Orellana and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

And I wished as I saw it o'erfly the land
That I had it back again in my hand;
But the elf laughed loud with malicious glee
—“It may not be, and it may not be!
The cage is empty, the bird is free!”—
And his mocking came back on the winds to me.

Then came forth the critic men
With sharp nose and sharper pen;
They flung their long fingers into the sky
And caught the book as it fluttered by;
And it shook like the wings of a captured bird,
And then, like a dead thing, hung; nor stirred
As they bore it off with a strange dark smile.
But my heart was beating fast all the while.

From the free fresh air to a sunless gloom
They hurried it into a secret room:
The door swung back with a boding boom,
“And here,” they said, “we will write your doom.”

187

They pierced and probed it with their pens,
Examined it with a powerful lens,
And up and down they viewed and reviewed,
Till the good was bad and the bad was good,
Till white was black, and B was A;
—But they used my book in a frightful way;
For its wings they broke and its back they bent,
And rumpled its feathers to their hearts' content.

They then sat down at two long tables,
Dipt into ink, and wrote out labels;
The while, most piteous to be seen,
My book lay ruined and wrecked between,
And meekly bore the dissecting glances
That stung my heart like a shower of lances.

At last one rose at the right-hand table
And read aloud from the written label—
“Though he may not have an eagle's pinion,
Yet the upper air is his dominion.”

188

“And so say I, and I've written it so,”
Said Number Two; “he has wings of snow;
My judgment is that a swan is he.”

“A swan!” from the left hissed Number Three,
“A swan!—I've a different tale to tell:
He's a gosling; I know the bird right well!”

Said a Fourth, with a head like a downy owl,
“It's a very ordinary barn-door fowl:
A useful creature, no doubt, in its place;
But a cackler! Dixi—that is, it's the case!”

“I agree so far with Number Four,”
Said Number Five, “as the barn-door:
But I made an inspection nice and narrow
And I pledge my ears the bird's a sparrow!
—And where's the critic will gainsay
That pledge of mine goes a good long way?”

Out to the centre stalked Number Six:
“Your various verdicts I must mix;

189

He's a bird has caught the various tone
Of other birds, but has none of his own.
It's a great pity, too, for he imitates well;
But all that he has he got outside his shell
—You know what I mean—he belongs to the breed
That pick up their song as they pick up their seed.
—I may add in your ear, but don't let it be known,
He has plagiarised from a bird of my own!”

“Yah! yah!” they all yelled, “it's a very good lark
That bird of your own: you were best keep it dark!”

Uprose Number Seven. He, staggering, rose;
And I will not do more than refer to his nose:
“My masters”—he spoke rather thick—“are you blind?
I've examined him—hic!—and what do I find?

190

—He has wings that will soar with the best we have had;
But I hate him for all: at his best he is bad!”

Upspoke Number Eight, while he tore what he wrote,—
“I think him a bird of original note,
But I cannot be sure; so let's damn him as dunce;
He ought to come out more decided at once.
If he isn't a dunce I'm a Dutchman? So be it!
If he is—you will own I'm sagacious to see it!”

Scarce two agreed, till they fell on a plan
Which seemed to please them every man—
At least the hubbub ceased: they took
And hung their verdicts round my book
Like flags of all nations on a wreck,
Or labels on a phial's neck
Which each describes the draught to be
Sherry, laudanum, cold beef-tea.

191

They dragged it then to the door of their den
And gave it to the air again.

And away like a guilty thing it flew,
That thinks it a crime to live, to you;
And you took off the labels and stroked its wing,
And my poor book looked like another thing.
And now it was plain they all had erred
In naming it that and the other bird,
For it grew in the keep of those I love
A homely plain domestic dove.