Classic Poem

Sweet Sensibility, thou soothing pow'r
Who shed'st thy blessings on the natal hour
Like fairy favours! Art can never seize,
Nor affectation catch, thy pow'r to please;
Thy subtle essence still eludes the chains
Of definition, and defeats her pains.
Sweet Sensibility, thou keen delight!
Thou hasty moral, sudden sense of right,
Thou untaught goddess, virtue's precious seed,
Thou sweet precursor of the gen'rous deed!
Beauty's quick relish, reason's radiant morn
Which dawns soft light before reflection's born!
To those who know thee not, no words can paint,
And those who know thee, know all words are faint!
'Tis not to mourn because a sparrow dies,
To rave in artificial ecstasies;
'Tis not to melt in tender Otway's fires;
'Tis not to faint when injured Shore expires;
'Tis not because the ready eye o'erflows
At Clementina's or Clarissa's woes.
Forgive, oh Richardson, nor think I mean
With cold contempt to blast thy peerless scene;
If some faint love of virtue glow in me,
Pure spirit, I first caught that flame from thee!
While soft compassion silently relieves,
Loquacious Feeling hints how much she gives,
Laments how oft her wounded heart has bled
And boasts of many a tear she never shed.
As words are but th' external marks to tell
The fair ideas in the mind that dwell,
And only are of things the outward sign,
And not the things themselves they but define,
So exclamations, tender tones, fond tears,
And all the graceful drapery Pity wears —
These are not Pity's self, they but express
Her inward sufferings by their pictured dress;
And these fair marks (reluctant I relate),
These lovely symbols may be counterfeit.
Celestial Pity! why must I deplore
Thy sacred image stamped on basest ore?
There are, who fill with brilliant plaints the page
If a poor linnet meet the gunner's rage;
There are, who for a dying fawn display
The tend'rest anguish in the sweetest lay;
Who for a wounded animal deplore
As if friend, parent, country were no more;
Who boast quick rapture trembling in their eye
If from the spider's snare they save a fly;
Whose well-sung sorrows every breast inflame,
And break all hearts but his from whom they came —
Yet, scorning life's dull duties to attend,
Will persecute a wife or wrong a friend;
Alive to every woe by fiction dressed,
The innocent he wronged, the wretch distressed
May plead in vain — their sufferings come not near,
Or he relieves them cheaply with a tear.