Thus: Let murderers be shut, to grow wiser and cooler, At hard labor for life on the works of Miss ----; Petty thieves, kept from flagranter crimes by their fears, Shall peruse Yankee Doodle a blank term of years,-- That American Punch, like the English, no doubt,-- Just the sugar and lemons and spirit left out. “But stay, here comes Tityrus Griswold, and leads on The flocks whom he first plucks alive, and then feeds on,-- A loud-cackling swarm, in whose feathers warm-drest, He goes for as perfect a--swan as the rest. “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 his verse, the Lord knows, Is some of it pr-- No, ’tis not even prose; I’m speaking of metres; some poems have welled From those rare depths of soul that have ne’er been excelled; They’re not epics, but that doesn’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; In the worst of his poems are mines of rich matter, But thrown in a heap with a crash and a clatter; Now it is not one thing nor another alone Makes a poem, but rather the general tone, The something pervading, uniting the whole, The before unconceived, unconceivable soul, So that just in removing this trifle or that, you Take away, as it were, a chief limb of the statue; Roots, wood, bark, and leaves singly perfect may be, But clapt hodge-podge together, they don’t make a tree.