 | The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes |  |
TO YOUTHFUL RHYMESTERS
So youthful rhymesters when a poet sings
Feel at their shoulders for the envied wings
Flap their bare arms, cry “can” and wonder why
They like the song birds cannot sing and fly.
Feel at their shoulders for the envied wings
Flap their bare arms, cry “can” and wonder why
They like the song birds cannot sing and fly.
Beware, young dreamer! he that hopes to climb
To fame and fortune up the stairs of rhyme
Too oft will find his weary feet have found
A creaking treadmill travelling round and round
While on its path the world of action goes
And leaves its prizes with the men of prose.
Ill is the bough that yields the laurel wreath—
Its drip is poison to the herbs beneath—
And many an idle youth and bitter maid
Have seen their virtues languish in its shade
Though vain the task their fated course to stem
This bitter lesson I commend to them:
Who writes in verse that should have writ in prose
Is like a traveller walking on his toes,—
Happy the rhymester who in time has found
The heels he lifts were made to touch the ground.
To fame and fortune up the stairs of rhyme
Too oft will find his weary feet have found
A creaking treadmill travelling round and round
While on its path the world of action goes
And leaves its prizes with the men of prose.
Ill is the bough that yields the laurel wreath—
Its drip is poison to the herbs beneath—
And many an idle youth and bitter maid
Have seen their virtues languish in its shade
Though vain the task their fated course to stem
This bitter lesson I commend to them:
Who writes in verse that should have writ in prose
Is like a traveller walking on his toes,—
Happy the rhymester who in time has found
The heels he lifts were made to touch the ground.
| The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes | |