Classic Poem

IN CHARACTER .

Too long the triumphs of our early times,
With civil discord, and with regal crimes,
Have stain'd these boards; while Shakspeare's pen has shewn
Thoughts, manners, men, to modern days unknown.
Too long have Rome and Athens been the rage ;
And classic Buskins soil'd a British Stage.

To-night our Bard, who scorns pedantic rules,
His Plot has borrow'd from the German schools;
— The German schools — where no dull maxims bind
The bold expansion of the electric mind.
Fix'd to no period, circled by no space,
He leaps the flaming bounds of time and place:
Round the dark confines of the forest raves,
With gentle Robbers stocks his gloomy caves:
Tells how prime Ministers are shocking things,
And reigning Dukes as bad as tyrant Kings;
How to two swains one nymph her vows may give,
And how two damsels with one lover live!
Delicious scenes! — such scenes our Bard displays,
Which, crown'd with German, sue for British, praise.

Slow are the steeds, that through Germania's roads
With hempen rein the slumbering post-boy goads; —
Slow is the slumbering post-boy, who proceeds
Through deep sands floundering, on those tardy steeds;
More slow, more tedious, from his husky throat
Twangs through the twisted horn the struggling note.

These truths confess'd — Oh! yet, ye travell'd few,
Germania's Plays with eyes unjaundiced view!
View and approve! — though in each passage fine
The faint translation mock the genuine line;
Though the nice ear the erring sight belie,
For U twice dotted is pronounced like I ;
Yet oft the scene shall Nature's fire impart,
Warm from the breast, and glowing to the heart!

Ye travell'd few, attend! — On you our Bard
Builds his fond hope! Do you his genius guard!
Nor let succeeding generations say
— A British Audience damn'd a German Play!