On an Unfavourable Review
“I’ll give him dash for dash.”
JERDAN, farewell! farewell to all
Who ever praised me, great or small
Your poet’s course is run!
A weekly—no, an every-day
Reviewer takes my fame away,
And I am all undone!
I cannot live an author long!
When I did write, O I did wrong
To aim at being great;
A Diamond Poet in a pin
May twinkle on in peace, and win
No diamond critic’s hate!
No small inditer of reviews
Will analyse his tiny muse,
Or lay his sonnets waste;
Who strives to prove that Richardson,
That calls himself a diamond one,
Is but a bard of paste?
The smallest bird that wings the sky
May tempt some sparrow shot, and die;
But midges still go free!
The peace that shuns my board and bed
May settle on a lowlier head,
And dwell, “St. John, with thee!”
I aimed at higher growth; and now
My leaves are withered on the bough,
I’m choked by bitter shrubs!
O Mr. F. C. W.!
What can I christen thy review
But one of “Wormwood Scrubs?”
The very man that sought me once—
(Can I so soon be grown a dunce?)
He now derides my verse;
But who, save me, will fret to find
The editor has changed his mind,—
He can’t have got a worse.