A MINOR POET by Alexander Smith

A MINOR POET, Alexander Smith Poems,Alexander Smith was one of a group of Scottish poets who wrote during the mid-1850s under the name the “Spasmodics”. This was a school of poetry that was very popular for around two decades but then suddenly fell out of fashion even though it included the odd poem from such luminaries as Alfred Lord Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

A MINOR POET by Alexander Smith

A MINOR POET

He sat one winter ’neath a linden tree
In my bare orchard; “See, my friend,” he said,
“The stars among the branches hang like fruit,
So, hopes were thick within me. When I ’m gone
The world will like a valuator sit
Upon my soul, and say, ‘I was a cloud
That caught its glory from a sunken sun,
And gradual burn’d into its native gray.”’
On an October eve, ’t was his last wish
To see again the mists and golden woods;
Upon his death-bed he was lifted up,

The slumb’rous sun within the lazy west
With their last gladness fill’d his dying eyes.
No sooner was he hence than critic-worms
Were swarming on the body of his fame,
And thus they judged the dead: “This Poet was
An April tree whose vermeil-loaded boughs
Promis’d to Autumn apples juiced and red,
But never came to fruit.” “He is to us

But a rich odor,—a faint music-swell.”
“Poet he was not in the larger sense;
He could write pearls, but he could never write
A Poem round and perfect as a star.”
“Politic, i’ faith. His most judicious act
Was dying when he did; the next five years
Had finger’d all the fine dust from his wings,
And left him poor as we. He died—’t was shrewd!
And came with all his youth and unblown hopes
On the world’s heart, and touch’d it into tears.”