Critics Beware

Critics Beware! Poets are vulnerable no less than anyone, when fallen victim to outrageous critics. As Shelley wrote, critics' darts struck Keats, who blindly, cruelly, mocked 'Endymion.' Lethal no less the heady potion fame. Some drowned, took poison, died paupers or insane. Yet poet-baiters must themselves take warning, wrote Heine in his 'Winter Fairy Tale.' Eternal lines, if barbed, outdo Hell's fierce burning. 'Time shall not heal when poets wield the flail.' Our foes, wrote Paul, are not of flesh and blood but powers of evil inhabiting high places. Promethean fire consumes the evil and the good, Iniquities have many masks and faces. Alone the Word that spares the infant's life to wrong proves mightier than every art of strife.