What is a modern poet's fate? / To write his thoughts upon a slate; / The critic spits on what is done, / Gives it a wipe - and all is gone.
'A Joke' in a common-place book of Hallam Tennyson's, in Hallam Tennyson 'Alfred Lord Tennyson, A Memoir' (1897) vol. 2, ch. 3 (not found in Hood's Complete Works)
