Among other things, to give the impression that he was not the author of the poem, he puts in a free criticism of himself: 

  There is Lowell, who’s striving Parnassus to climb
  With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme. 
  He might get on alone, spite of brambles and boulders,
  But he can’t with that bundle he has on his shoulders. 
  The top of the hill he will never come nigh reaching
  Till he learns the distinction ’twixt singing and preaching;
  His lyre has some chords that would ring pretty well,
  But he’d rather by half make a drum of the shell,
  And rattle away till he’s old as Mathusalem,
  At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem.

Evidently he thought that he paid too much attention to politics, as in the “Biglow Papers,” and to lecturing, and various side issues, when he ought to be cultivating pure poetry more assiduously; or rather, he would have liked to be a simple poet and do nothing else, not even earn a living.

The way he characterizes in this poem the great writers whom we know is both amusing and interesting, and he generally tells the truth.  For instance, he writes—­

  There comes Poe, with his raven, like Barnaby Rudge,
  Three fifths of him genius and two fifths sheer fudge.

The best of his criticisms are not satirical, but true and appreciative.  Thus, Hawthorne: 

  There is Hawthorne, with genius so shrinking and rare
  That you hardly at first see the strength that is there;
  A frame so robust, with a nature so sweet,
  So earnest, so graceful, so lithe, and so fleet,
  Is worth a descent from Olympus to meet.

His reference to Whittier, too, is a noble tribute by one poet to another: 

  There is Whittier, whose swelling and vehement heart
  Strains the strait-breasted drab of the Quaker apart,
  And reveals the live Man, still supreme and erect,
  Underneath the bemummying wrappers of sect.

Bryant was the oldest of the American poets, and the generation to which Lowell belonged had been taught to look up to him as the head of American poetical literature.  Of course the younger poets felt that they ought to receive a share of the homage, and perhaps they were a little jealous of Bryant.

  There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified,
  As a smooth, silent iceberg that never is ignified,
  Save when by reflection ‘t is kindled o’ nights
  With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights.

This is not at all complimentary, it would seem, but a little farther along Lowell makes up for it in part by saying—­

  But, my dear little bardlings, don’t prick up your ears,
  Nor suppose I would rank you and Bryant as peers;
  If I call him an iceberg I don’t mean to say,
  There is nothing in that which is grand in its way;
  He is almost the one of your poets that knows
  How much grace, strength, and dignity lie in Repose.