Alas! that snows are shed Upon thy laurel'd head, Hurtled by many cares and many wrongs! Malignity lets none Approach the Delphic throne; A hundred lane-fed curs bark down Fame's hundred tongues. But this is in the night, when men are slow To raise their eyes, when high and low, The scarlet and the colourless, are one; Soon Sleep unbars his noiseless prison, And active minds again are risen ; Where are the curs? dream-bound, and whimpering in the sun. At fife's, or lyre's, or tabor's sound The dance of youth, O Southey, runs not round, But closes at the bottom of the room Amid the falling dust and deepening gloom, Where the weary sit them down, And Beauty too unbraids, and waits a lovelier crown. We hurry to the river we must cross, And swifter downward every footstep wends; Is not so dreary as they deem Who look on it from haunts too dear; The weak from Pleasure's baths feel most its chilling air! No firmer breast than thine hath Heaven To poet, sage, or hero given : No heart more tender, none more just And hear, in God's own voice, "Well done!" Not, were that submarine Gem-lighted city mine, Wherein my name, engraven by thy hand, Pour'd forth before my Muse, With Hiero's cars and steeds, and Pindar's lyre From To Andrew Crosse. No longer do the girls for Moore That shone with blandest light on him. [1846 Moore. CHANGEFUL! how little do you know T [1853 Byron. His colour'd prints, in gilded frames, To the Nightingale. MELODIOUS Shelley caught thy softest song, [1853 And they who heard his music heard not thine ; Shelley. Gentle and joyous, delicate and strong, From the far tomb his voice shall silence mine. [1863 Shelley, Dryden. THOU hast not lost all glory, Rome! Satirists. HONESTER men and wiser, you will say, Were satirists. Unhurt? for spite? for pay? Their courteous soldiership, outshining ours, [1846 Mounted the engine, and took aim from towers-- And push our zig-zag parallels by night. And, here almost his equal, if but here, Pope. Pope pleased alike the playful and severe. Johnson. But cowers beneath his bugle-blast for Charles. Cowper. Churchmen have chaunted satire, and the pews Donne. Mason. Young's cassock was flounced round with plaintive Young. pun, And pithier Churchill swore he would have none. Of the loud scourge fell sorest upon Scots. Byron was not all Byron; one small part Churchill. Byron. Milton. Shakespeare. Dryden. From To Wordsworth. A MARSH, where only flat leaves lie, That wins the ear and wastes the day. He who would build his fame up high, Thou raisest every edifice, Whether in shelter'd vale it stand We both have run o'er half the space [1846 |