Instead of speech, may form a lasting link
Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces
Frail inan, when paper-even a rag like this,
Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his.

LXXXIX.

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.

XC.

And glory long has made the sages smile; 'Tis something, nothing, words, illusion, windDepending 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.

XCI.

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.

XCII.

All these are, certes entertaining facts,

Like Shakspeare's stealing deer, Lord Bacon's bribes; Like Titus' youth, and Cæsar's earliest acts;

Like Burns (whom Dr. 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.

XCIII.

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.)

XCIV.

Such names at present cut a convict figure,
The very Botany Bay in moral geography;
Their loyal treason, renegado vigour,

Are good manure for their more bare biography.
Wordsworth's last quarto, by the way, is bigger
Than any since the birth-day of topography;
A clumsy frowzy poem, call'd the "Excursion."
Writin a manner which is my aversion.

XCV.

He there builds up a formidable dyke

Between his own and others' intellect;
But Wordsworth's poem, and his followers, like
Joanna Southcote's Shiloh, and her sect,

Are things which in this century don't strike

The public mind, so few are the elect;
And the new births of both their stale virginities
Have proved but dropsies, taken for divinities.

XCVI.

But let me to my story: I must own,
If I have any fault, it is digression;
Leaving my people to proceed alone,

While I soliloquize beyond expression;
But these are my addresses from the throne,
Which put off business to the ensuing session:
Forgetting each omission is a loss to

The world, not quite so great as Ariosto.

XCVII.

I know that what our neighbours call "longeurs," (We've not so good a word, but have the thing In that complete perfection which ensures

An epic from Bob Southey every spring-) Form not the true temptation which allures The reader; but 'twould not be hard to bring Some fine examples of the epopée,

To prove its grand ingredient is ennui.

XCVIII.

We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps;

We feel without him: Wordsworth sometimes wakes,

To show with what complacency he creeps,

With his dear "Waggoners," around his lakes;
He wishes for "a boat" to sail the deeps-

Of ocean?—No, of air; and then he makes
Another outcry for "a little boat,"
And drivels seas to set it well afloat.

XCIX.

If he must fain sweep o'er the ethereal plain,
And Pegasus runs restive in his "
waggon,"
Could he not beg the loan of Charles's Wain?
Or pray Medea for a single dragon?
Or if too classic for his vulgar brain,

He fear'd his neck to venture such a nag on,
And he must needs mount nearer to the moon,
Could not the blockhead ask for a balloon?

C.

66 Pedlers," and "boats" and "waggons!" Oh! ye shades Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this? That trash of such sort not alone evades

Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss

Floats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades
Of sense and song above your graves may hiss-
The "little boatman" and his "Peter Bell"
Can sneer at him who drew " Achitophel!"

CI.

T' our tale. The feast was over, the slaves gone,
The dwarfs and dancing girls had all retired;
The Arab lore and poet's song were done,
And every sound of revelry expired;

The lady and her lover, left alone,

The rosy flood of twilight's sky admired:

Ave Maria! o'er the earth and sea,

That heavenliest hour of Heaven is worthiest thee!

CII.

Ave Maria! blessed be the hour!

The time, the clime, the spot, where I so oft Have felt that moment in its fullest power,

Sink o'er the earth so beautiful and soft,

While swung the deep bell in the distant tower,

Or the faint dying day-hynn stole aloft,
And not a breath crept through the rosy air,
And yet the forest leaves seem'd stirr'd with prayer.

СІІІ.

Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of prayer!

Ave Maria! 'tis the hour of love!

Ave Maria! may our spirits dare

Look up to thine and to thy Son's above! Ave Maria! oh that face so fair!

Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty doveWhat though 'tis but a pictured image strikeThat painting is no idol, 'tis too like.

CIV.

Some kinder casuists are pleased to say,
In nameless print-that I have no devotion;
But set those persons down with me to pray,
And you shall see who has the prosperest notion
Of getting into Heaven the shortest way;

My altars are the mountains and the ocean,

Earth, air, stars,—all that springs from the great Whole Who hath produced, and will receive the soul.

CV.

Sweet hour of twilight!-in the solitude
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood,
Rooted where once the Adrian wave flow'd o'er,
To where the last Cesarean fortress stood,
Evergreen forest! which Boccacio's lore
And Dryden's lay made haunted ground to me,
How have I loved the twilight hour and thee!