Phantasmagoria and Other Poems

POETA FIT, NON NASCITUR

“How shall I be a poet?
How shall I write in rhyme?
You told me once ‘the very wish
Partook of the sublime.’
Then tell me how!  Don’t put me off
With your ‘another time’!”

The old man smiled to see him,
To hear his sudden sally;
He liked the lad to speak his mind
Enthusiastically;
And thought “There’s no hum-drum in him,
Nor any shilly-shally.”

“And would you be a poet
Before you’ve been to school?
Ah, well!  I hardly thought you
So absolute a fool.
First learn to be spasmodic -
A very simple rule.

“For first you write a sentence,
And then you chop it small;
Then mix the bits, and sort them out
Just as they chance to fall:
The order of the phrases makes
No difference at all.

‘Then, if you’d be impressive,
Remember what I say,
That abstract qualities begin
With capitals alway:
The True, the Good, the Beautiful -
Those are the things that pay!

“Next, when you are describing
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don’t state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things
With a sort of mental squint.”

“For instance, if I wished, Sir,
Of mutton-pies to tell,
Should I say ‘dreams of fleecy flocks
Pent in a wheaten cell’?”
“Why, yes,” the old man said: “that phrase
Would answer very well.

“Then fourthly, there are epithets
That suit with any word -
As well as Harvey’s Reading Sauce
With fish, or flesh, or bird -
Of these, ‘wild,’ ‘lonely,’ ‘weary,’
‘strange,’
Are much to be preferred.”

“And will it do, O will it do
To take them in a lump -
As ‘the wild man went his weary way
To a strange and lonely pump’?”
“Nay, nay!  You mus…