Robusto, I've been thinking about your sentences in response to me:

I infer from some of the things you say — "Smart means what he says, but he also likes grinning mischievously at the ordinary liturgical ways of saying it," etc. — that this poem may be some kind of lampoon, but you never really call it satire. I have two things to say about that: One is that satire is essentially one-sided, and its ultimate point-of-view is discoverable; it is like a trick mirror which, viewed from different angles, reveals entirely different images. But it does not reveal them both at the same time, and it ultimately decides for itself (as the viewer/reader must) which view represents reality.

For me, the categories "lampoon" and "satire" don't apply to this kind of comedy, which is more self-directed than satirical and more awestruck than lampooning. Hard to describe, but Smart's laughter has a cosmic or global quality, to my ear. The level of spiritual truth is so large, yet so pervasive in ordinary little things, that considering it, and trying to give him an account of it, makes him laugh. I think the Biblical names make him laugh, and Jeoffry's capers also make him laugh. And fill him with awe.