Classic Poem

I

Here is pure transcendentalism carried
To logical conclusions by a mind,
Which is, perhaps, a thought too much refined
By mathematics elegant and arid.
No Bruce in stranger Abyssinias tarried.
No Franklin wilder coasts set out to find
Than this queer don, queerest of all don-kind,
To nonsense morganatically married.

Concord has naught like this. And I surmise
Will always feel a certain want and lack.
We know strange matters, but we need a knack
Of seeing subtleties with a wild smile
Of unembarrassed gaiety in our eyes,
That justifiably might shock Carlyle.

II

Perhaps too mimsy and a trifle mome
From pondering the riddle of the sphinx.
He's a peculiar cup from which one drinks
A curious wine that bubbles with strange foam.
With mysteries he's much too much at home.
Yet, in a fashion of his own, he thinks,
And timid beauty 'mid his verses slinks,
Light footed, through the heavy-sounding tome.

I like his smile and his queer awkward face.
His Doric language has the art to please
Persons of greater elegance and ease,
Whose gay intelligence no dogma blunts.
I grant him humor and provincial grace.
And what a boojum is the snark he hunts!