Poetry Archives

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.”