Classic Poem

Who knocks at Dr. Wendell's door?
Who waits with patient feet
For “aloes, pil et colocynth,”
Or “Rhubarb, tincture sweet?”

Who knocks? the many little ones
In whom his home rejoices,
Desert their play, and crowd to peep
With eager eyes and voices.

“What if 'twere Santa Claus, arrived
With weighty load of toys,
With dolls for little maids' delight,
And rods for rampant boys?”

Then, peering thro' the glass, they see
By the uncertain light,
What seems the very soul of frost
Set in the silent night.

“Nay, do not fear me, little ones,
I have no ill-intent;
But tell Papa an Author waits
And eke, a penitent.”

The children to the study run,
The father comes straightway;
But argues, ere he draws the bolt:
“Give me your name, I pray.

“You Authors are so hot of blood,
So sensitive of skin,
One wants one's surgeon's mittens on
Before one lets you in.

“The Swan of Cambridge might you be?
Or Lowell, fresh of face,
Or Hillard, bringing palm-leaves from
His swift Italian race?

“Or Emerson, whose teeming Muse
Craved ‘cantharids to eat’?”
“Nay, nay, undo the door, and see
A woman in a sheet.

“A woman in a sheet, that looks
A statue, as she stands,
And proffers you a knotted scourge
From softly folded hands.”

“Pass hence, pale shade! dost take me for
A Haynau? By the Rood
I never flogged a woman yet,
And know not if I could.”

With fixed regard, with rigid lip,
Replies the penitent:
“I was the saucy ‘Commonwealth’—
Oh! help me to repent.

“Behind my embrasure well-braced,
With every chance to hit,
I made your banner, waving wide,
A mark for wayward wit.

“'Twas now my turn to talk the street,
In dangerous singleness,
And run, as bravely as I might,
The gauntlet of the press.

“And when I passed your balcony
Expecting only blows,
From height of vantage-ground, you stooped
To whelm me with a rose.

“A rose, intense with crimson life
And hidden perfume sweet—
Call out your friends, and see me do
My penance, in the street.”

“Oh no!” the Doctor shivering cried:
“The night is very cold;
Step in, or on the threshold here
My lesson shall be told.

“We sat as critics, in those days,
High-talking, wondrous wise,—
We meet as poets now, and look
With more synthetic eyes.

“The critic is allowed to rule
The common law of art—
The poet takes his judgment from
The pleading of the heart.”