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Í, BEING a boy, used thus to count my fingers :

Stand up, right thumb here; thou art Geoffrey Chaucer, Grave, reverend father of old English song,

The clear, the strong, the dignified, the plain;

I love thee well, thy prologues and thy tales,

Néver for me too long, nor long enough;

Thou art my dictionary, primer, grammar;

From theé I 've learned, if I have learned, my tongue,
Nót from the módern winnowers perverse
Who save the chaff and cast away the grain.
Yét, Chaucer, though I honor and admire
And dearly love thee, there are in my breast
Some deep emotions which thou touchest never:
Kind, gentle, tearful pity, dire revenge,
Stérn, unrelenting hatred, and sweet love;
Awe reverential too of influences

Unearthly, unsubstantial, superhuman,

And álmost adoration of the face

Sublime of wild, uncultivated nature

Chaucer, thou toúchest none of these; go down.

Stand up, forefinger; thoú 'rt the arch-enchanter,
Sweet, fanciful, delicious, playful Shakespeare,
With his hobgoblins, fairies, Bottom, Puck,
His róbbers and his cút-throats and his witches,
And bóld Sir John and all his men in buckram,

And gentle Juliet and impassioned Romeo,
And bloody Richard wooing lady Ann

Or stúdying prayers between two reverend bishops.
But charming though thou art and captivating,
And loved within the cockles of my heart,

I've yet a crow to pluck with thee, my Shakespeare;
For when thou shouldst be noble thou 'rt oft mean,
And full of prattle when thou shouldst be brief,

And, like a míser doating grown and blind,
Stúffest into thy bags of gems and gold,
Nót the pure métals only but false coins

And vile alloys groped out of mire and dirt,
Which éven the scavenger had disdained to touch
I'm sorry, Shakespeare, but thou must go down.

Stand up, strong middle finger; thou 'rt John Milton,
Mónarch of Éngland's poets, prince of verse;
I love thy deep, harmonious, flowing numbers,
Thy sénse, thy leárning, gravity and knowledge,
Thy rátional Adam, and sweet, hapless Eve;
Bút I like not thy bitter pólemics,

Thy small philosophy and mean religion,
Nor that inflexible, obdúrate temper

Thou borrowedst from the temper of the times;
No vénial faults are these, so get thee down.

Stand up, ring finger; thou 'rt accomplished Pope,
Melódious minstrel of the rounded rhyme,

Philosopher and satirist and wit,

Acúte, dogmatic, antithetic, bright,
The poet of the reason not the heart,
A pédagogue who lashes and instructs,
A rhétorician léss loved than admired,
Whó, when we ask him for a tender tale,

Reads us a syllogism, a dry prelection;

Yet for his brilliant wit's sake and his keen
Well mérited scourgings of that vicious age,
And for the noble height at which he stood
Above religion's vile hypocrisy

I could forgive his frailties and forget,
Hád he but with more conscientious hand,
More skilled, more diligent, less imaginative,
Painted his English portrait of great Homer
Thou must go down, Pope, I love others better.

Stand up, weak little-finger; thou art Goldsmith,
Simple and tenderhearted to a fault,

The butt of witlings, even of his best friends,
Johnson and Burke and Reynolds, coarser natures
But little capable of understanding,

Or dúly valuing had they understood,
The poet's almost childish inexpertness
In life's conventionalities, masquerade,
And subtle thimble-rig and hocus-pocus.

Yét his sweet Aúburn, Traveller, Venison - Haunch,
Good, simple Vicar and queer Tony Lumpkin
Shall fill their separate niches in Fame's temple
When féw shall ask what was 't churl Johnson wrote,
Burke talked about, or cold Sir Joshua painted.
Still áll too soft thy gentle genius, Goldsmith,
And more the wax resembling which receives,

Than the hard stóne which stamps, the strong impression;

I love thee well, but yet thou must go down.

Stand up, left thumb here; thou art mighty Homer,
Bright morning sun of poesie heroic,

Whose beams far-darting west are with redoubled
Splendor and beauty from the disks reflected

Of the great Mantuan and British planets.

I knów not, Homer, whence thou in thy turn
Thy light hadst, whether from some farther sun
Whose rays direct have never reached our eyes,
Ór from a fount in thine own self inherent,
But this I know at least: those sceptics err
Who seé indeed and recognise the light
But have no faith there ever was a Homer.
Well! let it be, so long as they cannot
Rób us same time of th' Odyssey and Iliad,
Themselves, their species, of the noblest work
That issued ever from the hands of man;

Not pérfect, some have said alas! what's perfect, What can be perfect in imperfect eyes,

That múst, were 't but for change, have imperfection? So, blámed or blámeless, get thee down, great Homer.

Stand up, forefinger; nightingale of Andes,
That in the dewy evening's pleasant cool
Sángst out of húmble hazelbush sweet ditties
Of Corydon and Thyrsis, and how best
To twine the póllard with the vine's soft arms;
Then bolder grown pour'dst from the highest top
Of birch or hólm- oak thy sonorous song
Of wars and battles, Gods and Goddesses,
And Róme's foundation by the second Jason,
Adventurous like the first, and, like the first,
Perfidious, calculating, cold seducer,

Whóm with more complaisance than truth thou styl'st
The tenderhearted I blush for thee, Virgil;

Hádst thou no other fault, thou must go down.

Stand up, strong middle finger; thou 'rt Venusium's World-famous lyrist, moralist, and critic,

My heart's delight, judicious, pithy Horace,
Who, frúgal in his plenty, never wastes

A word not by the sense required, and, liberal
Éven in the midst of his frugality,

Flings free the useful, necessary word.

Yét, Horace, thou 'rt for mé something too much

The courtier; for a prince's smiles and favors
Too readily sold'st a poet's independance.

I can forgive the purchase by the great
Of ease and honors, dignities and fame,
Óf the vile populace' vivats and hurrahs,
Óf the priest's únction and the lawyer's parchment,
Éven of Hygéa's ministers' leave to live

A life of sin and luxury and riot,

Bút I cannot forgive the poet's sale

Óf his fine soúl to the démon Patronage

Too, too obsequious Horace, thou must down.

Stand up, ring finger; thou 'rt the Florentine,
The hapless, exiled, ever persecuted
But still undaunted Dante, who in the dim
Dark middle age the first was to hold high
The beacon torch of rational enquiry
And boldly speak the truth he boldly thought;
Wért thou less stérn, less terrible, less just,
Less Éschylean, hadst thou less of Moses,
Léss of that jeálous and vindictive God
Who púnishes children for their fathers' sins.
Éven to the generation third and fourth,
And hádst thou taken Maro for thy real,

Not merely for thy nominal, leader through
Death's awful, unexplored, Trans - Stygian land,
And hádst thou oftener slaked thy knowledge-thirst
Át the clear, wélling fountain of Lucretius,

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