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And buccaneer so stern and staunch,
Who, though historians vary,

Did wondrous feats on tough buck's haunch,
And butt of old Canary.

The fiddle, with a gong-like power,

Still louder, louder swelling,
Resounded till it shook the bower,
Grim Neptune's coral dwelling:

And still Sir Proteus held his course,
To prove his muse no craven,
Until he grew completely hoarse,
And croaked like any raven.

They might have thought, who heard the strum
Of such unusual strain,

That Discord's very self was come,

With all her minstrel train,

Headlong by vengeful Phoebus thrown,
Through ocean's breast to sweep,
To where Sir Bathos sits alone,
Majestic on his wire-wove throne,
Below the lowest deep.*

VI.

COLA DOVE È IL FINIMONDO.

THOUGH Johnny prized the Jew's-harp twang
Beyond old Homer's harp,t

He little loved the barbarous clang

Of fiddle cracked and sharp:

* Τηλε μαλ', όχι ΒΑΘΙΣΤΟΝ ὑπο χθονός εστι βερέθρον,
Τόσσον ενερθ' Αίδεω, όσον ουρανός εστ' από γαίης.

Our hero is not singular. The harp of Israel is exalted above the lyre of Greece by the poetical orthodoxy of the bards of the lakes:

And when the names Sir Proteus said
Of Murray, Kerr, and Scott;

The sound went crashing through his head,
Like Van Tromp's famous shot,*

Which, like some adamantine rock,
By Hector thrown in sport,
Plumped headlong into Sheerness dock,
And battered down a fort.

Like one astound, John stared around,
And watched his time to fly;
And quickly spied, amid the tide,
A dolphin sailing by ;-

And jumped upon him in a crack,
And touched him in the fin,
And rose triumphant, on his back,
Through ocean's roaring din:

While Proteus, on his fiddle bent
Still scraped his feudal jig;
Nor marked, as on his ballad went,
His bird had hopped the twig.

So Johnny rose 'mid ocean's roar,
And landed was full soon,
Upon a wild and lonely shore,
Beneath the waning moon.

Maonium qui jam soliti contemnere carmen,
Judaicos discunt numeros servantque, coluntque,
Tradidit arcano quoscumque volumine Moses!

which accounts for the air of conscious superiority and dignified con-
tempt they assume towards those perverted disciples of Homer and
Sophocles, who are insensible to the primitive mellifluence of patriar-
chal modulation. It is not less creditable to the soundness of their
theology than to the purity of their taste, that they herein differ
toto cœlo from the profane Frenchman, who concludes his poem with
a treaty between the principal persona es of the ancient and modern
religions of Europe, by which it is stipulated that the latter shall
continue throned in glory on Mount Sinai, while the former shall re-
tain the exclusive and undisturbed possession of Mount Parnassus.
* This shot, I am informed, is still to be seen at Sheerness.

He sate him down, beside a cave
As black as hell itself,

And heard the breakers roar and rave,
A melancholy elf:

But when he wanted to proceed,
And advertise his mare,

In vain he struggled to be freed,
Such magic fixed him there.

Then came a voice of thrilling force:
"In vain my power you brave,
For here must end your earthly course,
And here's Oblivion's cave.

"Far, far within its deep recess,
Descends the winding road,
By which forgotten minstrels press
To Pluto's drear abode.

"Here Cr-k-r fights his battles o'er,

And doubly kills the slain,

Where Y

no more can nod or snore

In concert to the strain.

"Here, to psalm tunes thy C-1-r-dge sets

His serio-comic lay:

Here his gray Pegasus curvets,

Where none can hear him bray.

"Here dreaming W-rds-th wanders lost,
Since Jove hath cleft his deck :*
Lo! on these rocks his tub is tost,†
A shattered, shapeless wreck.

ΝΗΑ ΘΟΗΝ αργητι κεραυνω

ΖΕΥΣ ελσας εκέασσε, μέσω ενι οινοπι ποντῳ.

+ See page 122, 877.

"In such a vessel ne'er before

Did human creature leave the shore.
But say what was it?-Thought of fear!
Well may ye tremble when ye hear!
A household tub, like one of those
Which women use to wash their clothes!"

WORDSWORTH'S POEMS, vol. ii. p. 72.

"Here shall Corruption's laureate wreath,
By ancient Dulness twined

With flowers that courtly influence breathe,
Thy votive temples bind.

"Amid the thick Lethean fen

The dull dwarf-laurel springs,*
To bind the brows of venal men,
The tuneful slaves of kings.

"Come, then, and join the apostate train

Of thy poetic stamp,

That vent for gain the loyal strain,
'Mid Stygian vapours damp,
While far below, where Lethe creeps,
The ghost of Freedom sits, and weeps
O'er Truth's extinguished lamp."

L'ENVOY.

GOOD reader! who have lost your time
In listening to a noisy rhyme !
If catgut's din, and tramping pad,
Have not yet made completely mad
The little brains you ever had,-
Hear me, in friendly lay expressing
A better than the "Bellman's" blessing:
That Nature may to you dispense
Just so much share of common sense,
As may distinguish smoke from fire,
A shrieking fiddle from a lyre,
And Phoebus, with his steed of air,
From poor old Poulter and his Mare.

THE END OF PROTEUS.

The dwarf-laurel is a little stunted plant, growing in ditches and bogs, and very dissimilar to that Parnassian shrub which Dryden and diviner Spenser wore ;" as in the "Carmen Triumphale" for the year 1814, mellifluously singeth the Protean bard, Robert Southey, Esquire, Poet-Laureate!!!

Χαίρε μοι, ω ΠΡΩΤΕΥ· σῃ δ' ουκέτι τέρψεαι οιος

Τεχνη • ΜΙΣΘΟΦΟΡΕΙ ΓΑΡ Ο ΠΟΙΚΙΛΟΜΟΡΦΟΣ ΑΠΟΛΛΩΝ

THE DEATH OF EDIPUS.

SPEECH OF THE MESSENGER TO THE CHORUS IN THE ŒDIPUS AT COLONUS OF SOPHOCLES.

[Written in 1815.]

E men of Athens, wondrous is the tale
I bear the fate of E lipus: no more

YE

In the lone darkness of his days he roams,

Snatched in strange manner from the paths of men.
You witnessed his departure: no kind hand
Guiding his blindness, but with steadfast tread,
Alone and unsupported, through the woods
And winding rocks he led our wond'ring course.
Till by that broken way, which brazen steps
Uphold, beside the hollow ground he stood,
Where Theseus and Pirithous held erewhile
The compact of inviolable love:

There, in the midst, from the Thorician rock
And the Acherdian cave alike remote,
He sate himself upon the marble tomb,
And loosed his melancholy garb, and called
His daughters, from the living spring to bear
His last ablution. They, to the near hill
Of Ceres histening, brought the fountain-flood,
And wrapped him in the garments that beseem
Funereal rites. Then subterranean Jove
Thundered the maidens trembled as they heard,
And beat their breasts, and uttered loud laments.
Touched at the bitter sound, he wrapped his arms
Around them: "Oh, my children!" he exclaimed,
"The hour and place of my appointed rest

:

Are found your father from this breathing world
Departs a weary lot was yours, my children,
Wide o'er the inhospitable earth to lead

A blind, forlorn, old, persecuted man.

These toils are yours no more: yet well I deem
Affection overweighed them, and the love,

The soul-felt love, which he who caused them bore you,
Where shall you find again?" Then on their necks

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