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With mad rapidity and unconcern,

Down to the gulf, from which is no return.
They trust in navies, and their navies fail-
God's curse can cast away ten thousand sail!
They trust in armies, and their courage dies;
In wisdom, wealth, in fortune, and in lies;
But all they trust in withers, as it must,
When He commands, in whom they place no trust.
Vengeance at last pours down upon their coast
A long despis'd, but now victorious, host;
Tyranny sends the chain, that must abridge
The noble sweep of all their privilege;
Gives liberty the last, the mortal shock;
Slips the slave's collar on, and snaps the lock.
A. Such lofty strains embellish what you teach:
Mean you to prophesy, or but to preach?

B. I know the mind, that feels indeed the fire
The muse imparts, and can command the lyre,
Acts with a force, and kindles with a zeal,
Whate'er the theme, that others never feel.
If human woes her soft attention claim,
A tender sympathy pervades the frame,
She pours a sensibility divine

Along the nerve of ev'ry feeling line.

But if a deed not tamely to be borne
Fire indignation and a sense of scorn,

The strings are swept with such a pow'r, so loud,
The storm of music shakes th' astonish'd crowd.
So, when remote futurity is brought

Before the keen inquiry of her thought,

A terrible sagacity informs

The poet's heart; he looks to distant storms;
He hears the thunder ere the tempest low'rs;
And, arm'd with strength surpassing human pow'rз,
Seizes events as yet unknown to man,

And darts his soul into the dawning plan.
Hence, in a Roman mouth, the graceful name
Of prophet and of poet was the same;
Hence British poets too the priesthood shar'd,
And ev'ry hallow'd druid was a bard.

But no prophetic fires to me belong;
I play with syllables, and sport in song.

A. At Westminster, where little poets strive
To set a distich upon six and five,

Where Discipline helps op'ning buds of sense,
And makes his pupils proud with silver pence,
I was a poet too; but modern taste

Is so refin'd, and delicate, and chaste,
That verse, whatever fire the fancy warms,
Without a creamy smoothness has no charms.
Thus, all success depending on an ear,
And thinking I might purchase it too dear,
If sentiment were sacrific'd to sound,

And truth cut short to make a period round,
I judg'd a man of sense could scarce do worse,
Than caper in the morris-dance of verse.

B. Thus reputation is a spur to wit,

And some wits flag through fear of losing it.
Give me the line, that ploughs its stately course
Like a proud swan, conq'ring the stream by force;
That, like some cottage beauty, strikes the heart,
Quite unindebted to the tricks of art.

When Labour and when Dulness, club in hand,
Like the two figures at St. Dunstan's, stand,
Beating alternately, in measur'd time,
The clock-work tintinnabulum of rhyme,
Exact and regular the sounds will be;
But such mere quarter-strokes are not for me.
From him, who rears a poem lank and long,
To him who strains his all into a song;
Perhaps some bonny Caledonian air,

All birks and braes, though he was never there;
Or, having whelp'd a prologue with great pains,
Feels himself spent, and fumbles for his brains;
A prologue interdash'd with many a stroke-
An art contriv'd to advertise a joke,

So that the jest is clearly to be seen,
Not in the words-but in the gap between :
Manner is all in all, whate'er is writ,
The substitute for genius, sense, and wit.

To dally much with subjects mean and low Proves that the mind is weak, or makes it so. Neglected talents rust into decay,

And ev'ry effort ends in pushpin play.

The man, that means success, should soar above
A soldier's feather, or a lady's glove;

Else, summoning the muse to such a theme,
The fruit of all her labour is whipp'd-cream.
As if an eagle flew aloft, and then-

Stoop'd from its highest pitch to pounce a wren.
As if the poet, purposing to wed,

Should carve himself a wife in gingerbread.
Ages elaps'd ere Homer's lamp appear'd,
And ages cre the Mantuan swan was heard.
To carry nature lengths unknown before,
To give a Milton birth, ask'd ages more.
Thus Genius rose and set at order'd times,
And shot a dayspring into distant climes,
Ennobling ev'ry region that he chose;
He sunk in Greece, in Italy he rose :
And, tedious years of Gothic darkness past,
Emerg'd all splendour in our isle at last.
Thus lovely halcyons dive into the main,
Then show far off their shining plumes again.
A. Is genius only found in epic lays?
Prove this, and forfeit all pretence to praise.
Make their heroic pow'rs your own at once,
Or candidly confess yourself a dunce.

