“But my dear little bardlings, don’t prick up your ears Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers; If I call him an iceberg, I don’t mean to say There is nothing in that which is grand in its way: He is almost the one of your poets that knows How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose; If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar His thought’s modest fulness by going too far; ’Twould be well if your authors should all make a trial Of what virtue there is in severe self-denial, And measure their writings by Hesiod’s staff, Which teaches that all has less value than half. “There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart Strains the straight-breasted drab of the Quaker apart, And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect, Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect; 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) 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 ’twere 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; 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 trip-hammer beats, And can ne’er be repeated again any more Than they could have been carefully plotted before: Like old what’s-his-name there at the battle of Hastings (Who, however, gave more than mere rhythmical bastings), Our Quaker leads off metaphorical fights For reform and whatever they call human rights, Both singing and striking in front of the war, And hitting his foes with the mallet of Thor; _Anne hæc_, one exclaims, on beholding his knocks, _Vestis filii tui_, O leather-clad Fox? Can that be thy son, in the battle’s mid din, Preaching brotherly love and then driving it in To the brain of the tough old Goliath of sin, With the smoothest of pebbles from Castaly’s spring Impressed on his hard moral sense with a sling?