;

170

Then his grammar's not always correct,

nor his rhymes,

And he 's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes,

Not his best, though, for those are struck

off at white-heats

When the heart in his breast like a triphammer beats,

And can ne'er be repeated again any

To its deeps within deeps by the stroke of Beethoven;

But, set that aside, and 't is truth that I speak,

Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek,

I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line

In that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline.

That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart

Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art,

'T is a shrine of retreat from Earth's hubbub and strife

As quiet and chaste as the author's own life.