Would flame in for a second and give you a fright’ning. 
He has perfect sway of what I call a sham metre,
But many admire it, the English pentameter,
And Campbell, I think, wrote most commonly worse,
With less nerve, swing, and fire in the same kind of verse,
Nor e’er achieved aught in’t so worthy of praise 1570
As the tribute of Holmes to the grand Marseillaise. 
You went crazy last year over Bulwer’s New Timon;—­
Why, if B., to the day of his dying, should rhyme on,
Heaping verses on verses and tomes upon tomes,
He could ne’er reach the best point and vigor of Holmes. 
His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric
Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric
In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes
That are trodden upon are your own or your foes’.

’There is Lowell, who’s striving Parnassus to climb 1580
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 ne’er 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 Methusalem,
At the head of a march to the last new Jerusalem. 1589

’There goes Halleck, whose Fanny’s a pseudo Don Juan,
With the wickedness out that gave salt to the true one,
He’s a wit, though, I hear, of the very first order,
And once made a pun on the words soft Recorder;
More than this, he’s a very great poet, I’m told,
And has had his works published in crimson and gold,
With something they call “Illustrations,” to wit,
Like those with which Chapman obscured Holy Writ,[4]
Which are said to illustrate, because, as I view it,
Like lucus a non, they precisely don’t do it;
Let a man who can write what himself understands 1600
Keep clear, if he can, of designing men’s hands,
Who bury the sense, if there’s any worth having,
And then very honestly call it engraving,
But, to quit badinage, which there isn’t much wit in,
Halleck’s better, I doubt not, than all he has written;
In his verse a clear glimpse you will frequently find,
If not of a great, of a fortunate mind,
Which contrives to be true to its natural loves
In a world of back-offices, ledgers, and stoves. 
When his heart breaks away from the brokers and banks, 1610
And kneels in his own private shrine to give thanks,
There’s a genial manliness in him that earns
Our sincerest respect (read, for instance, his “Burns"),
And we can’t but regret (seek excuse where we may)
That so much of a man has been peddled away.