But I think there were some--say a dozen, perhaps, or a score--out of
Browning.
And--though God knows his poems are not (as all mine are, sir) perfumed
with orris--
Or at least with patchouli--I wouldn't be sworn there were none out of
Morris.
And it's possible--only the legend of Circe is quite an old yarn--old
As the hills--that I might have been thinking, perhaps, of a poem by Arnold
When I sang how Ulysses--Odysseus I mean--would have yearned to dishevel
her
Bright hair with his kisses, and painted myself at her feet--a Strayed
Reveller.
As for poets who go on a contrary tack to what I go and you go--
You remember my lyrics _translated_--like "sweet bully Bottom"--from Hugo?
Though I will say it's curious that simply on just that account there
should be
Men so bold as to say that not one of my poems was written by me.
It would stir the political bile or the physical spleen of a drab or a Tory
To hear critics disputing my claim to Empedocles, Maud, and the Laboratory.
Yes, it's singular--nay, I can't think of a parallel (ain't it a high lark?
As that Countess would say)--there are few men believe it was I wrote the
Ode to a Skylark.
And it often has given myself and Lord Albert no end of diversion
To hear fellows maintain to my face it was Wordsworth who wrote the
Excursion,
When they know that whole reams of the verses recur in my authorized works
Here and there, up and down! Why, such readers are infidels--heretics--
Turks.
And the pitiful critics who think in their paltry presumption to pay me a
Pretty compliment, pairing me off, sir, with Keats--as if _he_ could