Let monodies on Fox regale your crew, | |
And Melville’s Mantle | |
One common Lethe waits each hapless bard | |
750 | And, peace be with you! ’tis your best reward. |
Such damning fame as Dunciads only give | |
Could bid your lines beyond a morning live; | |
But now at once your fleeting labours close, | |
With names of greater note in blest repose. | |
755 | Far be’t from me unkindly to upbraid |
The lovely Rosa’s prose in masquerade, | |
Whose strains, the faithful echoes of her mind, | |
Leave wondering comprehension far behind. | |
Though Crusca’s bards no more our journals fill, | |
760 | Some stragglers skirmish round the columns still; |
Last of the howling host which once was Bell’s, | |
Matilda snivels yet, and Hafiz yells; | |
And Merry’s metaphors appear anew, | |
Chain’d to the signature of O.P.Q. | |
765 | When some brisk youth, the tenant of a stall, |
Employs a pen less pointed than his awl, | |
Leaves his snug shop, forsakes his store of shoes, | |
St Crispin quits, and cobbles for the muse, | |
Heavens! how the vulgar stare! how crowds applaud! | |
770 | How ladies read, and literati laud! |
If chance some wicked wag should pass his jest, | |
‘Tis sheer ill-nature – don’t the world know best? | |
Genius must guide when wits admire the rhyme, | |
And Capel Lofft | |
775 | Hear, then, ye happy sons of needless trade! |
Swains! quit the plough, resign the useless spade! | |
Lo! Burns and Bloomfield, nay, a greater far, | |
Gifford was born beneath an adverse star, | |
Forsook the labours of a servile state, | |
780 | Stemm’d the rude storm, and triumph’d over fate: |
Then why no more? if Phœbus smiled on you | |
Bloomfield! why not on brother Nathan too? | |
Him too the mania, not the muse, has seized; | |
Not inspiration, but a mind diseased: | |
785 | And now no boor can seek his last abode, |
No common be enclosed without an ode. | |
Oh! since increased refinement deigns to smile | |
On Britain’s sons, and bless our genial isle, | |
Let poesy go forth pervade the whole | |
790 | Alike the rustic, and mechanic soul! |
Ye tuneful cobblers! still your notes prolong, | |
Compose at once a slipper and a song; | |
So shall the fair your handywork peruse, | |
Your sonnets sure shall please – perhaps your shoes. | |
795 | May Moorland weavers |
And tailors’ lays be longer than their bill! | |
While punctual beaux reward the grateful notes, | |
And pay for poems – when they pay for coats. | |
To the famed throng now paid the tribute due, | |
800 | Neglected genius! let me turn to you. |
Come forth, oh Campbell! | |
Who dares aspire if thou must cease to hope? | |
And thou, melodious Rogers! | |
Recall the pleasing memory of the past; | |
805 | Arise! let blest remembrance still inspire, |
And strike to wonted tones thy hallow’d lyre; | |
Restore Apollo to his vacant throne, | |
Assert thy country’s honour and thine own. | |
What! must deserted Poesy still weep | |
810 | Where her last hopes with pious Cowper sleep? |
Unless, perchance, from his cold bier she turns, | |
To deck the turf that wraps her minstrel, Burns! | |
No! though contempt hath mark’d the spurious brood, | |
The race who rhyme from folly, or for food, | |
815 | Yet still some genuine sons ‘tis hers to boast, |
Who, least affecting, still affect the most: | |
Feel as they write, and write but as they feel – | |
Bear witness Gifford, | |
‘Why slumbers Gifford?’ once was ask’d in vain; | |
820 | Why slumbers Gifford? let us ask again. |
Are there no follies for his pen to purge? | |
Are there no fools whose backs demand the scourge? | |
Are there no sins for satire’s bard to greet? | |
Stalks not gigantic Vice in every street? | |
825 | Shall peers or princes tread pollution’s path, |
And ’scape alike the law’s and muse’s wrath? | |
Nor blaze with guilty glare through future time, | |
Eternal beacons of consummate crime? | |
Arouse thee, Gifford! be thy promise claim’d, | |
830 | Make bad men better, or at least ashamed. |
Unhappy White! | |
And thy young muse just waved her joyous wing, | |
The spoiler swept that soaring lyre away, | |
Which else had sounded an immortal lay. | |
835 | Oh! what a noble heart was here undone, |
When Science’s self destroy’d her favourite son! | |
Yes, she too much indulged thy fond pursuit, | |
She sow’d the seeds, but death has reap’d the fruit. | |
‘Twas thine own genius gave the final blow, | |
840 | And help’d to plant the wound that laid thee low: |
So the struck eagle, stretch’d upon the plain, | |
No more through rolling clouds to soar again, | |
View’d his own feather on the fatal dart, | |
And wing’d the shaft that quiver’d in his heart; | |
845 | Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel |
He nursed the pinion which impell’d the steel; | |
While the same plumage that had warm’d his nest | |
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast. | |
There be, who say, in these enlighten’d days, | |
850 | That splendid lies are all the poet’s praise; |
That strain’d invention, ever on the wing, | |
Alone impels the modern bard to sing: | |
‘Tis true, that all who rhyme – nay, all who write, | |
Shrink from that fatal word to genius – trite; | |
855 | Yet Truth sometimes will lend her noblest fires, |
And decorate the verse herself inspires: | |
This fact in Virtue’s name let Crabbe | |
Though nature’s sternest painter, yet the best. | |
And here let Shee | |
860 | Whose pen and pencil yield an equal grace; |
To guide whose hand the sister arts combine, | |
And trace the poet’s or the painter’s line; | |
Whose magic touch can bid the canvass glow, | |
Or pour the easy rhyme’s harmonious flow; | |
865 | While honours, doubly merited, attend |
The poet’s rival, but the painter’s friend. | |
Blest is the man who dares approach the bower | |
Where dwelt the muses at their natal hour; | |
Whose steps have press’d, whose eye has mark’d afar, | |
870 | The clime that nursed the sons of song and war, |
The scenes which glory still must hover o’er, | |
Her place of birth, her own Achaian shore. | |
But doubly blest is he whose heart expands | |
With hallow’d feelings for those classic lands; | |
875 | Who rends the veil of ages long gone by, |
And views their remnants with a poet’s eye! | |
Wright! | |
Those shores of glory, and to sing them too; | |
And sure no common muse inspired thy pen | |
880 | To hail the land of gods and godlike men. |
And you, associate bards! | |
Those gems too long withheld from modern sight; | |
Whose mingling taste combined to cull the wreath | |
Where Attic flowers Aonian odours breathe, | |
885 | And all their renovated fragrance flung, |
To grace the beauties of your native tongue; | |
Now let those minds, that nobly could transfuse | |
The glorious spirit of the Grecian muse | |
Though soft the echo, scorn a borrow’d tone: | |
890 | Resign Achaia’s lyre, and strike your own. |
Let these, or such as these, with just applause, | |
Restore the muse’s violated laws; |