“But my good mother Baystate wants no praise of mine, She learned from _her_ mother a precept divine About something that butters no parsnips, her _forte_ In another direction lies, work is her sport (Though she’ll courtesy and set her cap straight, that she will, If you talk about Plymouth and red Bunker’s Hill). Dear, notable goodwife! by this time of night Her hearth is swept neatly, her fire burning bright, And she sits in a chair (of home plan and make) rocking, Musing much, all the while, as she darns on a stocking, Whether turkeys will come pretty high next Thanksgiving, Whether flour’ll be so dear, for, as sure as she’s living, She will use rye-and-injun then; whether the pig By this time ain’t got pretty tolerable big, And whether to sell it outright will be best, Or to smoke hams and shoulders and salt down the rest,-- At this minute, she’d swop all my verses, ah, cruel! For the last patent stove that is saving of fuel; So I’ll just let Apollo go on, for his phiz Shows I’ve kept him awaiting too long as it is.” “If our friend, there, who seems a reporter, is done With his burst of emotion, why, _I_ will go on,” Said Apollo; some smiled, and, indeed, I must own There was something sarcastic, perhaps, in his tone;-- “There’s Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit; A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit The electrical tingles of hit after hit; In long poems ’tis painful sometimes, and invites A thought of the way the new Telegraph writes, Which pricks down its little sharp sentences spitefully As if you got more than you’d title to rightfully, And you find yourself hoping its wild father Lightning Would flame in for a second and give you a fright’ning. He has perfect sway of what _I_ call a sham metre, But many admire it, the English pentameter, And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse, With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse, Nor e’er achieved aught in’t so worthy ofpraise As the tribute of Holmes to the grand _Marseillaise_. You went crazy last year over Bulwer’s New Timon;-- Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on, Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes, He could ne’er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes, His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satyric In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes That are trodden Upon are your own or your foes’.