Then take in hand thy lyre, Who aided him, will thee, the issue of Jove's brain. And since our dainty age To that strumpet the stage, But sing high and aloof, Safe from the wolf's black jaw, and the dull ass's hoof. THE JUST INDIGNATION THE AUTHOR TOOK AT THE BEGAT THIS ODE (TO HIMSELF). COME leave the loathed stage, Indicting and arraigning every day, Let their fastidious, vain Commission of the brain Run on and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn; Say that thou pour'st them wheat, 'Twere simple fury still thyself to waste If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine, No doubt some mouldy tale, As the shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish- Thrown forth, and raked into the common tub, As the best-order'd meal; For who the relish of these guests will fit, And much good do't you then: Can feed on orts; and, safe in your stage-clothes, The stagers and the stage-wrights too, your peers, With their foul comic socks, Which, if they are torn, and turn'd, and patch'd enough, The gamesters share your gilt, and you their stuff. Leave things so prostitute Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyre; And though thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold Strike that disdainful heat As curious fools, and envious of thy strain, But when they hear thee sing His zeal to God, and his just awe o'er men: Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers In sound of peace or wars, No harp e'er hit the stars, In tuning forth the acts of his sweet reign; THE WALTER SCOTT Publishing CO., LTD., NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE 4-03 THE CANTERBURY POETS. 1/- VOLS., SQUARE 8V0. PHOTOGRAVURE EDITION 2. Christian Year. Coleridge. Longfellow. Campbell. Shelley. Wordsworth. Blake. Golden Treasury. Dora Greenwell, Owen Meredith's Poems. Imitation of Christ. Women-Poets. American Humor. Verse. German Ballads. Poems by Roden Noel. Poems of Nature. Browning's Poems, Vol. 2. Mackay's Lover's Missal. Tennyson's Poems, Vol. 1 James Thomson. New Zealand Verse. |