Or when I turn my pen to love,
A theme that fits me like my glove,
A pang I've borne these twenty years
With ten-times twenty several dears,
Each glance a dart, each smile a quiver,
Stinging their bard from lungs to liver--
To work my ruin, or my cure,
Up starts thy pen, Anacreon Moore!
In vain I pour my shower of roses,
On which the matchless fair one dozes,
And plant around her conch the graces,
While jealous Venus breaks her laces,
To see a younger face promoted,
To see her own old face out-voted;
And myrtle branches twisting o'er her,
Bow down, each turn'd a true adorer.
Up starts the Irish Bard--in vain
I write, 'tis all against the grain:
In vain I talk of smiles or sighs,
The girls all have him in their eyes;
And not a soul--mamma, or miss--
But vows he's the sole Bard of Bliss!
Since first I dipp'd in the romantic,
A hundred thousand have run frantic--
There's not a hideous highland spot,
(Long fallowed to the core by Scott)--
No rill, through rack and thistle dribbling,
But has its deadlier crop of scribbling.
Each fen, and flat, and flood, and fell,
Gives birth to verses by the ell--
There Wordsworth, for his muse's sallies,
Claims all the ponds, the lanes, and alleys--
There Coleridge swears none else shall tune
A bag-pipe to the list'ning moon;
On come in clouds the scribbling columns,
Each prowling for his next three volumes.
Pages:
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106