by Byron
Leaves his snug shop, forsakes his store of shoes,
St Crispin quits, and cobbles for the muse,
Heavens! how the vulgar stare! how crowds applaud!
770
How ladies read, and literati laud!1
If chance some wicked wag should pass his jest,
‘Tis sheer ill-nature – don’t the world know best?
Genius must guide when wits admire the rhyme,
And Capel Lofft2 declares ’tis quite sublime.
775
Hear, then, ye happy sons of needless trade!
Swains! quit the plough, resign the useless spade!
Lo! Burns and Bloomfield, nay, a greater far,
Gifford was born beneath an adverse star,
Forsook the labours of a servile state,
780
Stemm’d the rude storm, and triumph’d over fate:
Then why no more? if Phœbus smiled on you
Bloomfield! why not on brother Nathan too?3
Him too the mania, not the muse, has seized;
Not inspiration, but a mind diseased:
785
And now no boor can seek his last abode,
No common be enclosed without an ode.
Oh! since increased refinement deigns to smile
On Britain’s sons, and bless our genial isle,
Let poesy go forth pervade the whole
790
Alike the rustic, and mechanic soul!
Ye tuneful cobblers! still your notes prolong,
Compose at once a slipper and a song;
So shall the fair your handywork peruse,
Your sonnets sure shall please – perhaps your shoes.
795
May Moorland weavers1 boast Pindaric skill,
And tailors’ lays be longer than their bill!
While punctual beaux reward the grateful notes,
And pay for poems – when they pay for coats.
To the famed throng now paid the tribute due,
800
Neglected genius! let me turn to you.
Come forth, oh Campbell!2 give thy talents scope;
Who dares aspire if thou must cease to hope?
And thou, melodious Rogers!3 rise at last,
Recall the pleasing memory of the past;
805
Arise! let blest remembrance still inspire,
And strike to wonted tones thy hallow’d lyre;
Restore Apollo to his vacant throne,
Assert thy country’s honour and thine own.
What! must deserted Poesy still weep
810
Where her last hopes with pious Cowper sleep?
Unless, perchance, from his cold bier she turns,
To deck the turf that wraps her minstrel, Burns!
No! though contempt hath mark’d the spurious brood,
The race who rhyme from folly, or for food,
815
Yet still some genuine sons ‘tis hers to boast,
Who, least affecting, still affect the most:
Feel as they write, and write but as they feel –
Bear witness Gifford,4 Sotheby,5 Macneil.6
‘Why slumbers Gifford?’ once was ask’d in vain;
820
Why slumbers Gifford? let us ask again.
Are there no follies for his pen to purge?1
Are there no fools whose backs demand the scourge?
Are there no sins for satire’s bard to greet?
Stalks not gigantic Vice in every street?
825
Shall peers or princes tread pollution’s path,
And ’scape alike the law’s and muse’s wrath?
Nor blaze with guilty glare through future time,
Eternal beacons of consummate crime?
Arouse thee, Gifford! be thy promise claim’d,
830
Make bad men better, or at least ashamed.
Unhappy White!2 while life was in its spring,
And thy young muse just waved her joyous wing,
The spoiler swept that soaring lyre away,
Which else had sounded an immortal lay.
835
Oh! what a noble heart was here undone,
When Science’s self destroy’d her favourite son!
Yes, she too much indulged thy fond pursuit,
She sow’d the seeds, but death has reap’d the fruit.
‘Twas thine own genius gave the final blow,
840
And help’d to plant the wound that laid thee low:
So the struck eagle, stretch’d upon the plain,
No more through rolling clouds to soar again,
View’d his own feather on the fatal dart,
And wing’d the shaft that quiver’d in his heart;
845
Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel
He nursed the pinion which impell’d the steel;
While the same plumage that had warm’d his nest
Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.
There be, who say, in these enlighten’d days,
850
That splendid lies are all the poet’s praise;
That strain’d invention, ever on the wing,
Alone impels the modern bard to sing:
‘Tis true, that all who rhyme – nay, all who write,
Shrink from that fatal word to genius – trite;
855
Yet Truth sometimes will lend her noblest fires,
And decorate the verse herself inspires:
This fact in Virtue’s name let Crabbe1 attest;
Though nature’s sternest painter, yet the best.
And here let Shee2 and Genius find a place,
860
Whose pen and pencil yield an equal grace;
To guide whose hand the sister arts combine,
And trace the poet’s or the painter’s line;
Whose magic touch can bid the canvass glow,
Or pour the easy rhyme’s harmonious flow;
865
While honours, doubly merited, attend
The poet’s rival, but the painter’s friend.
Blest is the man who dares approach the bower
Where dwelt the muses at their natal hour;
Whose steps have press’d, whose eye has mark’d afar,
870
The clime that nursed the sons of song and war,
The scenes which glory still must hover o’er,
Her place of birth, her own Achaian shore.