B. These were the chief: each interval of night Was grac'd with many an undulating light. In less illustrious bards his beauty shone A meteor, or a star; in these the sun.

The nightingale may claim the topmost bough, While the poor grashopper must chirp below. Like him unnotic'd, I, and such as I, Spread little wings, and rather skip than fly; Perch'd on the meagre produce of the land, An ell or two of prospect we command; But never peep beyond the thorny bound, Or oaken fence, that hems the paddock round.

In Eden, ere yet innocence of heart
Ilad faded, poetry was not an art:
Language, above all teaching, or, if taught,
Only by gratitude and glowing thought,
Elegant as simplicity, and warm

As ecstasy, unmanacled by form,

Not prompted, as in our degen'rate days,
By low ambition and the thirst of praise,
Was natural as is the flowing stream,
And yet magnificent-A God the theme!
That theme on Earth exhausted, though above
'Tis found as everlasting as his love,

Man lavish'd all his thoughts on human things-
The feats of heroes, and the wrath of kings;
But still, while Virtue kindled his delight,
The song was moral, and so far was right.
'Twas thus till Luxury seduc'd the mind
To joys less innocent, as less refin'd;
Then Genius danc'd a bacchanal; he crown'd
The brimming goblet, seiz'd the thyrsus, bound
His brows with ivy, rush'd into the field
Of wild imagination, and there reel'd,
The victim of his own lascivious fires,

And, dizzy with delight, profan'd the sacred wires.
Anacreon, Horace play'd in Greece and Rome
This bedlam part; and others nearer home.
When Cromwell fought for pow'r, and while he reign'd
The proud protector of the pow'r he gain'd,
Religion harsh, intolerant, austere,
Parent of manners like herself severe,
Drew a rough copy of the Christian face,
Without the smile, the sweetness, or the grace;
The dark and sullen humour of the time
Judg'd ev'ry effort of the muse a crime;
Verse, in the finest mould of fancy cast,
Was lumber in an age so void of taste:
But when the Second Charles assum'd the sway,
And arts reviv'd beneath a softer day,
Then, like a bow long forc'd into a curve,

The mind, releas'd from too constrain'd a nerve,

Flew to its first position with a spring,
That made the vaulted roofs of Pleasure ring.
His court, the dissolute and hateful school
Of Wantonness, where vice was taught by rule,
Swarm'd with a scribbling herd, as deep inlaid
With brutal lust as ever Circe made.
From these a long succession, in the rage
Of rank obscenity, debauch'd their age;
Nor ceas'd, till, ever anxious to redress
The abuses of her sacred charge, the press,
The muse instructed a well-nurtur'd train
Of abler votaries to cleanse the stain,
And claim the palm for purity of song,
That Lewdness had usurp'd and worn so long.
Then decent Pleasantry and sterling Sense,
That neither gave nor would endure offence,
Whipp'd out of sight, with satire just and keen,
The puppy pack, that had defil'd the scene.
In front of these came Addison. In him
Humour in holiday and sightly trim,
Sublimity and Attic taste, combin'd,
To polish, furnish, and delight, the mind.
Then Pope, as harmony itself exact,

In verse well disciplin'd, complete, compact,
Gave virtue and morality a grace,

That, quite eclipsing Pleasure's painted face,
Levied a tax of wonder and applause,
E'en on the fools that trampled on their laws.
But he (his musical finesse was such,

So nice his ear, so delicate his touch)
Made poetry a mere mechanic art;
And ev'ry warbler has his tune by heart.
Nature imparting her satiric gift,

Her serious mirth, to Arbuthnot and Swift,
With droll sobriety they rais'd a smile

At Folly's cost, themselves unmov'd the while.
That constellation set, the world in vain
Must hope to look upon their like again.

A. Are we then left- B. Not wholly in the dark; Wit now and then, struck smartly, shows a spark,

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