Explore "To a Critic" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ Song hath a catalogue of lovely things / Thy kind hath oft defiled, -- whose spite misleads / The world too often! -- where the poet reads, / As in a fable, of old envyings, / Crows, such as thou, which hush the bird that sings, / Or kill it with their cawings; thorns and weeds, / Such as thyself, 'midst which the wind sows seeds / Of flow'rs, these crush before one blossom swings. / But here and there the wisdom of a School / Unknown to these hath often written down / "Fame" in white ink the future hath turned brown; / When every beauty, heaped with ridicule, / In their ignoble prose, proved their renown, / Making each famous -- as an ass or fool.