To a Critic

Song hath a catalogue of lovely things

Thy kind hath oft defiled,— whose spite misleads

The world too often!— where the poet reads,

As in a fable, of old envyings,

Crows, such as thou, which hush the bird that sings,

Or kill it with their cawings; thorns and weeds,

Such as thyself,‘ midst which the wind sows seeds

Of flow'rs, these crush before one blossom swings.

But here and there the wisdom of a School

Unknown to these hath often written down

“Fame” in white ink the future hath turned brown;

When every beauty, heaped with ridicule,

In their ignoble prose, proved their renown,

Making each famous — as an ass or fool.