But doubly blest is he whose heart expands
With hallow’d feelings for those classic lands;
875
Who rends the veil of ages long gone by,
And views their remnants with a poet’s eye!
Wright!3 ’twas thy happy lot at once to view
Those shores of glory, and to sing them too;
And sure no common muse inspired thy pen
880
To hail the land of gods and godlike men.
And you, associate bards!1 who snatch’d to light
Those gems too long withheld from modern sight;
Whose mingling taste combined to cull the wreath
Where Attic flowers Aonian odours breathe,
885
And all their renovated fragrance flung,
To grace the beauties of your native tongue;
Now let those minds, that nobly could transfuse
The glorious spirit of the Grecian muse
Though soft the echo, scorn a borrow’d tone:
890
Resign Achaia’s lyre, and strike your own.
Let these, or such as these, with just applause,
Restore the muse’s violated laws;
But not in flimsy Darwin’s pompous chime,
That mighty master of unmeaning rhyme,
895
Whose gilded cymbals, more adorn’d than clear,
The eye delighted but fatigued the
ear;
In show the simple lyre could once surpass,
But now, worn down, appear in native brass;
While all his train of hovering sylphs around
900
Evaporate in similes and sound:
Him let them shun, with him let tinsel die:
False glare attracts, but more offends the eye.2
Yet let them not to vulgar Wordsworth stoop,
The meanest object of the lowly group,
905
Whose verse, of all but childish prattle void,
Seems blessed harmony to Lamb and Lloyd:3
Let them – but hold, my muse, nor dare to teach
A strain far, far beyond thy humble reach:
The native genius with their being given
910
Will point the path, and peal their notes to heaven.
And thou, too, Scott!1 resign to minstrels rude
The wilder slogan of a border feud:
Let others spin their meagre lines for hire;
Enough for genius if itself inspire!
915
Let Southey sing, although his teeming muse,
Prolific ever srin be too rofuse
Let simple Wordsworth2 chime his childish verse,
And brother Coleridge lull the babe at nurse;
Let spectre-mongering Lewis aim, at most,
920
To rouse the galleries, or to raise a ghost;
Let Moore still sigh; let Strangford steal from Moore,
And swear that Camoëns sang such notes of yore;
Let Hayley hobble on, Montgomery rave,
And godly Grahame chant a stupid stave;
925
Let sonneteering Bowles his strains refine,
And whine and whimper to the fourteenth line;
Let Stott, Carlisle,3 Matilda, and the rest
Of Grub-street, and of Grosvenor-place the best
Scrawl on, ’till death release us from the strain,
930
Or Common Sense assert her rights again.
But thou, with powers that mock the aid of praise,
Shouldst leave to humbler bards ignoble lays:
Thy country’s voice, the voice of all the nine,
Demand a hallow’d harp – that harp is thine.
935
Say! will not Caledonia’s annals yield
The glorious record of some nobler field
Than the vile foray of a plundering clan,
Whose proudest deeds disgrace the name of man?
Or Marmion’s acts of darkness, fitter food
940
For Sherwood’s outlaw tales of Robin Hood?
Scotland! still proudly claim thy native bard,
And be thy praise his first, his best reward!
Yet not with thee alone his name should live,
But own the vast renown a world can give;
945
Be known, perchance, when Albion is no more,
And tell the tale of what she was before;
To future times her faded fame recall,
And save her glory, though his country fall.
Yet what avails the sanguine poet’s hope,
950
To conquer ages, and with time to cope?
New eras spread their wings, new nations rise,
And other victors fill the applauding skies;
A few brief generations fleet along,
Whose sons forget the poet and his song:
955
E’en now, what once-loved minstrels scarce may claim
The transient mention of a dubious name!
When fame’s loud trump hath blown its noblest blast,
Though long the sound, the echo sleeps at last;
And glory, like the phœnix1 ‘midst her fires,
960
Exhales her odours, blazes, and expires.
Shall hoary Granta call her sable sons,
Expert in science, more expert at puns?
Shall these approach the muse? ah, no! she flies,
Even from the tempting ore of Seaton’s prize;
965
Though printers condescend the press to soil
With rhyme by Hoare, and epic blank by Hoyle:
Not him whose page, if still upheld by whist,
Requires no sacred theme to bid us list.2
Ye! who in Granta’s honours would surpass,
970
Must mount her Pegasus, a full-grown ass;
A foal well worthy of her ancient dam,
Whose Helicon is duller than her Cam.
