To A Critic

R. H. S.

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.