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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