Explore "Tales of a Wayside Inn" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Soon as the story reached its end, / One, over eager to commend, / Crowned it with injudicious praise; / And then the voice of blame found vent, / And fanned the embers of dissent / Into a somewhat lively blaze.
The Theologian shook his head; / "These old Italian tales," he said, / "From the much-praised Decameron down / Through all the rabble of the rest, / Are either trifling, dull, or lewd; / The gossip of a neighborhood / In some remote provincial town, / A scandalous chronicle at best! / They seem to me a stagnant fen, / Grown rank with rushes and with reeds, / Where a white lily, now and then, / Blooms in the midst of noxious weeds / And deadly nightshade on its banks."