Xxviii

But, back to my Knight of the Pencil, Dismissed to his fresco and stencil! Whose story--begun with a chuckle, And throughout timed by raps of the knuckle,-- To small enough purpose were studied If it ends with crown cracked or nose bloodied. Come, critics,--not shake hands, excuse me! But--say have you grudged to amuse me This once in the forty-and-over Long years since you trampled my clover And scared from my house-eaves each sparrow I never once harmed by that arrow Of song, karterotaton belos, (Which Pindar declares the true melos,) I was forging and filing and finishing, And no whit my labors diminishing Because, though high up in a chamber Where none of your kidney may clamber Your hullabaloo would approach me? Was it "grammar" wherein you would "coach" me-- You,--pacing in even that paddock Of language allotted you ad hoc, With a clog at your fetlocks,--you--scorners Of me free of all its four corners? Was it "clearness of words which convey thought"? Ay, if words never needed enswathe aught But ignorance, impudence, envy And malice--what word-swathe would then vie With yours for a clearness crystalline? But had you to put in one small line Some thought big and bouncing--as noddle Of goose, born to cackle and waddle And bite at man's heel as goose-wont is, Never felt plague its puny os frontis-- You 'd know, as you hissed, spat and sputtered, Clear cackle is easily uttered!