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The cougar comes down on your thunderstruck back!

You had left out a comma, - your Greek 's put in joint,

And pointed at cost of your story's whole point.

In the course of the evening, you venture on certain

Soft speeches to Anne, in the shade of the curtain:

You tell her your heart can be likened to one flower,

"And

that, O most charming of women, 's the sunflower, Which turns" - here a clear nasal voice, to your terror,

From outside the curtain, says, "That's all an error."

As for him, he 's- no matter, he never grew tender,

Sitting after a ball, with his feet on the fender,

Shaping somebody's sweet features out of cigar smoke,

(Though he'd willingly grant you that such doings are smoke); All women he damns with mutabile semper,

And if ever he felt something like

love's distemper,

"I was towards a young lady who spoke ancient Mexican,

And assisted her father in making a lexicon;

Though I recollect hearing him get quite ferocious

About Mary Clausum, the mistress of Grotius,

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As bitter as wormwood, and sourer than sorrel,

:

If any poor devil but look at a laurel ; Apollo, I say, being sick of their rioting

(Though he sometimes acknowledged their verse had a quieting

Effect after dinner, and seemed to suggest a

Retreat to the shrine of a tranquil siesta),

Kept our Hero at hand, who, by means of a bray,

Whic: he gave to the life, drove the rabble away;

And if that would n't do, he was sure to succeed,

If he took his review out and offered to read ;

Or, failing in plans of this milder description,

He would ask for their aid to get up a subscription,

Considering that authorship was n't a
rich craft,
To print the "
Witchcraft."

American drama of

"Stay, I'll read you a scene, he hardly began,

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- but

Ere Apollo shrieked "Help!" and the authors all ran:

And once, when these purgatives acted with less spirit,

And the desperate case asked a remedy desperate,

He drew from his pocket a foolscap epistle,

As calmly as if 't were a nine-barrelled pistol,

And threatened them all with the judg

ment to come,

Of "A wandering Star's first impressions of Rome." "Stop! stop!" with their hands o'er their ears, screamed the Muses, "He may go off and murder himself, if he chooses,

'T was a means self-defence only sanctioned his trying,

'Tis mere massacre now that the enemy's flying;

If he 's forced to 't again, and we happen to be there,

Give us each a large handkerchief soaked in strong ether."

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(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 upwalked Mr.;

At a few steps behind him, a small man

in glasses

Went dodging about, muttering, "Murderers! asse !"

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, 't is pru

dent to pull

O'er the eyes of the public their national wool,

By accusing of slavish respect to John Bul

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"Why, nothing of consequence, save

this attack

On my friend there, behind, by some pitiful hack,

Who thinks every national author a poor one,

That is n't a copy of something that's foreign,

And assaults the American Dick-"

"Nay, 't is clear

That your Damon there 's fond of a flea in his ear,

And, if no one else furnished them gratis, on tick

He would buy some himself, just to hear the old click ;

Why, I honestly think, if some fool in Japan

Should turn up his nose at the 'Poems on Man,'

Your friend there by some inward instinct would know it,

Would get it translated, reprinted, and show it; As a man might take off a high stock to exhibit

The autograph round his own neck of the gibbet;

Nor would let it rest so, but fire column

after column,

Signed Cato, or Brutus, or something

as solemn,

By way of displaying his critical crosses, And tweaking that poor transatlantic proboscis,

His broadsides resulting (this last there's no doubt of)

In successively sinking the craft they're fired out of.

Nownobody knows when an authorishit, If he don't have a public hysterical fit; Let him only keep close in his snug garret's dim ether,

And nobody'd think of his critics - or him either;

If an author have any least fibre of worth in him,

Abuse would but tickle the organ of mirth in him;

All the critics on earth cannot crush with their ban

One word that 's in tune with the nature of man.

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