Selected Poems (9 page)

Admires the strain she cannot comprehend.

Thus Lays of Minstrels
¹
– may they be the last! –

On half-strung harps whine mournful to the blast.

155

While mountain spirits prate to river sprites,

That dames may listen to the sound at nights;

And goblin brats, of Gilpin Horner’s brood,

Decoy young border-nobles through the wood,

And skip at every step, Lord knows how high,

160

And frighten foolish babes, the Lord knows why;

While high-born ladies in their magic cell,

Forbidding knights to read who cannot spell,

Despatch a courier to a wizard’s grave,

And fight with honest men to shield a knave.

165

Next view in state, proud prancing on his roan,

The golden-crested haughty Marmion,

Now forging scrolls, now foremost in the fight,

Not quite a felon, yet but half a knight,

The gibbet or the field prepared to grace;

170

A mighty mixture of the great and base.

And think’st thou, Scott! by vain conceit perchance,

On public taste to foist thy stale romance,

Though Murray with his Miller may combine

To yield thy muse just half-a-crown per line?

175

No! when the sons of song descend to trade,

Their bays are sear, their former laurels fade.

Let such forego the poet’s sacred name,

Who rack their brains for lucre, not for fame:

Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain!

180

And sadly gaze on gold they cannot gain!

Such be their meed, such still the just reward

Of prostituted muse and hireling bard!

For this we spurn Apollo’s venal son,

And bid a long ‘good night to Marmion.’
¹

185

These are the themes that claim our plaudits now;

These are the bards to whom the muse must bow;

While Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot,

Resign their hallow’d bays to Walter Scott.

The time has been, when yet the muse was young,

190

When Homer swept the lyre, and Maro sung,

An epic scarce ten centuries could claim,

While awe-struck nations hail’d the magic name:

The work of each immortal bard appears

The single wonder of a thousand years.
²

195

Empires have moulder’d from the face of earth,

Tongues have expired with those who gave them birth,

Without the glory such a strain can give,

As even in ruin bids the language live.

Not so with us, though minor bards content,

200

On one great work a life of labour spent:

With eagle pinion soaring to the skies,

Behold the ballad-monger Southey rise!

To him let Camoëns, Milton, Tasso yield,

Whose annual strains, like armies, take the field.

205

First in the ranks see Joan of Arc advance,

The scourge of England and the boast of France!

Though burnt by wicked Bedford for a witch,

Behold her statue placed in glory’s niche;

Her fetters burst, and just released from prison,

210

A virgin phœnix from her ashes risen.

Next see tremendous Thalaba come on,
¹

Arabia’s monstrous, wild, and wond’rous son;

Domdaniel’s dread destroyer, who o’erthrew

More mad magicians than the world e’er knew.

215

Immortal hero! all thy foes o’ercome,

For ever reign – the rival of Tom Thumb!

Since startled metre fled before thy face,

Well wert thou doom’d the last of all thy race!

Well might triumphant genii bear thee hence,

220

Illustrious conqueror of common sense!

Now, last and greatest, Madoc spreads his sails,

Cacique in Mexico, and prince in Wales;

Tells us strange tales, as other travellers do,

More old than Mandeville’s, and not so true.

225

Oh, Southey! Southey!
²
cease thy varied song!

A bard may chant too often and too long:

As thou art strong in verse, in mercy, spare!

A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear.

But if, in spite of all the world can say,

230

Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way;

If still in Berkley ballads most uncivil,

Thou wilt devote old women to the devil,
¹

The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue:

‘God help thee,’ Southey, and thy readers too.
²

235

Next comes the dull disciple of thy school,

That mild apostate from poetic rule

The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay

As soft as evening in his favourite May,
³

Who warns his friend ‘to shake off toil and trouble,

240

And quit his books, for fear of growing double;’
⁴

Who, both by precept and example, shows

That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose;

Convincing all, by demonstration plain,

Poetic souls delight in prose insane;

245

And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme

Contain the essence of the true sublime.

Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy,

The idiot mother of ‘an idiot boy;’

A moon-struck, silly lad, who lost his way,

250

And, like his bard, confounded night with day;
¹

So close on each pathetic part he dwells,

And each adventure so sublimely tells,

That all who view the ‘idiot in his glory‘

Conceive the bard the hero of the story.

255

Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here,

To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?

Though themes of innocence amuse him best,

Yet still obscurity’s a welcome guest.

If Inspiration should her aid refuse

260

To him who takes a pixy for a muse,
²

Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass

The bard who soars to elegise an ass.

So well the subject suits his noble mind,

He brays, the laureat of the long-ear’d kind.

265

Oh! wonder-working Lewis! monk, or bard,

Who fain wouldst make Parnassus a church-yard!

Lo! wreaths of yew, not laurel bind thy brow

Thy muse a sprite, Apollo’s sexton thou!

Whether on ancient tombs thou takest thy stand,

270

By gibb’ring spectres hail’d, thy kindred band;

Or tracest chaste descriptions on thy page,

To please the females of our modest age;

All hail, M.P.!
³
from whose infernal brain

Thin sheeted phantoms glide, a grisly train;

275

At whose command ‘grim women’ throng in crowds,

And kings of fire, of water, and of clouds,

With ‘small gray men,’ ‘wild yagers,’ and what not,

To crown with honour thee and Walter Scott;

Again all hail! if tales like thine may please,

280

St Luke alone can vanquish the disease;

Even Satan’s self with thee might dread to dwell,

And in thy skull discern a deeper hell.

Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir

Of virgins melting, not to Vesta’s fire,

285

With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flush’d,

Strikes his wild lyre, whilst listening dames are hush’d?

‘Tis Little! young Catullus of his day,

As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay!

Grieved to condemn, the muse must still be just,

290

Nor spare melodious advocates of lust.

Pure is the flame which o’er her altar burns;

From grosser incense with disgust she turns:

Yet kind to youth, this expiation o’er,

She bids thee ‘mend thy line, and sin no more.’

295

For thee, translator of the tinsel song,

To whom such glittering ornaments belong,

Hibernian Strangford! with thine eyes of blue,
¹

And boasted locks of red or auburn hue

Whose plaintive strain each love-sick miss admires,

300

And o’er harmonious fustian half expires,

Learn, if thou canst, to yield thine author’s sense,