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Bob Southey! You're a poet, poet laureate,
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And representative of all the race.
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Although 'tis true that you turned out a Tory at
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Last, yours has lately been a common case.
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And now my epic renegade, what are ye at
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With all the lakers, in and out of place?
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A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye
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Like four and twenty blackbirds in a pye,
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Which pye being opened they began to sing'
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(This old song and new simile holds good),
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'A dainty dish to set before the King'
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Or Regent, who admires such kind of food.
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And Coleridge too has lately taken wing,
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But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,
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Explaining metaphysics to the nation.
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I wish he would explain his explanation.
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You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know,
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At being disappointed in your wish
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To supersede all warblers here below,
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And be the only blackbird in the dish.
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And then you overstrain yourself, or so,
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And tumble downward like the flying fish
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Gasping on deck, because you soar too high,
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Bob, And fall for lack of moisture quite a dry Bob.
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And Wordsworth in a rather long Excursion
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(I think the quarto holds five hundred pages)
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Has given a sample from the vasty version
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Of his new system to perplex the sages.
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'Tis poetry, at least by his assertion,
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And may appear so when the Dog Star rages,
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And he who understands it would be able
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To add a story to the tower of Babel.
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You gentlemen, by dint of long seclusion
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From better company, have kept your own
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At Keswick, and through still continued fusion
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Of one another's minds at last have grown
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To deem, as a most logical conclusion,
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That poesy has wreaths for you alone.
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There is a narrowness in such a notion,
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Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for ocean.
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I would not imitate the petty thought,
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Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,
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For all the glory your conversion brought,
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Since gold alone should not have been its price.
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You have your salary; was't for that you wrought?
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And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.
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You're shabby fellows—true—but poets still
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And duly seated on the immortal hill.
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Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows,
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Perhaps some virtuous blushes; let them go.
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To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs,
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And for the fame you would engross below,
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The field is universal and allows
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Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow.
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Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe will try
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'Gainst you the question with posterity.
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For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,
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Contend not with you on the winged' steed,
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I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,
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The fame you envy and the skill you need.
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And recollect a poet nothing loses
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In giving to his brethren their full meed
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Of merit, and complaint of present days
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Is not the certain path to future praise.
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He that reserves his laurels for posterity
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(Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
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Has generally no great crop to spare it, he
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Being only injured by his own assertion.
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And although here and there some glorious rarity
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Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,
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The major part of such appellants go
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To—God knows where—for no one else can know.
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If fallen in evil days on evil tongues,
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Milton appealed to the avenger, Time,
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If Time, the avenger, execrates his wrongs
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And makes the word Miltonic mean sublime,
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He deigned not to belie his soul in songs,
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Nor turn his very talent to a crime.
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He did not loathe the sire to laud the son,
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But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.
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Think'st thou, could he, the blind old man, arise
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Like Samuel from the grave to freeze once more
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The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,
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Or be alive again—again all hoar
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With time and trials, and those helpless eyes
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And heartless daughters—worn and pale and poor,
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Would he adore a sultan? He obey
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The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?
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Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!
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Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,
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And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
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Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore,
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The vulgarest tool that tyranny could want,
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With just enough of talent and no more,
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To lengthen fetters by another fixed
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And offer poison long already mixed.
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An orator of such set trash of phrase,
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Ineffably, legitimately vile,
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That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
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Nor foes—all nations—condescend to smile.
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Not even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze
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From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil,
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That turns and turns to give the world a notion
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Of endless torments and perpetual motion.
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A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
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And botching, patching, leaving still behind
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Something of which its masters are afraid,
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States to be curbed and thoughts to be confined,
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Conspiracy or congress to be made,
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Cobbling at manacles for all mankind,
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A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
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With God and man's abhorrence for its gains.
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If we may judge of matter by the mind,
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Emasculated to the marrow, it
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Hath but two objects, how to serve and bind,
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Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
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Eutropius of its many masters, blind
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To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,
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Fearless, because no feeling dwells in ice;
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Its very courage stagnates to a vice.
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Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds,
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For I will never feel them. Italy,
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Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds
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Beneath the lie this state-thing breathed o'er thee.
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Thy clanking chain and Erin's yet green wounds
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Have voices, tongues to cry aloud for me.
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Europe has slaves, allies, kings, armies still,
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And Southey lives to sing them very ill.
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Meantime, Sir Laureate, I proceed to dedicate
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In honest simple verse this song to you.
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And if in flattering strains I do not predicate,
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'Tis that I still retain my buff and blue;
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My politics as yet are all to educate.
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Apostasy's so fashionable too,
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To keep one creed's a task grown quite
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