A Fable for Critics

PHŒBUS, sitting one day in a laurel-tree’s shade, Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made, For the god being one day too warm in his wooing, She took to the tree to escape his pursuing; Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk; And, though ’twas a step into which he had driven her, He somehow or other had never forgiven her; Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, Something bitter to chew when he’d play the Byronic, And I can’t count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her. “My case is like Dido’s,” he sometimes remarked; “When I last saw my love she was fairly embarked In a laurel, as she thought—but (ah, how fate mocks!) She has found it by this time a very bad box; Let hunters from me take this saw when they need it,— You’re not always sure of your game when you’ve treed it. Just conceive such a change taking place in one’s mistress! What romance would be left?—who can flatter or kiss trees? And, for mercy’s sake, how could one keep up a dialogue With a dull wooden thing that will live and will die a log,— Not to say that the thought would forever intrude That you’ve less chance to win her the more she is wood? Ah! it went to my heart, and the memory still grieves, To see those loved graces all taking their leaves; Those charms beyond speech, so enchanting, but now, As they left me forever, each making its bough! If her tongue had a tang sometimes more than was right, Her new bark is worse than ten times her old bite.”