On Excessive Deference to a Foreign Literary Opinion
What ! and shall we , with such submissive airs
As age demands in reverence from the young,
Snatch at these crumbs of praise from Europe flung,
And doubt of our own greatness till it bears
The warranty of your Goethes or Voltaires?
We who alone in latter times have sung
Strains that had shamed not him from Mantua sprung —
We who are Milton's kindred, Shakespeare's heirs.
The prize of lyric victory who shall gain
If ours be not the laurel, ours the palm?
More than the wanton leer of fevered Night
Around the eddying flotsam of the Seine,
And more than Weimar's proud elaborate Calm,
One flash of Byron's lightning, Burns's light.
As age demands in reverence from the young,
Snatch at these crumbs of praise from Europe flung,
And doubt of our own greatness till it bears
The warranty of your Goethes or Voltaires?
We who alone in latter times have sung
Strains that had shamed not him from Mantua sprung —
We who are Milton's kindred, Shakespeare's heirs.
The prize of lyric victory who shall gain
If ours be not the laurel, ours the palm?
More than the wanton leer of fevered Night
Around the eddying flotsam of the Seine,
And more than Weimar's proud elaborate Calm,
One flash of Byron's lightning, Burns's light.
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