Lines dedicated to the outraged memory of Keats.
[Two pretty poor sonnets by Keats have been exposed by a Mr. Horner and
exploited in facsimile, twice over in one week, by _The Times_. In its
_Literary Supplement_, where they made their second appearance, we are
told with cynical candour that "afterwards, when he had become ashamed
of his crowning" (the foolish episode which is the subject of these two
sonnets) Keats "kept them from publication; and Reynolds" (the friend to
whom he confided them), "knowing the story, respected his feelings after
his death."]
What is there in the poet's human lot
Most beastly loathsome? Haply you will say
An influenza in the prime of May?
Or haply, nosed in some suburban plot,
The reek of putrid cabbage when it's hot?
Or, with the game all square and one to play,
To be defeated by a stymie? Nay,
I know of something worse--I'll tell you what.
It is to have your rotten childish rhymes
(Rotten as these) dragged from oblivion's shroud
Where, with the silly act that gave them birth,
They lay as lie the dead in sacred earth,
And see them, twice in one week, boomed aloud
To tickle penny readers of _The Times_.