To Mary (On Her Objecting To 'The Witch Of Atlas', Upon The Score Of Its Containing No Human Interest).

1.      How, my dear Mary, are you critic-bitten      (For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,      That you condemn these verses I have written,      Because they tell no story, false or true?      What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,      May it not leap and play as grown cats do,      Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,      Content thee with a visionary rhyme.      2.      What hand would crush the silken-winged fly,      The youngest of inconstant April's minions,      Because it cannot climb the purest sky,      Where the swan sings, amid the sun's dominions?      Not thine. Thou knowest 'tis its doom to die,      When Day shall hide within her twilight pinions      The lucent eyes, and the eternal smile,      Serene as thine, which lent it life awhile.      3.      To thy fair feet a winged Vision came,      Whose date should have been longer than a day,      And o'er thy head did beat its wings for fame,      And in thy sight its fading plumes display;      The watery bow burned in the evening flame.      But the shower fell, the swift Sun went his way      And that is dead. O, let me not believe      That anything of mine is fit to live!      4.      Wordsworth informs us he was nineteen years      Considering and retouching Peter Bell;      Watering his laurels with the killing tears      Of slow, dull care, so that their roots to Hell      Might pierce, and their wide branches blot the spheres      Of Heaven, with dewy leaves and flowers; this well      May be, for Heaven and Earth conspire to foil      The over-busy gardener's blundering toil.      5.      My Witch indeed is not so sweet a creature      As Ruth or Lucy, whom his graceful praise      Clothes for our grandsons but she matches Peter,      Though he took nineteen years, and she three days      In dressing. Light the vest of flowing metre      She wears; he, proud as dandy with his stays,      Has hung upon his wiry limbs a dress      Like King Lear's 'looped and windowed raggedness.'      6.      If you strip Peter, you will see a fellow      Scorched by Hell's hyperequatorial climate      Into a kind of a sulphureous yellow:      A lean mark, hardly fit to fling a rhyme at;      In shape a Scaramouch, in hue Othello.      If you unveil my Witch, no priest nor primate      Can shrive you of that sin, if sin there be      In love, when it becomes idolatry.