Classic Poem

“W HY don't you strike out something new”
Cried fair Euphemia, heavenly blue
Of eye as well as stocking
“If shilly-shally long you stand,
You'll feel Time's enervating hand
Your second cradle rocking.”

“Ah, madam! cease your bard to blame;
I view the pedestal of Fame,
But at its base I falter:
On every step, terrific, stand
A troop of Poets, pen in hand,
To scare me from her altar.

“I first essay'd to write in prose,
Plot, humour, character disclose,
And ransack heaths and hovels:
But, when I sat me down to write,
I sigh'd to find that I had quite
O'erlook'd the Scottish Novels.”

“Well,” cried Euphemia, with a smile,
“Miss Austin's gone: assume her style;
Turn playmate of Apollo—
But, hold! how heedless the remark!
Miss Austin's gone—but Mansfield Park
And Emma scorn to follow.”

A bolder flight I'd fain essay,
The manners of the East portray,
That field is rich and spacious:
Greece, Turkey, Egypt—was a scope!
There too I'm foil'd—why will not Hope
Un-write his Anastasius!

Rogers, in calm and even sense,
Byron, in ecstacy intense,
Make my dim flame burn denser:
Shall I in Fashion's corps enlist,
A light gay epigrammatist?
No!—there I'm marr'd by Spenser.

Thus “cribb'd and cabin'd—“poor indeed!”
canter'd on my winged sleed
Towards scenes of toil and tillage:
But there, alas! my weary back,
Hit on another beaten back,
Encountering Crabbe's Village.

Two pathways still to me belong,
Come, poignant Satire! amorous Song!
Beware, ye state empirics!—
Anticipated! hideous bore!
I quite forgot Hibernian Moore,
His Fudges and his Lyrics.

Great Jove! compassionate my lot!
On Campbell, Byron, Moore, and Scott,
Point thy celestial cannon:
Sew Crabbe and Rogers in a sack,
Tie Hope and Spenser back to back,
And souse them in the Shannon.

So shall I with majestic tread,
My doughty predecessors dead,
Up Pindus stretch my sinews:
And leave all lesser bards behind,
“The one-ey'd monarch of the blind,”
“The Triton of the Minnows.”