Once for all, to return, and to stay, will I, nill I-- When Phœbus expressed his desire for a lily, Our hero, whose homœopathic sagacity With an ocean of zeal mixed his drop of capacity, Set off for the garden as fast as the wind, (Or, to take a comparison more to my mind, As a sound politician leaves conscience behind,) And leaped the low fence, as a party hack jumps O'er his principles, when something else turns up trumps. He was gone a long time, and Apollo meanwhile, Went over some sonnets of his with a file, For of all compositions, he thought that the sonnet Best repaid all the toil you expended upon it; It should reach with one impulse the end of its course, And for one final blow collect all of its force; Not a verse should be salient, but each one should tend With a wave-like up-gathering to burst at the end;-- So, condensing the strength here, there smoothing a wry kink, He was killing the time, when up walked Mr. ----; At a few steps behind him, a small man in glasses, Went dodging about, muttering "murderers! asses!" From out of his pocket a paper he'd take, With the proud look of martyrdom tied to its stake, And, reading a squib at himself, he'd say, "Here I see 'Gainst American letters a bloody conspiracy, They are all by my personal enemies written; I must post an anonymous letter to Britain, And show that this gall is the merest suggestion Of spite at my zeal on the Copyright question, For, on this side the water, 'tis prudent to pull O'er the eyes of the public their national wool, By accusing of slavish respect to John Bull, All American authors who have more or less Of that anti-American humbug--success, While in private we're always embracing the knees Of some twopenny editor over the seas, And licking his critical shoes, for you know 'tis The whole aim of our lives to get one English notice; My American puffs I would willingly burn all, (They're all from one source, monthly, weekly, diurnal,) To get but a kick from a transmarine journal!" So, culling the gibes of each critical scorner As if they were plums, and himself were Jack Horner, He came cautiously on, peeping round every corner, And into each hole where a weasel might pass in, Expecting the knife of some critic assassin, Who stabs to the heart with a caricature, Not so bad as those daubs of the Sun, to be sure, Yet done with a dagger-o'-type, whose vile portraits Disperse all one's good, and condense all one's poor traits. Apollo looked up, hearing footsteps approaching, And slipped out of sight the new rhymes he was broaching,-- "Good day, Mr. ----, I'm happy to meet With a scholar so ripe, and a critic so neat, Who through Grub-street the soul of a gentleman carries,-- What news from that suburb of London and Paris Which latterly makes such shrill claims to monopolize The credit of being the New World's metropolis?"