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Poeta Fit Non Nascitur

"How shall I be a poet?   How shall I write in rhyme?   You told me once `the very wish   Partook of the sublime.'   The tell me how!

Don't put me off   With your `another time'!"   The old man smiled to see him,   To hear his sudden sally;   He liked the lad to speak his mind  Enthusiastically;  And thought "There's no hum-drum in him,  Nor any shilly-shally."  "And would you be a poet  Before you've been to school?  Ah, well!

I hardly thought you  So absolute a fool.  First learn to be spasmodic —  A very simple rule.  "For first you write a sentence,  And then you chop it small;  Then mix the bits, and sort them out  Just as they chance to fall:  The order of the phrases makes  No difference at all.  `Then, if you'd be impressive,  Remember what I say,  That abstract qualities begin  With capitals alway:  The True, the Good, the Beautiful —  Those are the things that pay!  "Next, when we are describing  A shape, or sound, or tint;  Don't state the matter plainly,  But put it in a hint;  And learn to look at all things  With a sort of mental squint."  "For instance, if I wished,

Sir,  Of mutton-pies to tell,  Should I say `dreams of fleecy flocks  Pent in a wheaten cell'?"  "Why, yes," the old man said: "that phrase  Would answer very well.  "Then fourthly, there are epithets  That suit with any word —  As well as Harvey's Reading Sauce  With fish, or flesh, or bird —  Of these, `wild,' `lonely,' `weary,' `strange,'  Are much to be preferred."  "And will it do,

O will it do  To take them in a lump —  As `the wild man went his weary way  To a strange and lonely pump'?"  "Nay, nay!

You must not hastily  To such conclusions jump.  "Such epithets, like pepper,  Give zest to what you write;  And, if you strew them sparely,  They whet the appetite:  But if you lay them on too thick,  You spoil the matter quite!  "Last, as to the arrangement:  Your reader, you should show him,  Must take what information he  Can get, and look for no im­  mature disclosure of the drift  And purpose of your poem.  "Therefore to test his patience —  How much he can endure —  Mention no places, names, or dates,  And evermore be sure  Throughout the poem to be found  Consistently obscure.  "First fix upon the limit  To which it shall extend:  Then fill it up with `Padding'  (Beg some of any friend)  Your great

ZA  You place towards the end."  "And what is a Sensation,  Grandfather, tell me, pray?  I think I never heard the word  So used before to-day:  Be kind enough to mention one  `Exempli gratiâ'"  And the old man, looking sadly  Across the garden-lawn,  Where here and there a dew-drop  Yet glittered in the dawn,  Said "Go to the Adelphi,  And see the `Colleen Bawn.'  "The word is due to Boucicault —  The theory is his,  Where Life becomes a Spasm,  And History a Whiz:  If that is not Sensation,  I don't know what it is,  "Now try your hand, ere Fancy  Have lost its present glow —"  "And then," his grandson added,  "We'll publish it, you know:  Green cloth — gold-lettered at the back —  In duodecimo!"  Then proudly smiled that old man  To see the eager lad  Rush madly for his pen and ink  And for his blotting-pad —  But, when he thought of publishing,  His face grew stern and sad.

Composition date is unknown - the above date represents the first publication date.

The lyrical form of this poem is abcbdb.

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Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (/ˈlʌtwɪdʒ ˈdɒdʒsən/; 27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English wr…
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