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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 every feeling line.
But, if a deed, not tamely to be borne,
Fire indignation and a sense of scorn,

The strings are swept with such a power 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 lowers;

:

And, arm'd with strength surpassing human powers, Seizes events, as yet unknown to man,

And darts his soul into the dawning 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 every hallowed 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,
Where discipline helps opening buds of sense,
And makes his pupils proud with silver pence,
I was a poet too but modern taste
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, conquering the stream by force;
That, like some cottage beauty, strikes the heart,
Quite unindebted to the tricks of art.

When labour and when dulness club in hand,
Like the two figures at St. Dunstan's stand,
Beating alternately, in measur'd time,
The clock-work tintinabulum of rhyme,
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 between:

Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.

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

And every effort ends in push-pin play.

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 every 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.

A. Is genius only found in epic lays?
Prove this, and forfeit all pretence to praise.

Make their heroic powers your own at once,
Or candidly confess yourself a dunce.

B. These were the chief: each interval of night
Was grac'd with many an undulating light.
In less illustrious bards his beauty shone
A meteor, or a star; in these, the sun.

The nightingale may claim the topmost bough, While the poor grasshopper must chirp below: Like him, unnotic'd, I, and such as I,

Spread little wings, and rather skip than fly ;
Perch'd on the meagre produce of the land,
An ell or two of prospect we command;
But never peep beyond the thorny bound,
Or oaken fence, that hems the paddoc round.

In Eden, ere yet innocence of heart
Had faded, poetry was not an art ;
Language, above all teaching, or, if taught,
Only by gratitude and glowing thought,
Elegant as simplicity, and warm

As ecstacy, unmanacled by form,

Not prompted, as in our degenerate days,
By low ambition and the thirst of praise,
Was natural as is the flowing stream,
And yet magnificent a God the theme!
That theme on earth exhausted, though above
'Tis found as everlasting as his love,

Man lavish'd all his thoughts on human things

The feats of heroes, and the wrath of kings;

But still, while virtue kindled his delight,
The song was moral, and so far was right,
'Twas thus till luxury seduc'd the mind,
To joys less innocent, as less refin'd;
Then genius danc'd a bacchanal; he crown'd
The brimming goblet, seiz'd the thyrsus, bound
His brows with ivy, rush'd into the field
Of wild imagination, and there reel'd,

The victim of his own lascivious fires,

And, dizzy with delight, profan'd the sacred wires.
Anacreon, Horace, play'd in Greece and Rome
This bedlam part; and others nearer home.
When Cromwell fought for power, and while he
reign'd

The proud Protector of the power he gain'd,

Religion harsh, intolerant, austere,

Parent of manners like herself severe,

Drew a rough copy of the Christian face,
Without the smile, the sweetness, or the grace;
The dark and sullen humour of the time
Judg'd every effort of the muse a crime :
Verse, in the finest mould of fancy cast,
Was lumber in an age so void of taste:
But when the second Charles assum'd the sway,
And arts reviv'd beneath a softer day,
Then, like a bow long forc'd into a curve,

The mind, releas'd from too constrain❜d a nerve,
Flew to its first position with a spring,

That made the vaulted roofs of pleasure ring.

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