Classic Poem

A GAIN I stop; — again the toil refuse!
Away, for pity's sake, distracting Muse,
Nor thus come smiling with thy bridal tricks
Between my studious face and politics.
Is it for thee to mock the frowns of fate?
Look round, look round, and mark my desperate state
Cannot thy gifted eyes a sight behold,
That might have quelled the Lesbian bard of old,
And made the blood of Dante's self run cold?

Lo, first the table spread with fearful books,
In which, whoe'er can help it, never looks;
Letters to Lords, Remarks, Reflections, Hints,
Lives, snatched a moment from the public prints;
Pamphlets to prove, on pain of our undoing,
That rags are wealth, and reformation ruin,
Journals, and briefs, and bills, and laws of libel,
And, bloated and blood-red, the placeman's annual Bible. n

Scarce from the load, as from a heap of dead,
My poor old Homer shows his living head;
Milton, in sullen darkness, yields to fate,
And Tasso groans beneath the courtly weight;
Horace alone (the rogue!) his doom has missed,
And lies at ease upon the Pension List.

Round these, in tall imaginary chairs,
Imps ever grinning, sit my daily cares;
Distaste, delays, dislikings to begin,
Gnawings of pen, and kneadings of the chin.
Here the Blue Daemon keeps his constant stir,
Who makes a man his own barometer;
There Nightmare, horrid mass! unfeatured heap!
Prepares to seize me if I fall asleep;
And there, with hands that grasp one's very soul,
Frowns Head-ache, scalper of the studious poll;
Head-ache, who lurks at noon about the courts,
And whets his tomahawk on East's Reports.

Chief of this social game, behind me stands,
Pale, peevish, periwigged, with itching hands,
A goblin double-tailed, and cloaked in black,
Who, while I'm gravely thinking, bites my back n
Around his head flits many a harpy shape,
With jaws of parchment, and long hairs of tape,
Threatening to pounce, and turn whate'er I write,
With their own venom, into foul despite.
Let me but name the court, they swear and curse
And din me with hard names; and what is worse
'Tis now three times that I have missed my purse.

No wonder poor Torquato went distracted,
On whose galled senses just such pranks were acted;
When the small tyrant, God knows on what ground,
With dungeons and with doctors hemmed him round.

Last, but not least, (methinks I see him now!)
With stare expectant, and a ragged brow,
Comes the foul fiend, who — let it rain or shine,
Let it be clear or cloudy, foul or fine,
Or freezing, thawing, drizzling, hailing, snowing,
Or mild, or warm, or hot, or bleak and blowing,
Or damp, or dry, or dull, or sharp, or sloppy,
Is sure to come, — the Devil, who comes for copy,

*****

But see! e'en now the Muse's charm prevails;
The shapes are moved, the stricken circle fails;
With backward grins of malice they retire,
Scared by her seraph looks and smiles of fire.
That instant, as the hindmost shuts the door,
The bursting sunshine smites the windowed floor;
Bursts too on every side the sparkling sound
Of birds abroad; th' elastic spirits bound;
And the fresh mirth of morning breathes around:
Away, ye clouds; dull politics, give place;
Off, cares, and wants, and threats, and all the race
Of foes to freedom and to laurelled leisure! —
To-day is for the Muse, and dancing Pleasure.

Oh for a seat in some poetic nook,
Just hid with trees, and sparkling with a brook,
Where through the quivering boughs the sunbeams shoot
Their arrowy diamonds upon flower and fruit,
While stealing airs come fuming o'er the stream,
And lull the fancy to a waking dream!
There shouldst thou come, O first of my desires,
What time the noon had spent its fiercer fires,
And all the bow'r, with chequered shadows strewn,
Glowed with a mellow twilight of its own.
There shouldst thou come, and there sometimes with thee
Might deign repair the staid Philosophy,
To taste thy fresh'ning brook, and trim thy groves,
And tell us what good task true glory loves.

I see it now! — I pierce the fairy glade,
And feel th' enclosing influence of the shade.
A thousand forms, that sport on summer eves,
Glance through the light, and whisper in the leaves,
While every bough seems nodding with a sprite,
And every air seems hushing the delight,
And the calm bliss, fixed on itself awhile,
Dimples the unconscious lips into a smile.

Anon strange music breathes; — the fairies show
Their pranksome crowd; and in grave order go
Beside the water, singing, small and clear,
New harmonies unknown to mortal ear,
Caught upon moonlight nights from some nigh-wandering sphere.
I turn to them, and listen with fixed eyes,
And feel my spirits mount on winged ecstacies.

In vain. — For now, with looks that doubly burn,
Shamed of their late defeat, my foes return;
They know their foil is short; — and shorter still,
The bliss that waits upon the Muse's will.
Back to their seats they rush, and reassume
Their ghastly rites, and sadden all the room.
O'er ears and brain the bursting wrath descends,
Cabals, misstatements, noise of private ends,
Doubts, hazards, crosses, cloud-compelling vapours,
With dire necessity to read the papers,
Judicial slaps that would have stung Saint Paul,
Costs, pityings, warnings, wits; and worse than all,
(Oh for a dose of Thelwall or of poppy!)
The fiend, the punctual fiend, that bawls for copy!
Full in the midst, like that Gorgonian spell,
Whose ravening features glared collected hell,
The well-wigged pest his curling horror shakes,
And a fourth snap of threatening vengeance takes!
At that dread sight the Muse at last turns pale,
Freedom and Fiction's self no more avail;
And lo! my Bower of Bliss is turned into a jail!

What then? What then? my better genius cries: —
Scandals and jails! All these you may despise.
The enduring soul, that, to keep others free,
Dares to give up its darling liberty,
Lives wheresoe'er its countrymen applaud,
And in their great enlargement walks abroad:
But toils alone, and struggles every hour,
Against the insatiate, gold-flushed Lust of Power,
Can keep the fainting Virtue of thy land
From the rank slaves that gather round his hand.
Be poor in purse, and law will soon undo thee;
Be poor in soul, and self-contempt will rue thee.

I yield, I yield. — Once more I turn to you,
Harsh politics! and once more bid adieu
To the soft dreaming of the Muse's bowers,
Their sun-streaked fruits and fairy-painted flowers;
Farewell, for gentler times, ye laurelled shades;
Farewell, ye sparkling brooks and haunted glades,
Where the trim shapes that bathe in moonlight eves,
Glance through the light, and whisper in the leaves,
While every bough seems nodding with a sprite,
And every air seems hushing the delight.

Farewell, farewell, dear Muse, and all thy pleasure!
He conquers ease, who would be crowned with leisure.