ON HAVING READ HIS VERSES IN MANUSCRIPT,
WRITTEN DECEMBER 1786.
Encircled by thy filial band,
O, LISTER, pleas’d I see thee stand,
Rich in the blessing that can balm
Each mental wound, each sorrow calm,
And every irksome care beguile,
The sweetness of the duteous smile.
Of fortune and of love possest,
With all the sunshine of the breast,
At ease thy placid spirit woos
The favours of a jocund muse,
Who scatters, at thy mild desire,
Careless graces o’er thy lyre.
Not thee, she marks a luckless son,
Whose fortune and renown are one,
Who, if his twice-important strain
The surly bookseller in vain
To-day allows its face to show
In front of pamphlet-crowded bow,
Must pine, alas! in two-fold sorrow,
When pride and hunger fast to-morrow.
Nor yet she marks thee, high of aim,
A throbbing candidate for fame,
Who, plac’d within the sheltering bowers
Where ease and plenty speed the hours,
Far from their rosy confine strays
In authorism’s dangerous ways,
Where Envy’s restless ills betide,
Her thorns infest, her serpents glide,
Those rhyming snakes, whose malice long
Pursues the Bard of higher song.
And mark the scribbling Serpent’s station,
Artificer of defamation!
Who, sore beneath the general sense
Of his vain Muse’s impotence,
Turns public Critic, to supply
His spleen, and gaunt necessity;
Breathes purchas’d praise, in servile tone,
On lays as meagre as his own,
And with rapacious spite abuses
Each happier votary of the muses.
Behold, from day-light cautious screen’d,
His kennel-dirt, with labour glean’d,
This self-elected censor fling,
This dull, insidious, nameless thing.
O, wise art thou those paths to shun,
Where much is lost, and little won;
For never, with enduring roots
The genuine Poet’s laurel shoots,
Or high its blooming branch shall wave,
Till sprung from his unconscious grave.
Yet oft, for candid friends, persuade
Thy muse to warble in this shade.
Its gales have been inured to spring
With notes Aonian on their wing.
Ah! witness many a sparkling rhyme,
By GARRICK rung in tuneful chime,
Ere yet on Britain’s stage he shone,
And shar’d the wreath his Shakespear won!
And witness JOHNSON’S loftier strains,
Proud glory of his native plains:
And theirs, the learn’d, and lucky pair,
Ordain’d to fill the prelate chair;
For modest GREEN, in Lichfield grove,
With NEWTON, tun’d his lute to love,
And many a Muse delighted shed
Her myrtle on each rival head,
Ere yet the mitre’s envied round
Their brows with graver honours bound.
Witness the bright, the jocund powers,
That gave to wit the social hours,
When, as their festal influence glow’d,
Each prompt idea, as it flow’d,
Thy fancy tinged with brilliant dyes,
Ingenious, and ingenuous VYSE!
Witness the lays that still engage
Poetic eyes, on Dodsley’s page,
Meek DAVIES, thine, whose feeling mind
Was by each Christian grace refin’d,
While purest rays of Delian fire
Shed living lustre on thy lyre.
Source of my Life, and all the joys
That from a cultured mind arise,
Thy efforts, liberal as benign,
The glories of the Delphic Shrine
To my yet infant eyes display’d
In these green vales, this blooming shade;
Thou, who didst chace the mists of time
From sylvan FLETCHER’S beauteous rhyme,
And graver BEAUMONT’S nervous page,
The faithful mirrour of his age.
Thou, in whose free harmonious song
The Female Rights shall flourish long;
That song, with generous disdain,
Which breaks the sullen pedant’s chain,
Forg’d our aspiring sex to bind
From ranging the high tracts of mind,
Where Fancy’s flowers, and Learning’s fruit,
On every side, luxuriant shoot;—
Source of my Life, it will not prove
A vain essay of filial love,
Here, if a right thy daughter claim
To rank with theirs thy honour’d name,
whose silver lyre’s harmonious sound
Made lovely LICHFIELD classic ground,
Though now thy vital lamp’s faint light
Gleams on the verge of its long night,
Pale, dim, and weak its social blaze,
And pale its intellectual rays.
While duteous love, with anxious aim,
Guards from rude blasts its quivering flame,
Through yet a few more quiet years,
That bring to thee nor pains, nor fears,
O, be it mine to cheer, and warm
Thy drooping heart, thy helpless form!
And now recorded be the song,
That floated sweet these vales among,
Or lighten’d with satiric ray,
The song of proudly virtuous DAY.
Pride, it is still thy sullen part
To check each kindling glow of heart;
For how should soft affection thrive,
How keep its tender blooms alive,
Where thy repulsive shadow lours,
Like the dark yew on springing flowers!
That sheds its chilling damps around,
And wintry makes the vernal ground.
So changest thou affection’s beam,
To cold, and colourless esteem.
Yet, bounteous DAY, that groveling pride
Did ne’er thy words and actions guide,
Which deals its smiles in each degree,
As rank, or wealth, their gifts decree;
’Tis thine to look too coldly down
On talents liberal as thine own,
While sickness, want, and sorrow, share
Thine ample boon, thy watchful care.
See favour’d LICHFIELD’S classic train
Adorn’d by ELLIOT’S happy strain!
And his, for whom the Sisters nine,
And Sisters three, in strife combine,
Which should their choicest gifts award,
That form the Courtier, and the Bard.
Ah! need I say ’tis BOOTHBY claims
These honours from the goddess-dames?
With vigorous mind, whose efforts bend
Where Science’ widening bounds extend,
That ductile, to his earnest gaze
Expand before its potent rays;
And whose so seldom erring art
Averts, or blunts the mortal dart,
Relaxing from severer toil
Here DARWIN won the Muses smile;
Fram’d in these bowers the splendid rhyme,
Of brightest glow, and richest chime,
Still nervous, though it still retain
The Leonine, and Runic chain;
And ne’er, Oh Bard! their power disclaim,
For thou canst gem each link they frame.
These silver lyres are heard no more
On Stow’s calm lake, and grassy shore;
Yet GROVE, as through their mead he roves,
With classic notes, that CLIO loves,
Though seldom, yet at times pervades
The silence of these verdant shades
And, LISTER, may they echo long
The tones of thy convivial song!