UNWITTING TRIBUTE.
A learned critic, meaning censure, says
No subject is too prosy for my muse,
And thus methinks unwittingly he pays
A tribute he'd refuse.
Nothing too prosy! Wherefore should it be?
He is no poet if in the merest clod
He may not find some trace of Poesy,
His all-besetting god.
He cannot hide from it, do what he will;
It gazes out on him from stocks and stones;
The world moves by on grating wheels—he still
Can hear celestial tones.
The cruse that winks through some lone widow's pane;
The birring sonnet of her spinning wheel,
No prosier are than heaven's lurid chain,
Or earth's resounding peal.
The elements that chaunt in epic tongue—
To them the drowsiest senses are awake:
It needs a poet's ear to catch the song
That breathes in things prosaic.
So, as “unto the pure all things are pure,”
Unto the poet all reflect his dream:
He needs no spic'd event, no special lure,
But finds in all a theme.
