Classic Poem

ON HIS WORKS, MDCCXXVI .

Let vulgar souls triumphal arches raise
And speaking marble to record their praise,
Or carve with fruitless toil, to fame unknown,
The mimic feature on the breathing stone;
Mere mortals, subject to Death's total sway,
Reptiles of earth, and beings of a day;
'T is thine on ev'ry heart to grave thy praise,
A monument which worth alone can raise;
Sure to survive when time shall whelm in dust
The arch, the marble, and the mimic bust;
Nor till the volumes of th' expanded sky
Blaze in one flame, shalt thou and Homer die,
When sink together, in the world's last fires,
What heaven created and what heaven inspires.
If aught on earth, when once this breath is fled,
With human transport touch the mighty dead,
Shakespeare! rejoice; his hand thy page refines;
Now ev'ry scene with native brightness shines:
Just to thy fame, he gives thy genuine thought;
So Tully publish'd what Lucretius wrote:
Prun'd by his care, thy laurels loftier grow,
And bloom afresh on thy immortal brow.
Thus when thy draughts, O Raphael! time invades,
And the bold figure from the canvass fades,
A rival hand recals from ev'ry part
Some latent grace, and equals art with art;
Transported we survey the dubious strife,
While the fair image starts again to life.
How long untun'd had Homer's sacred lyre
Jarr'd grating discord, all extinct his fire?
This you beheld, and taught by heaven to sing,
Call'd the loud music from the sounding string.
Now wak'd from slumbers of three thousand years,
Once more Achilles in dread pomp appears,
Tow'rs o'er the field of death as fierce he turns,
Keen flash his arms, and all the hero burns;
His plume nods horrible! his helm on high
With cheeks of iron glares against the sky;
With martial stalk, and more than mortal might,
He strides along; he meets the gods in fight:
Then the pale Titans, chain'd on burning floors,
Start at the din that rends th' infernal shores:
Tremble the tow'rs of heaven, earth rocks her coasts,
And gloomy Pluto shakes with all his ghosts.
To ev'ry theme responds thy various lay;
Here pours a torrent, there meanders play.
Sonorous as the storm thy numbers rise,
Toss the wild waves, and thunder in the skies;
Or softer than a yielding virgin's sigh,
The gentle breezes breathe away and die.
How twangs the bow when with a jarring spring
The whizzing arrows vanish from the string!
When giants strain some rock's vast weight to shove
The slow verse heaves, and the clogg'd words scarce move;
But when from high itrolls with many a bound,
Jumping it thund'ring whirls and rushes to the ground:
Swift flows the verse when winged lightnings fly,
Dart from the dazzled view, and flash along the sky.
Thus, like the radiant god who sheds the day,
The vale you paint, or gild the azure way;
And while with ev'ry theme the verse complies,
Sink without grov'ling, without rashness rise.
Proceed, great bard! awake th' harmonious string;
Be ours all Homer; still Ulysses sing.
E'en I, the meanest of the muses' train,
Inflam'd by thee, attempt a nobler strain;
Adventrous waken the Maeonian lyre,
Tun'd by your hand, and sing as you inspire.
So arm'd by great Achilles for the fight,
Patroclus conquer'd in Achilles' might.
Like theirs our friendship; and I boast my name
To thine united, for thy friendship's fame.
How long Ulysses, by unskilful hands
Stript of his robes, a beggar trod our lands,
Such as he wander'd o'er his native coast,
Shrunk by the wand and all the hero lost;
O'er his smooth skin a bark of wrinkles spread,
Old age disgrac'd the honours of his head,
Nor longer in his heavy eye-ball shin'd
The glance divine forth-beaming from the mind:
But you, like Pallas, ev'ry limb infold
With royal robes, and bid him shine in gold:
Touch'd by your hand his manly frame improves
With air divine, and like a god he moves.
This labour past of heavenly subject sing,
While hov'ring angels listen on the wing,
To hear from earth such heart-felt raptures rise,
As when they sing suspended hold the skies;
Or nobly rising in fair Virtue's cause,
From thy own life transcribe th' unerring laws;
Teach a bad world beneath her sway to bend:
To verse like thine fierce savages attend,
And men more fierce. When Orpheus tunes the lay,
E'en fiends relenting hear their rage away.