Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

Is the downfal of Nations.

They trust in armies, and their courage dies;
In wisdom, wealth, in fortune, and in lies;
But all they trust in withers, as it must,

When He commands, in whom they place no trust,
Vengeance at last pours down upon their coast
A long despis'd, but now victorious host;
Tyranny sends the chain that must abridge
The noble sweep of all their privilege;
Gives liberty the last, the mortal shock ;
Slips the slave's collar on, and snaps the lock.
A. Such lofty strains embellish what you teach,

Mean you to prophesy, or but to preach?

B. 1 know the mind that feels indeed the fire
The muse imparts, and can command the lyre,
Acts with a force, and kindles with a zeal,
Whate'er the theme, that others never feel,
If human woes her soft attention claim,
A tender sympathy pervades the frame,
She pours a sensibility divine

Along the nerve of ev'ry feeling line,

[blocks in formation]

.

The Power of the Muse.

But, if a deed not tamely to be born,

Fire, indignation, and a sense of scorn,

The strings are swept with such a pow'r, so loud,
The storm of music shakes th' astonish'd crowd.
So, when remote futurity is brought

Before the keen inquiry of her thought,

A terrible sagacity informs

The poet's heart; he looks to distant storms;
He hears the thunder ere the tempest low'rs;
And, arm'd with strength surpassing human pow'rs,
Seizes events as yet unknown to man,

And darts his soul into the dawing plan.

Hence, in a Roman mouth, the graceful name
Of prophet and of poet was the same;

Hence British poets, too, the priesthood shar'd,
And ev'ry hallow'd druid was a bard.
But no prophetic fires to me belong;

I play with syllables, and sport in song.

A. At Westminster, where little poets strive
To set a distich upon six and five,

1

But Dullness of mere Versification.

Where discipline helps op'ning buds of sense,
And makes his pupils proud with silver-pence,
I was a poet too: but modern taste

[ocr errors]

Is so refin'd, and delicate, and chaste,

That verse, whatever fire the fancy warms,
Without a creamy smoothness has no charms.
Thus, all success depending on an ear,
And thinking I might purchase it too dear,
If sentiment were sacrific'd to sound,

And truth cut short to make a period round,
I judg'd a man of sense could scarce do worse
Than caper in the morris-dance of verse.

B. Thus reputation is a spur to wit,
And some wits flag through fear of losing it.
Give me the line that plows its stately course

Like a proud swan, conq'ring the stream by force;
That, like some cottage beauty, strikes the heart,
Quite unindebted to the tricks of art.

When labour and when dullness, club in hand,

Like the two figures at St. Dunstan's, stand,

Writing Verses.

Beating alternately, in measur'd time,
The clock-work tintinabulum of rhime,
Exact and regular the sounds will be ;
But such mere quarter-strokes are not for me.
From him who rears a poem lank and long,
To him who strains his all into a song ;
Perhaps some bonny Caledonian air,

All birks and braes, though he was never there:
Or, having whelp'd a prologue with great pains,
Feels himself spent, and fumbles for his brains ;
A prologue interdash'd with many a stroke—
An art contriv❜d to advertise a joke,
So that the jest is clearly to be seen,
Not in the words-but in the gap
Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.

between ;

To dally much with subjects mean and low Proves that the mind is weak, or makes it so. Neglected talents rust into decay,

And ev'ry effort ends in push-pin play.

Epic Poetry.

The man that means success should soar above
A soldier's feather, or a lady's glove;
Else, summoning the muse to such a theme,
The fruit of all her labour is whipt-cream.
As if an eagle flew aloft, and then-
Stoop'd from its highest pitch to pounce a wren.
As if the poet, purposing to wed,

Should carve himself a wife in gingerbread.
Ages elaps'd ere Homer's lamp appear'd
And ages ere the Mantuan swan was heard:
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.
Thus genius rose and set at order'd times,
And shot a day-spring into distant climes,
Ennobling ev'ry region that he chose;
He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose ;
And, tedious years of Gothic darkness pass'd,
Emerg'd all splendour in our isle at last.
Thus lovely halcyons dive into the main,
Then show far off their shining plumes again. -

1

« ForrigeFortsett »