I need not ask after the plans you've in view;
"Twould be odd, I believe, if I had'nt them too:
But there's one thing I've always forgotten to mention, Your versification,-pray give it invention.
A fancy like your's, that can play it's own part,
And clip with fine fingers the chords of the heart, Should draw from itself the whole charm of it's song,
Nor put up with notes, that to others belong.'1
The poet to this was about to reply,
When Moore, coming in, caught the Deity's eye,
Who gave him his hand, and said, 'Shew me a sight
That can give a divinity sounder delight,
Or that earth should more prize from it's core to the poles,
Than the self-improved morals of elegant souls.
Repentant I speak it,-though when I was wild,
My friends should remember the world was a child,-
That customs were diff'rent, and young people's eyes
Had no better examples than those in the skies.
But soon as I learnt how to value these doings,
I never much valued your billings and cooings;
They only make idle the best of my race;
And since my poor Daphne turned tree in my face,
There are very few poets, whose caps or whose curls
Have obtained such a laurel by hunting the girls.
So it gives me, dear Tom, a delight beyond measure,
To find how you've mended your notions of pleasure;
For never was poet, whose fanciful hours
Could bask in a richer abstraction of bowers,
With sounds and with spirits, of charm to detain
The wonder-eyed soul in their magic domain;
And never should poet, so gifted and rare,
Pollute the bright Eden Jove gives to his care,
But love the fair Virtue, for whom it is given,
And keep the spot pure for the visits of heaven.'
He spoke with a warmth, but his accent was bland,
And the poet bow'd down with a blush to his hand,
When all on a sudden, there rose on the stairs
A noise as of persons with singular airs;
You'd have thought 'twas the Bishops or Judges a coming, Or whole court of Aldermen hawing and humming,
Or Abbot, at least, with his ushers before,
But 'twas only Bob Southey and two or three more. 14 As soon as he saw him, Apollo seem'd pleas'd;15
But as he had settled it not to be teaz'd
By all the vain dreamers from bed-room and brook,
He turn'd from the rest without even a look;
For Coleridge had vex'd him long since, I suppose,
By his idling, and gabbling, and muddling in prose ; 16
And Wordsworth, one day, made his very hairs bristle,
By going and changing his harp for a whistle. 17
These heroes however, long used to attack,
Were not by contempt to be so driven back,
But follow'd the God up, and shifting their place,
Stood full in his presence, and look'd in his face;
When one began spouting the cream of orations
In praise of bombarding one's friends and relations;1 s
And t'other some lines he had made on a straw,
Shewing how he had found it, and what it was for,
And how, when 'twas balanc'd, it stood like a spell!-
And how, when 'twas balanc'd no longer, it fell!
A wild thing of scorn he describ'd it to be,
But he said it was patient to heaven's decree :-
Then he gaz'd upon nothing, and looking forlorn,
Dropt a natural tear for that wild thing of scorn! 19
Apollo half laughed betwixt anger and mirth,
And cried, 'Was there ever such trifling on earth?
It is not enough that this nonsense, I fear,
Has hurt the fine head of my friend Robert here,
But the very best promise bred up in the school,
Must shew himself proudest in playing the fool.
What! think ye a bard's a mere gossip, who tells
Of the ev'ry-day feelings of every one else,
And that poetry lies, not in something select,
But in gath'ring the refuse that others reject?.
Must a ballad doled out by a spectacled nurse
About Two-Shoes or Thumb, be your model of verse;
And your writings, instead of sound fancy and style,
Look more like the morbid abstractions of bile?
There is one of you here,-'twas of him that I spoke,—
Who, instead of becoming a byeword and joke,
Should have brought back our fine old pre-eminent way, And been the first man at my table to day:
But resolv'd as I am to maintain the partitions
'Twixt wit and mere wildness, he knows the conditions;
And if he retains but a spark of my fire,
Will shew it this instant,-and blush,-and retire.' He spoke; and poor Wordsworth, his cheeks in a glow, (For he felt the God in him) made symptoms to go,
When Apollo, in pity, to screen him from sight,
Threw round him a cloud that was purple and white,
The same that of old us'd to wrap his own shoulders,
When coming from heaven, he'd spare the beholders.—
The bard, like a second Æneas, went home in't,
And lives underneath it, it seems, at this moment.20
Apollo then turning and smoothing his frown,
Bade Southey take warning, and let him sit down;
But the rest of Bob's friends, too ambitious to flinch,
Stood fixing their faces, and stirred not an inch;
While Sam, looking soft and politely dejected,
Confess'd with a sigh, that 'twas what he expected,
Since Phoebus had fatally learnt to confide in
Such prosers as Johnson, and rhymers as Dryden.'
But wrath seiz'd Apollo ;—and turning again,
'Whatever,' he cried, were the faults of such men,
Ye shall try, wretched mortals, how well ye can bear
What Dryden has witness'd, unsmote with despair.'2 1
He said; and the place all seem'd swelling with light,'
While his locks and his visage grew awfully bright
And clouds, burning inward, roll'd round on each side,
To encircle his state, as he stood in his pride;
|