Satire! I never call’d thee very fair,
But if thou art inclined to hear my pray’r,
Grant the bright surface that our form reflects,
The healthy font that braces our defects:
But O! to fulminate with forked line
Another’s fame or fortune, ne’er be mine!
Against the wretch who dares it, high or low.
Against him only, I direct my blow.
* * * * *
Well; you have seen our Prosperos, at whose beck
Our ship, with all her royalty, is wreck.
From sire to son descends the wizard book
That works such marvels. —
Look behind you! look!
There issue from the Treasury, dull and dry as
The leaves in winter, Gilford and Matthies.
Brighter and braver Peter Pindar started,
And ranged around him all the lighter-hearted.
When Peter Pindar sank into decline,
Up from his hole sprang Peter Porcupine.
* * * * *
Honester men and wiser, you will say,
Were satirists.
Unhurt? for spite? for pay?
Their courteous soldiership, outshining ours,
Mounted the engine and took aim from tow’rs.
From putrid ditches we more safely light,
And push our zig-zag parallels by night.
Dryden’s rich numbers rattle torse and round,
Profuse, and nothing plattery in the sound.
And, here almost his equal, if but here,
Pope pleas’d alike the playful and severe.
The summer cur at growler Johnson snarls,
But cowers beneath his bugle-blast for Charles.
From Vanity and London far removed,
With that pure Spirit his pure spirit loved,
In thorny paths the pensive Cowper trod,
But angels prompted and the word was God.
Churchmen have chaunted satire, and the pews
Heard good sound doctrine from the sable Muse.
Frost-bitten and lumbaginous, when Donne,
With verses gnarl’d and knotted, hobbled on,
Thro’ listening palaces did rhymeless South
Pour sparkling waters from lus golden mouth.
Prim, in spruce parti-colours, Mason shone,
His Muse lookt well in gall-dyed crape alone.
Beneath the starry sky, ‘mid garden glooms,
In meditation deep, and dense perfumes,
Young’s cassock was flounced round with plaintive pun.
And pithier Churchill swore he would have none.
He bared his own broad vices, but the knots
Of the loud scourge fell sorest upon Scots.
* * * * *
Byron was not all Byron; one small part
Bore the impression of a human heart.
Guided by no clear love-star’s panting light
Thro’ the sharp surges of a northern night,
In Satire’s narrow strait he swam the best,
Scattering the foam that hist about his breast.
He, who might else have been more tender, first
From Scottish saltness caught his rabid thirst.
Praise Keats..
“I think I’ve heard of him.”
“With you
Shelley stands foremost.”
. And his lip was blue.
“I hear with pleasure any one commend
So good a soul; for Shelley is my friend.”
One leaf from Southey’s laurel made explode
All his combustibles..
“An ass! by God!”
Who yet surmounted in romantic Spain
Highths our brisk courser never could attain.
I lagg’d; he call’d me; urgent to prolong
My matin chirpings into mellower song.
Mournfuller tones came then.. O ne’er be they
Drown’d in night howlings from the Forth and Spey!
Twice is almighty Homer far above
Troy and her towers, Olympus and his Jove.
First, when the God-led Priam bends before
Him sprung from Thetis, dark with Hector’s gore:
A second time, when both alike have bled,
And Agamemnon speaks among the dead.
Call’d up by Genius in an after-age,
That awful spectre shook the Athenian stage.
From eve to mom, from mom to parting night,
Father and daughter stood before my sight.
I felt the looks they gave, the words they said,
And reconducted each serener shade.
Ever shall these to me be well-spent days,
Sweet fell the tears upon them, sweet the praise.