| (i) |
| |
| Dedication |
| |
| Bob Southey! You’re a poet, poet
laureate, |
| And
representative of all the race. |
| Although ‘tis true that you turned out
a Tory at |
| Last, yours
has lately been a common case. |
| And now my epic renegade, what are ye
at |
| With all the
lakers, in and out of place? |
| A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye |
Like ‘four and twenty blackbirds in a
pye’,
|
| ‘Which pye being opened they began to
sing’ |
| (This old song
and new simile holds good), |
| ‘A dainty dish to set before the King’ |
| Or Regent, who
admires such kind of food. |
| And Coleridge too has lately taken
wing, |
| But like a
hawk encumbered with his hood, |
| Explaining metaphysics to the nation |
I wish he would explain his
explanation.
|
| You, Bob, are rather insolent, you
know, |
| At being
disappointed in your wish |
| To supersede all warblers here below, |
| And be the
only blackbird in the dish. |
| And then you overstrain yourself, or
so, |
| And tumble
downward like the flying fish |
| Gasping on deck, because you soar too
high, Bob, |
And fall for lack of moisture quite a
dry Bob.
|
| And Wordsworth in a rather long
Excursion |
| (I think the
quarto holds five hundred pages) |
| Has given a sample from the vasty
version |
| Of his new
system to perplex the sages |
| ’Tis poetry, at least by his assertion, |
| And may appear
so when the Dog Star rages, |
| And he who understands it would be able |
To add a story to the Tower of Babel.
|
| You gentlemen, by dint of long
seclusion |
| From better
company, have kept your own |
| At Keswick, and through still continued
fusion |
| Of one
another’s minds at last have grown |
| To deem, as a most logical conclusion, |
| That poesy has
wreaths for you alone. |
| There is a narrowness in such a notion, |
Which makes me wish you’d change your
lakes for ocean.
|
| I would not imitate the petty thought, |
| Nor coin my
self-love to so base a vice, |
| For all the glory your conversion
brought, |
| Since gold
alone should not have been its price. |
| You have your salary; was’t for that
you wrought? |
| And Wordsworth
has his place in the Excise. |
| You’re shabby fellows—true—but poets
still |
And duly seated on the immortal hill.
|
| Your bays may hide the baldness of your
brows, |
| Perhaps some
virtuous blushes; let them go. |
| To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs, |
| And for the
fame you would engross below, |
| The field is universal and allows |
| Scope to all
such as feel the inherent glow. |
| Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and
Crabbe will try |
’Gainst you the question with
posterity.
|
| For me, who, wandering with pedestrian
Muses, |
| Contend not
with you on the winged steed, |
| I wish your fate may yield ye, when she
chooses, |
| The fame you
envy and the skill you need. |
| And recollect a poet nothing loses |
| In giving to
his brethren their full meed |
| Of merit, and complaint of present days |
Is not the certain path to future
praise.
|
| He that reserves his laurels for
posterity |
| (Who does not
often claim the bright reversion) |
| Has generally no great crop to spare
it, he |
| Being only
injured by his own assertion. |
| And although here and there some
glorious rarity |
| Arise like
Titan from the sea’s immersion, |
| The major part of such appellants go |
To—God knows where—for no one else can
know.
|
| If fallen in evil days on evil tongues, |
| Milton
appealed to the avenger, Time, |
| If Time, the avenger, execrates his
wrongs |
| And makes the
word Miltonic mean sublime, |
| He deigned not to belie his soul
in songs, |
| Nor turn his
very talent to a crime. |
| He did not loathe the sire to
laud the son, |
But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.
|
| Think’st thou, could he, the blind old
man, arise |
| Like Samuel
from the grave to freeze once more |
| The blood of monarchs with his
prophecies, |
| Or be alive
again—again all hoar |
| With time and trials, and those
helpless eyes |
| And heartless
daughters—worn and pale and poor, |
| Would be adore a sultan? He obey |
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?
|
| Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid
miscreant! |
| Dabbling its
sleek young hands in Erin’s gore, |
| And thus for wider carnage taught to
pant, |
|
Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore, |
| The vulgarest tool that tyranny could
want, |
| With just
enough of talent and no more, |
| To lengthen fetters by another fixed |
And offer poison long already mixed.
|
| An orator of such set trash of phrase, |
| Ineffably,
legitimately vile, |
| That even its grossest flatterers dare
not praise, |
| Nor foes—all
nations—condescend to smile. |
| Not even a sprightly blunder’s spark
can blaze |
| From that
Ixion grindstone’s ceaseless toil, |
| That turns and turns to give the world
a notion |
Of endless torments and perpetual
motion.
|
| A bungler even in its
disgusting trade, |
| And botching,
patching, leaving still behind |
| Something of which its masters are
afraid, |
| States to be
curbed and thoughts to be confined, |
| Conspiracy or congress to be made, |
| Cobbling at
manacles for all mankind, |
| A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old
chains, |
With God and man’s abhorrence for its
gains.
|
| If we may judge of matter by the mind, |
| Emasculated to
the marrow, it |
| Hath but two objects, how to serve and
bind, |
| Deeming the
chain it wears even men may fit, |
| Eutropius of its many masters, blind |
| To worth as
freedom, wisdom as to wit, |
| Fearless, because no feeling dwells in
ice; |
Its very courage stagnates to a vice.
|
| Where shall I turn me not to view its
bonds, |
| For I will
never feel them. Italy, |
| Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds |
| Beneath the
lie this state-thing breathed o’er thee |
| Thy clanking chain and Erin’s yet green
wounds |
| Have voices,
tongues to cry aloud for me. |
| Europe has slaves, allies, kings,
armies still, |
And Southey lives to sing them very
ill.
|
| Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to
dedicate |
| In honest
simple verse this song to you. |
| And if in flattering strains I do not
predicate, |
| ’Tis that I
still retain my buff and blue; |
| My politics as yet are all to educate. |
| Apostasy’s so
fashionable too, |
| To keep one creed’s a task grown
quite Herculean. |
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian?
|
| Lord Byron
| Classic Poems |
| |
|
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