English bards and Scotch reviewers; a satire. To which is added, An ode to Bonaparte [and Oscar of Alva].

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West & Blake, 1814 - 72 pages

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Page 38 - So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart, And winged the shaft that quivered in his heart ; Keen were his pangs, but keener far to feel He nursed the pinion which impelled the steel ; While the same plumage that had warmed his nest Drank the last life-drop of his bleeding breast.
Page 54 - All Evil Spirit as thou art, It is enough to grieve the heart To see thine own unstrung; To think that God's fair world hath been The footstool of a thing so mean!
Page 54 - Thine evil deeds are writ in gore, Nor written thus in vain — Thy triumphs tell of fame no more, Or deepen every stain...
Page 24 - Health to great Jeffrey ! Heaven preserve his life To flourish on the fertile shores of Fife, And guard it sacred in its future wars, Since authors sometimes seek the field of Mars ! Can none remember that eventful day ? That ever glorious, almost fatal fray, When Little's leadless pistol met his eye, And Bow-street myrmidons stood laughing by?
Page 16 - Next comes the dull disciple of thy school, That mild apostate from poetic rule, The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay As soft as evening in his favourite May, Who warns his friend 'to shake off toil and trouble, And quit his books, for fear of growing double...
Page 16 - Who, both by precept and example, shows That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose; Convincing all, by demonstration plain, Poetic souls delight in prose insane; And Christmas stories tortured into rhyme Contain the essence of the true sublime. Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy, The idiot mother of 'an idiot boy...
Page 39 - Tis true, that all who rhyme— nay, all who write, Shrink from that fatal word to genius— trite; Yet Truth sometimes will lend her noblest fires, And decorate the verse herself inspires: This fact in Virtue's name let Crabbe attest; Though nature's sternest painter, yet the best.
Page 55 - Then haste thee to thy sullen Isle, And gaze upon the sea; That element may meet thy smile — It ne'er was ruled by thee! Or trace with thine all idle hand In loitering mood upon the sand That Earth is now as free! That Corinth's pedagogue hath now Transferred his by-word to thy brow.
Page 52 - That spell upon the minds of men Breaks never to unite again, That led them to adore Those Pagod things of sabre sway, With fronts of brass, and feet of clay.
Page 9 - Take — hackneyed jokes from Miller, got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote; A mind well skilled to find or forge a fault, A turn for punning, call it Attic salt...

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