Genius + 

What is the thing called Genius? One has said + 

’Tis general ability directed + 

Into a special channel. One, instead, + 

Proffers a definition much respected + 

By toiling dullards: genius, he explains, + 

Is infinite capacity for taking pains. + 

Max Nordau, seeing he has not the thing, + 

Has solemnly decided, with Lombroso, + 

That genius is degeneracy. Ring + 

The curtain down⁠—the show is only so-so; + 

I’d rather see a dog-fight than sit out + 

This inconclusive definition-bout. + 

What, then, is genius? Faith, I’m only sure + 

That I am deep in doubt about the matter; + 

But this I think: of two in literature + 

He is the greater genius who’s the fatter. + 

’Twas in an age less prosperous that those + 

Were kings of thought who starved by verse and prose. + 

Lo! the lean rhapsodist whose soul surveys, + 

Ecstatic, his unprofitable vision, + 

Interprets it in cleanly speech; arrays + 

His jeweled words with scholarly precision! + 

Faith, he’s a dunce or he would never lack + 

The means to wedge his belly from his back. + 

’Twere passing easy to allay his pang + 

Had he the genius⁠—that’s to say, the insight + 

Commercial. If he would but sing in slang + 

He’d earn the wherewithal to make his skin tight. + 

Genius (let’s now define the word afresh) + 

Is the capacity to take on flesh. + 

Spirit of Letters, hail! Thy reign is Now; + 

Thy ministers are gentlemen that waddle⁠— + 

Children of light and leading who avow + 

They swap, for tallow, speech that’s not a model⁠— + 

For laminated kidney-suet trade + 

Unsavory words. You must be stout, George Ade. + 