LAUGH, honest Southey! prithee come
With every laugh thou hast at home;
But leave there Virtue, lest she sneer
At one most noble British Peer,
Who ties fresh tags upon his ermine
By crying Aye and catching vermin:
Terror of those, but most the foe
Of all who think and all who know.
The passive transferable tool
Of every knave and every fool
Whom England’s angry Genius sent
To glut our hungry Parliament;
A sworn apprentice who, accurst
With pale ambition’s feverish thirst,
Is doomed to labor all he can
Yet never to be master man.
“Such characters, methinks you say,
We meet by hundreds every day;
And common dolts and common slaves,
Distinguisht but by stars or staves,
Should glitter and go out, exempt
From all but common men’s contempt,
The hounds that on their dunghills rot,
Fawners or snarlers, are forgot;
But not more speedily than those
Whose pleasures hang upon their nose.
Bibbons and garters, these are things
Often by Ministers and Kings,
Not over-wise nor over-nice,
Confer’d on folly and on vice.
How wide the difference let them see
‘Twixt these and immortality!”
Yes, oftentimes imperial Seine
Has listened to my early strain.
Beyond the Rhine, beyond the Bhone,
My Latian Muse is heard and known:
On Tiber’s bank, in Arno’s shade,
I woo’d and won the classic Maid.
When Spain from base oppression rose,
I foremost rushed amid her foes.
Gallicia’s hardy band I led,
Inspirited, and cloathed, and fed.
Homeward I turn: o’er Hatteril’s rocks
I see my trees, I hear my flocks.
Where alders mourn’d their fruitless bed,
A million larches raise the head;
And from Segovia’s hills remote
My sheep enrich my neighbor’s cote:
The wide and easy road I lead
Where never paced the harnest steed;
Where scarcely dared the goat look down
Beneath the fearful mountain’s frown,
Suspended while the torrent’s spray
Springs o’er the crags that roll away.
But Envy’s steps too soon pursue
The man who hazards schemes so new;
Who, better fit for Rome and Greece,
Thinks to be Justice of the Peace!