There Clarke, still striving piteously ‘to please,’
Forgetting doggrel leads not to degrees,
975
A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon,
A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon,3
Condemn’d to drudge, the meanest of the mean,
And furbish falsehoods for a magazine,
Devotes to scandal his congenial mind;
980
Himself a living libel on mankind.4
Oh! dark asylum of a Vandal race!1
At once the boast of learning, and disgrace!
So lost to Phœbus, that nor Hodgson’s2 verse
Can make thee better, nor poor Hewson’s3 worse.
985
But where fair Isis rolls her purer wave,
The partial muse delighted loves to lave;
On her green banks a greener wreath she wove,
To crown the bards that haunt her classic grove;
Where Richards wakes a genuine poet’s fires,
990
And modern Britons glory in their sires.4
For me, who, thus unask’d, have dared to tell
My country, what her sons should know too well,
Zeal for her honour bade me here engage
The host of idiots that infest her age;
995
No just applause her honour’d name shall lose,
As first in freedom, dearest to the muse.
Oh! would thy bards but emulate thy fame,
And rise more worthy, Albion, of thy name!
What Athens was in science, Rome in power,
1000
What Tyre appear’d in her meridian hour,
‘Tis thine at once, fair Albion! to have been –
Earth’s chief dictatress, ocean’s lovely queen:
But Rome decay’d, and Athens strew’d the plain,
And Tyre’s proud piers lie shatter’d in the main;
1005
Like these, thy strength may sink, in ruin hurl’d,
And Britain fall, the bulwark of the world.
But let me cease, and dread Cassandra’s fate,
With warning ever scoff’d at, till too late;
To themes less lofty still my lay confine,
1010
And urge thy bards to gain a name like thine.
Then, hapless Britain! be thy rulers blest,
The senate’s oracles, the people’s jest!
Still hear thy motley orators dispense
The flowers of rhetoric, though not of sense,
1015
While Canning’s colleagues hate him for his wit,
And old dame Portland1 fills the place of Pitt.
Yet once again, adieu! ere this the sail
That wafts me hence is shivering in the gale;
And Afric’s coast and Calpe’s adverse height,
1020
And Stamboul’s minarets must greet my sight:
Thence shall I stray through beauty’s native clime,2
Where Kaff3 is clad in rocks, and crown’d with snows sublime.
But should I back return, no tempting press4
Shall drag my journal from the desk’s recess:
1025
Let coxcombs, printing as they come from far,
Snatch his own wreath of ridicule from Carr;
Let Aberdeen and Elgin1 still pursue
&n
bsp; The shade of fame through regions of virtù;
Waste useless thousands on their Phidian freaks,
1030
Misshapen monuments and maim’d antiques;
And make their grand saloons a general mart
For all the mutilated blocks of art:
Of Dardan tours let dilettanti tell,
I leave topography to rapid2 Gell;3
1035
And, quite content, no more shall interpose
To stun the public ear – at least with prose.
Thus far I’ve held my undisturb’d career,
Prepared for rancour, steel’d ’gainst selfish fear:
This thing of rhyme I ne’er disdain’d to own –
1040
Though not obtrusive, yet not quite unknown:
My voice was heard again, though not so loud,
My page, though nameless, never disavow’d;
And now at once I tear the veil away: –
Cheer on the pack! the quarry stands at bay,
1045
Unscared by all the din of Melbourne house,
By Lambe’s resentment, or by Holland’s spouse,
By Jeffrey’s harmless pistol, Hallam’s rage,
Edina’s brawny sons and brimstone page.
Our men in buckram shall have blows enough,
1050
And feel they too are ‘penetrable stuff:’
And though I hope not hence unscathed to go,
Who conquers me shall find a stubborn foe.
The time hath been, when no harsh sound would fall
From lips that now may seem imbued with gall;
1055
Nor fools nor follies tempt me to despise
The meanest thing that crawl’d beneath my eyes:
But now, so callous grown, so changed since youth,
I’ve learn’d to think, and sternly speak the truth;
Learn’d to deride the critic’s starch decree,
1060
And break him on the wheel he meant for me;
To spurn the rod a scribbler bids me kiss,
Nor care if courts and crowds applaud or hiss:
Nay more, though all my rival rhymesters frown,
I too can hunt a poetaster down;
1065
And, arm’d in proof, the gauntlet cast at once
To Scotch marauder, and to southern dunce.
Thus much I’ve dared; if my incondite lay
Hath wrong’d these righteous times, let others say:
This, let the world, which knows not how to spare,
1070
Yet rarely blames unjustly, now declare.1
‘Up, up, my friend, and clear your looks;
Why all this toil and trouble?
Up, up, my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you’ll grow double.
POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION
I have been informed, since the present edition went to the press, that my trusty and well-beloved cousins, the Edinburgh Reviewers, are preparing a most vehement critique on my poor, gentle, unresisting, Muse, whom they have already so be-deviled with their ungodly ribaldry: