An Epistle to Rheinhart Kleiner, Esq., Poet-Laureate

Congenial KLEINER, whose broad brow sustains

The bays that prove the sweetness of thy strains:

To rougher rhymes than thine an audience lend,

And take th’ admiring tribute of a friend.

What shall I say? Must I in pain rehearse

The deadly dulness of a modern verse,

Or prate of Whitman, whose Boeotian bawl

Can scarce be justly labell’d verse at all?

Alas! such themes no charms for me afford,

Nor can I scan them happy and unbor’d.

Pox on the rogues that writ these lifeless lays!

My fancy beckons me to nobler days!

Say, waking Muse, where ages best unfold,

And tales of times forgotten most are told;

Where weary pedants, dryer than the dust,

Like some lov’d incense scent their letter’d must;

Where crumbling tomes upon the groaning shelves

Cast their lost centuries about ourselves.

Mine be the pleasure of the grimy stand

Where age-old volumes sleep on ev’ry hand.

Mine be the joy to live in Thought’s demesne

The bygone hours of volumes thick and lean;

With Wittie’s aid to count the Zodiac host,

Or hunt with Johnson for the Cock-Lane Ghost.

O’er Mather’s prosy page, half dreaming, pore,

Or follow Hawkesworth to the distant shore.

Ye old familiar friends whom ages bless,

How oft ye greet me in a diff’rent dress!

Watch shining Maro, who on ev’ry side

Adorns the dingy walls with Roman pride.

Untouch’d or English’d; French or Leipzig made,

The lustrous lines of Virgil pierce the shade.

O Mantuan Lamp! what bard before or since

Can such a wealth of polish’d force evince?

Thus the quick question, but the answer lies

Where yonder rotting Homer meets our eyes.

The blind, the bearded bard before us burns,

And thrills our temples with his tragic turns.

Of Ilion’s siege each time as new we hear,

While shrewd Ulysses charms the eager ear.

These share we all, yet what affection twines

About obscurer, less remember’d lines!

Each knows his fav’rites, and in fancy claims

For boon companions those forgotten names.

Would ye read Lucan? Start ye then and go

Where Lucan gains Britannic garb from Rowe.

Full many a Grecian lyrist smiles or grieves

To English tunes thro’ Elton’s quarto leaves.

Or if our own originals you’d see,

Go smell the drugs in Garth’s Dispensary!

What shades scholastic thro’ the twilight flit

Where Knapton’s sagging folios loosely sit!

The skull-capp’d dealer, crouching on his stool,

O’er the vague past can claim a wizard’s rule:

On his seam’d face the myriad wrinkles play,

And subtly link him to the yesterday.

Rise, Stanhope, rise! Thy macaroni train

Dance in the beams that pierce the dusty pane.

Hail! sportive Rochester, bestir thy feet,

And mince in fancy o’er the cobbled street!

House after house appear in gabled rows,

And the dim room Old London’s spirit shews!

Upon the floor, in Sol’s enfeebled blaze,

The coal-black puss with youthful ardour plays;

Yet what more ancient symbol may we scan

Than puss, the age-long satellite of Man?

Egyptian days a feline worship knew,

And Roman consuls heard the plaintive mew:

The glossy mite can win a scholar’s glance,

Whilst sages pause to watch a kitten prance.

Outside the creaking door a nation boils,

And Progress crushes Learning in its coils.

The blessed Past in mad confusion fades,

And Commerce blasts Retirement’s quiet shades.

Unnumber’d noises, in demoniac choir,

Wake the curs’d Pit, and stir the seething fire.

A million passengers, in hast’ning heat,

Jostle their fellows, and disturb the street.

From their coarse lips barbaric tones diffuse,

To shock the senses, and affront the Muse.

Decadent day! that Culture must return

To cloister’d cell, and Men, secluded, learn.

O! for the days when I would idly dream

In grassy meads by Seekonk’s swelling stream;

When leafy groves adorn’d the rising hill,

And in the copse the feather’d train would trill.

When fragrant zephyrs fann’d the summer green,

And stars, undimm’d, lit winter’s snowy scene.

Then flow’d the verse spontaneous from the heart,

That now demands the student’s labour’d art.

Then pour’d Creation’s blessings on us all,

Which now we strain from books in dingy stall.

Yet let us bless the bookstall whilst it stays;

That, too, may soon be part of other days!