Sonnet
Addressed to H. K. White, on His Poems Lately Published
Henry! I greet thine entrance into life!
Sure presage that the myrmidons of fate,
The fool’s unmeaning laugh, the critic’s hate,
Will dire assail thee; and the envious strife
Of bookish schoolmen, beings over rife,
Whose pia-mater studious is fill’d
With unconnected matter, half distill’d
From letter’d page, shall bare for thee the knife,
Beneath whose edge the poet ofttimes sinks:
But fear not! for thy modest work contains
The germ of worth; thy wild poetic strains,
How sweet to him, untutor’d bard, who thinks
Thy verse “has power to please, as soft it flows
Through the smooth murmurs of the frequent close.”
1803.