True Genius

Shall ancient worth, or ancient fame,
Preclude the moderns from their claim?
Must they be blockheads, dolts and fools,
Who write not up to Grecian rules?
Who tread in buskins or in socks,
Must they be damned as heterodox,
Nor merit of good works prevail,
Except within the classic pale?
'Tis stuff that bears the name of knowledge,
Not current half a mile from college;
Where half their lectures yield no more
(Besure I speak of times of yore)
Than just a niggard light, to mark
How much we all are in the dark.
As rushlights, in a spacious room,
Just burn enough to form a gloom.
 When Shakespeare leads the mind a dance
From France to England, hence to France,
Talk not to me of time and place;
I own I'm happy in the chase.
Whether the drama's here or there,
'Tis nature, Shakespeare, everywhere.
The poet's fancy can create,
Contract, enlarge, annihilate,
Bring past and present close together,
In spite of distance, seas, or weather;
And shut up in a single action,
What cost whole years in its transaction.
So, ladies at a play, or rout,
Can flirt the universe about,
Whose geographical account
Is drawn and pictured on the mount.
Yet, when they please, contract the plan,
And shut the world up in a fan.
 True Genius, like Armida's wand,
Can raise the spring from barren land.
While all the art of imitation
Is pilf'ring from the first creation;
Transplanting flowers, with useless toil,
Which wither in a foreign soil.
As conscience often sets us right
By its interior active light,
Without th' assistance of the laws
To combat in the moral cause;
So Genius, of itself discerning,
Without the mystic rules of learning,
Can, from its present intuition,
Strike at the truth of composition.