A FAMILIAR LETTER—TO SEVERAL CORRESPONDENTS.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 575, 22 April 1876, Page 3

A FAMILIAR LETTER—TO SEVERAL CORRESPONDENTS.

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES )

Yes, write if you waut to, there’s nothing like trying ; VVI 10 knows what a treasure your casket may hold ! I’ll show you that rhyming’s as easy as lying. If you’ll listen to me while the art 1 unfold.

Here’s a book full of words; one can choose as he fancies, As a painter his tint, as a workman hia tool, Just think, all the poems and plays and romances Were drawn out of this like the fish from a pool 1 You can wander at will through its syllabled mazes, And take all you want,—not a copper they cost, —- What is there to hinder yo ,; r picking out phrases For an epic as clever as Paradise Lost?

Doii’t mind if the index of sense is at zero, Use words Unit run smoothly, whatever t hey mean ; Leamler and Lilians and Lillibullero Arc much the same thing in the rhyming machine. There are words so delicious their sweetness will smother That boarding-school flavor of which we’re afraid, — There is “ lush ” ia a good one, and “ swirl ” is another, — Put both in one stanza, its fortune is made.

With musical murmurs and rythmical closes You can cheat us of smiles when you’ve nothing to tell; You baud us a nosegay of milliner’s roses, And we cry with delight, “ Oh, how sweet they do smell 1”

Perhaps you will answer all needful conditions For winning the laurel to which you aspire By docking the tails of the two prepositions 1’ the style o’ the bards you so greatly admire.

As for subjects of verse, they are only too plenty For >login" the changes on metrics) chin.es, A maiden, a moonbeam, a lover of twenty, Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes,

Let me show you a picture—His far from irrelevant—liy a famous old band in the arts of design ; ’fis only a photographed sketch of an elephant,— The name of the draughtsman was Rembrandt of Rhine.

How easy ! no troublesome colors to lay on, It can’t have fatigued him,—no, not iu the least, — A dash here and there with a hap-hazard crayon, And there stands the wrinkled-skinned, baggy-limbed beast. Just so with your verse—’tis as easy as sketching,— You can reel off a song without knitting your brow, As lightly as Rembrandt a drawing or etching : It is nothing at all, if you only knowhow. Well, imagine you’ve printed your volume of verses ; Your forehead is wreathed with the garland of fame, Your poems the eloquent school-boy rehearses, Her album the school-girl presents for your name. Each morning the post brings you autograph letters ; You’ll answer them promptly—an hour isn’t much ; For the honor of sharing a page with your betters, With magistrates, members of Congress, and such.

Of course you’re delighted to servo the committees That come with requests from the country all round, You would grace the occasion with poems and ditties, When they've got a now school-house, or poor-house, or pound. With a song for the saints and a hymn for the sinners, You go and are welcome wherever you picas*. ; You’re a privileged guest at all manner of diMuers, You’ve a seat on the platform among the grandees.

At length your mere presence becomes a sensation, Your cup of enjoyment is filled to its brim, With the pleasure Horatian of digit-monstra-tion, As the whisper runs round of “ That’s he!” or “ Thai’s him 1”

But remember, O dealer in phrases sonorous, So daintily chosen, so tunefully matched, Though you soar with the wings of the cherubim o’er us, The ovum was human from which you were hatched, No wi ! l of your own with its puny compulsion Can summon the spirit that quickens the lyre ; It comes, if at all, like the Sibyl’s convulsion, And touches the brain with a finger of lire So, perhaps, after all, it’s as well to bo quiet, If you’ve nothing you think is worth saying in prose, As to furnish a meal of their cannibal diet To the critics, by publishing, as you propose. But it’s all of no use, and I’m sorry I’ve written, — I shall see your thin volume some day on my shelf ; For the rhyming tarantula surely has bitten, And music must cure you, so pipe it yourself.