Classic Poem

Your leaves bound up compact and fair,
In neat array at length prepare,
To pass their hour on learning's stage,
To meet the surly critic's rage;
The statesman's slight, the smatterer's sneer--
Were these, indeed, your only fear,
You might be tranquil and resigned:
What most should touch your fluttering mind;
Is that, few critics will be found
To sift your works, and deal the wound.

Thus, when one fleeting year is past
On some bye-shelf your book is cast--
Another comes, with something new,
And drives you fairly out of view:
With some to praise, but more to blame,
The mind returns to--whence it came;
And some alive, who scarce could read
Will publish satires on the dead.

Thrice happy Dryden, who could meet
Some rival bard in every street!
When all were bent on writing well
It was some credit to excel:--

Thrice happy Dryden, who could find
A Milbourne for his sport designed--
And Pope, who saw the harmless rage
Of Dennis bursting o'er his page
Might justly spurn the critic's aim,
Who only helped to swell his fame.

On these bleak climes by Fortune thrown,
Where rigid Reason reigns alone,
Where lovely Fancy has no sway,
Nor magic forms about us play--
Nor nature takes her summer hue
Tell me, what has the muse to do?--

An age employed in edging steel
Can no poetic raptures feel;
No solitude's attracting power,
No leisure of the noon day hour,
No shaded stream, no quiet grove
Can this fantastic century move;

The muse of love in no request--
Go--try your fortune with the rest,
One of the nine you should engage,
To meet the follies of the age:--

On one, we fear, your choice must fall--
The least engaging of them all--
Her visage stern--an angry style--
A clouded brow--malicious smile--
A mind on murdered victims placed--
She, only she, can please the taste!