Classic Poem

You announce your Iliads loudly,
And your Odysseys you plan,
And, in you, assure us proudly
We behold the coming man.

But such wordy, windy actors,
Who have nothing done as yet:
Intellectual benefactors
Of your sort: I've often met.

Here is Rhodes, and they are dancing;
Give a sample of your skill,
Or begone, and stop romancing
If you neither can nor will.

Real princes, coin possessing
In the realm of genius, pay.
Schiller, Goethe, Wieland, Lessing
Asked no credit by the way.

Not for them ovations purely
From the public begged on trust;
Nor the laurels prematurely
Snatched, with greedy hand out-thrust.

Dead the mediæval swagger
Of the youths of noble name;
But it lives still in the bragger
About distant, deathless fame.

All such boasters, oh, believe me,
Are of real Platen blood;
On this point can none deceive me,
I have known too well the brood.