Selected Poems (10 page)

Nor vend thy sonnets on a false pretence.

Think’st thou to gain thy verse a higher place,

By dressing Camoëns
²
in a suit of lace?

305

Mend, Strangford! mend thy morals and thy taste;

Be warm, but pure; be amorous, but be chaste:

Cease to deceive; thy pilfer’d harp restore,

Nor teach the Lusian bard to copy Moore.

Behold! – ye tarts! one moment spare the text –

310

Hayley’s last work, and worst – until his next;

Whether he spin poor couplets into plays,

Or damn the dead with purgatorial praise,

His style in youth or age is still the same,

For ever feeble and for ever tame.

315

Triumphant first see ‘Temper’s Triumphs’ shine!

At least I’m sure they triumph’d over mine.

Of ‘Music’s Triumphs,’ all who read may swear

That luckless music never triumph’d there.
¹

Moravians, rise! bestow some meet reward

320

On dull devotion – Lo! the Sabbath bard,

Sepulchral Grahame,
²
pours his notes sublime

In mangled prose, nor e’en aspires to rhyme;

Breaks into blank the Gospel of St Luke,

And boldly pilfers from the Pentateuch;

325

And, undisturb’d by conscientious qualms,

Perverts the Prophets, and purloins the Psalms.

Hail, Sympathy! thy soft idea brings

A thousand visions of a thousand things,

And shows, still whimpering through threescore of years,

330

The maudlin prince of mournful sonneteers.

And art thou not their prince, harmonious Bowles!

Thou first, great oracle of tender souls?

Whether thou sing’st with equal ease, and grief,

The fall of empires, or a yellow leaf;

335

Whether thy muse most lamentably tells

What merry sounds proceed from Oxford bells,
¹

Or still in bells delighting, finds a friend

In every chime that jingled from Ostend;

Ah! how much juster were thy muse’s hap,

340

If to thy bells thou wouldst but add a cap!

Delightful Bowles! still blessing and still blest,

All love thy strain, but children like it best.

‘Tis thine, with gentle Little’s moral song,

To soothe the mania of the amorous throng!

345

With thee our nursery damsels shed their tears,

Ere miss as yet completes her infant years:

But in her teens thy whining powers are vain;

She quits poor Bowles for Little’s purer strain.

Now to soft themes thou scornest to confine

350

The lofty numbers of a harp like thine;

‘Awake a louder and a loftier strain,’
²

Such as none heard before, or will again!

Where all Discoveries jumbled from the flood,

Since first the leaky ark reposed in mud,

355

By more or less, are sung in every book,

From Captain Noah down to Captain Cook.

Nor this alone; but, pausing on the road,

The bard sighs forth a gentle episode;
¹

And gravely tells – attend each beauteous miss! –

360

When first Madeira trembled to a kiss.

Bowles! in thy memory let this precept dwell,

Stick to thy sonnets, man! – at least they sell.

But if some new-born whim, or larger bribe,

Prompt thy crude brain, and claim thee for a scribe;

365

If chance some bard, though once by dunces fear’d,

Now, prone in dust, can only be revered;

If Pope, whose fame and genius, from the first,

Have foil’d the best of critics, needs the worst,

Do thou essa: each fault each failin scan

370

The first of poets was, alas! but man.

Rake from each ancient dunghill ev’ry pearl,

Consult Lord Fanny, and confide in Curll;
²

Let all the scandals of a former age

Perch on thy pen, and flutter o’er thy page;

375

Affect a candour which thou canst not feel,

Clothe envy in the garb of honest zeal;

Write, as if St John’s soul could still inspire,

And do from hate what Mallet3 did for hire.

Oh! hadst thou lived in that congenial time,

380

To rave with Dennis, and with Ralph to rhyme;
⁴

Throng’d with the rest around his living head,

Not raised thy hoof against the lion dead;
¹

A meet reward had crown’d thy glorious gains,

And link’d thee to the Dunciad for thy pains.

385

Another epic! Who inflicts again

More books of blank upon the sons of men?

Bœotian Cottle, rich Bristowa’s boast,

Imports old stories from the Cambrian coast,

And sends his goods to market – all alive!

390

Lines forty thousand, cantos twenty-five!

Fresh fish from Helicon!
²
who’ll buy? who’ll buy?

The precious bargain’s cheap – in faith, not I.

Your turtle-feeder’s verse must needs be flat,

Though Bristol bloat him with the verdant fat;

395

If Commerce fills the purse, she clogs the brain,

And Amos Cottle strikes the lyre in vain.

In him an author’s luckless lot behold,

Condemn’d to make the books which once he sold.

Oh, Amos Cottle! – Phoebus! what a name

400

To fill the speaking trump of future fame! –

Oh, Amos Cottle! for a moment think

What meagre profits spring from pen and ink!

When thus devoted to poetic dreams,

Who will peruse thy prostituted reams?

405

Oh pen perverted! paper misapplied!

Had Cottle
³
still adorn’d the counter’s side,

Bent o’er the desk, or, born to useful toils,

Been taught to make the paper which he soils,

Plough’d, delved, or plied the oar with lusty limb,

410

He had not sung of Wales, nor I of him.

As Sisyphus against the infernal steep

Rolls the huge rock whose motions ne’er may sleep,

So up thy hill, ambrosial Richmond, heaves

Dull Maurice
¹
all his granite weight of leaves:

415

Smooth, solid monuments of mental pain!

The petrifactions of a plodding brain

That, ere they reach the top, fall lumbering back again.

With broken lyre, and cheek serenely pale,

Lo! sad Alcæus wanders down the vale;

420

Though fair they rose, and might have bloom’d at last,

His hopes have perish’d by the northern blast:

Nipp’d in the bud by Caledonian gales,

His blossoms wither as the blast prevails!

O’er his lost works let
classic
Sheffield weep;

425

May no rude hand disturb their early sleep!
²

Yet say! why should the bard at once resign

His claim to favour from the sacred nine?

For ever startled by the mingled howl

Of northern wolves, that still in darkness prowl;

430

A coward brood which mangle as they prey,

By hellish instinct, all that cross their way;

Aged or young, the living or the dead,

No mercy find – these harpies must be fed.

Why do the injured unresisting yield

435

The calm possession of their native field?

Why tamel thus before their fangs retreat,

Nor hunt the bloodhounds back to Arthur’s Seat?
³

Health to immortal Jeffrey! once, in name,

England could boast a judge almost the same;

440

In soul so like, so merciful, yet just,

Some think that Satan has resin’d his trust,

And given the spirit to the world again,

To sentence letters, as he sentenced men.

With hand less mighty, but with heart as black,

445

With voice as willing to decree the rack;

Bred in the courts betimes, though all that law

As yet hath taught him is to find a flaw;

Since well instructed in the patriot school

To rail at party, though a party tool,

450

Who knows, if chance his patrons should restore