C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Advice to a Poet
By Frederick Locker-Lampson (1821–1895)
D
But if you must, don’t tell your neighbors;
Or five in six, who cannot scrawl,
Will dub you donkey for your labors.
This epithet may seem unjust
To you—or any verse-begetter:
Oh, must we own—I fear we must!—
That nine in ten deserve no better.
And match you with the beast that grazes;
Or wag their heads, and hold their tongues,
Or damn you with the faintest praises.
Be patient,—you will get your due
Of honors, or humiliations;
So look for sympathy—but do
Not look to find it from relations.
My kindred marveled what the praise meant,
They now wear more respectful looks,
But can’t get over their amazement.
Indeed, they’ve power to wound, beyond
That wielded by the fiercest hater;
For all the time they are so fond—
Which makes the aggravation greater.
The threadbare thoughts they feebly utter:
If they attempted naught—or less!—
They would not sink, and gasp, and flutter.
Fly low, my friend; then mount, and win
The niche for which the town’s contesting:
And never mind your kith and kin—
But never give them cause for jesting.
Should form his plan; and having conned it,
Should know wherein his strength consists,
And never, never go beyond it.
Great Dryden all pretense discards;
Does Cowper ever strain his tether?
And Praed (Watteau of English Bards)—
How well he keeps his team together!
A vein for ornament ensnaring;
Simplicity is still the soul
Of all that Time deems worth the sparing.
Long lays are not a lively sport;
Reduce your own to half a quarter:
Unless your public thinks them short,
Posterity will cut them shorter.
With feelings of profoundest pity:
They hunger for the poet’s bays,
And swear one’s spiteful when one’s witty.
The critic’s lot is passing hard:
Between ourselves, I think reviewers,
When called to truss a crowing bard,
Should not be sparing of the skewers.
Regard our verse with fascination,
Through asinine paternal eyes,
And hues of Fancy’s own creation;
Then pray, sir, pray, excuse a queer
And sadly self-deluded rhymer,
Who thinks his beer (the smallest beer!)
Has all the gust of alt hochheimer.
So tricksy, it were wrong to let her
Rest satisfied with what she thinks
Is perfect: try and teach her better.
And if you only use, perchance,
One half the pains to learn that we, sir,
Still use to hide our ignorance—
How very clever you will be, sir!