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Then take in hand thy lyre,
Strike in thy proper strain,
With Japhet's line, aspire
Sol's chariot for new fire,
To give the world again :

Who aided him, will thee, the issue of Jove's brain.

And since our dainty age
Cannot endure reproof,
Make not thyself a page,

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
VULGAR CENSURE OF HIS PLAY, "THE NEW INN,"
BY SOME MALICIOUS SPECTATORS,
FOLLOWING

BEGAT

THIS

ODE

(TO HIMSELF).

COME leave the loathed stage,
And the more loathsome age;
Where pride and impudence, in faction knit,
Usurp the chair of wit!

Indicting and arraigning every day,
Something they call a play.

Let their fastidious, vain

Commission of the brain

Run on and rage, sweat, censure, and condemn;
They were not made for thee, less thou for them.

Say that thou pour'st them wheat,
And they will acorns eat;

'Twere simple fury still thyself to waste
On such as have no taste!
To offer them a surfeit of pure bread,
Whose appetites are dead!
No, give them grains their fill,
Husks, draff to drink and swill:

If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine,
Envy them not, their palate's with the swine.

No doubt some mouldy tale,
Like Pericles, and stale

As the shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish-
Scraps, out of every dish

Thrown forth, and raked into the common tub,
May keep up the Play-club;
There, sweepings do as well

As the best-order'd meal;

For who the relish of these guests will fit,
Needs set them but the alms-basket of wit.

And much good do't you then:
Brave plush and velvet-men,

Can feed on orts; and, safe in your stage-clothes,
Dare quit, upon your oaths,

The stagers and the stage-wrights too, your peers,
Of larding your large ears

With their foul comic socks,
Wrought upon twenty blocks;

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
And take the Alcaic lute;

Or thine own Horace, or Anacreon's lyre;
Warm thee by Pindar's fire:

And though thy nerves be shrunk, and blood be cold
Ere years have made thee old,

Strike that disdainful heat
Throughout, to their defeat,

As curious fools, and envious of thy strain,
May, blushing, swear no palsy's in thy brain.

But when they hear thee sing
The glories of thy king,

His zeal to God, and his just awe o'er men:
They may, blood-shaken then,

Feel such a flesh-quake to possess their powers
As they shall cry,
Like ours,

In sound of peace or wars,

No harp e'er hit the stars,

In tuning forth the acts of his sweet reign;
And raising Charles his chariot 'bove his Wain."

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.

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Golden Treasury.
Poems of Wild Life.
Paradise Regained.
Crabbe.

Dora Greenwell,
Goethe's Faust.
American_Sonnets.
Landor's Poems.
Greek Anthology.
Hunt and Hood.
Humorous Poems.
Lytton's Plays.
Great Odes.

Owen Meredith's Poems.

Imitation of Christ.
Painter-Poets.

Women-Poets.
Love Lyrics.

American Humor. Verse.
Scottish Minor Poets.
Cavalier Lyrists.

German Ballads.
Songs of Beranger.

Poems by Roden Noel.
Songs of Freedom.
Canadian Poems.
Contemporary Scottish
Verse.

Poems of Nature.
Cradle Songs.
Poetry of Sport.
Matthew Arnold.
The Bothie (Clough).
Browning's Poems, Vol. 1
Pippa Passes, etc.

Browning's Poems, Vol. 2.
A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, etc.
Browning's Poems, Vol. 3.
Dramatic Lyrics.

Mackay's Lover's Missal.
Henry Kirke White.
Lyra Nicotiana.
Aurora Leigh.
Naval Songs

Tennyson's Poems, Vol. 1
In Memoriam, Maud, etc.
Tennyson's Poems, Vol. 2.
The Princess, etc.
War Songs.

James Thomson.
Alexander Smith.
Lee-Hamilton.
Paul Verlaine.
Baudelaire.

New Zealand Verse.

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