from Canto III

101

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine!
     Our virgins dance beneath the shade—
I see their glorious black eyes shine;
     But gazing on each glowing maid,
My own the burning tear-drop laves,
     To think such breasts must suckle slaves.

102

Place me on Sunium’s marbled steep,
     Where nothing, save the waves and I,
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
     There, swan-like, let me sing and die:
A land of slaves shall ne’er be mine—
     Dash down yon cup of Samian wine!

103

Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung,
     The modern Greek, in tolerable verse;
If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young,
     Yet in these times he might have done much worse:
His strain display’d some feeling—right or wrong;
     And feeling, in a poet, is the source
Of others’ feeling; but they are such liars,
And take all colours—like the hands of dyers.

104

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
     Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;
     ‘Tis strange, the shortest letter which man uses
Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
     Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail man, when paper—even a rag like this,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that’s his.

105

And when his bones are dust, his grave a blank,
     His station, generation, even his nation,
Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank
     In chronological commemoration,
Some dull MS. oblivion long has sank,
     Or graven stone found in a barrack’s station
In digging the foundation of a closet,
May turn his name up, as a rare deposit.

106

And glory long has made the sages smile;
     ‘Tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind—
Depending more upon the historian’s style
     Than on the name a person leaves behind:
Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle;
     The present century was growing blind
To the great Marlborough’s skill in giving knocks,
Until his late Life by Archdeacon Coxe.

107

Milton’s the prince of poets—so we say;
     A little heavy, but no less divine:
An independent being in his day—
     Learn’d, pious, temperate in love and wine;
But his life falling into Johnson’s way,
     We’re told this great high priest of all the Nine
Was whipt at college—a harsh sire—odd spouse,
For the first Mrs. Milton left his house.

108

All these are, certes, entertaining facts,
     Like Shakspeare’s stealing deer, Lord Bacon’s bribes;
Like Titus’ youth, and Caesar’s earliest acts;
     Like Burns (whom Doctor Currie well describes);
Like Cromwell’s pranks;—but although truth exacts
     These amiable descriptions from the scribes,
As most essential to their hero’s story,
They do not much contribute to his glory.

109

All are not moralists, like Southey, when
    He prated to the world of “Pantisocrasy”;
Or Wordsworth unexcised, unhired, who then
    Season’d his pedlar poems with democracy;
Or Coleridge, long before his flighty pen
     Let to the Morning Post its aristocracy;
When he and Southey, following the same path,
Espoused two partners (milliners of Bath).

110

Such names at present cut a convict figure,
     The very Botany Bay in moral geography;
Their loyal treason, renegado rigour,
     Are good manure for their more bare biography.
Wordsworth’s last quarto, by the way, is bigger
     Than any since the birthday of typography;
A drowsy frowzy poem, call’d the “Excursion,”
Writ in a manner which is my aversion.