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 | The poems of Madison Cawein |  |
350
TO A CRITIC
R. H. S.
Song hath a catalogue of lovely thingsThy 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.
| The poems of Madison Cawein | |