JEALOUSY AND ART.
If bright Apollo be the type of Art,
So is flay'd Marsyas that of Jealousy:
With the bare fibres which for ever smart
Under the sunbeams that rejoice the sky.
Had Marsyas ask'd not with the god to vie,
The god had praised the cunning of his flute.
Thou stealest half Apollo's melody,
Tune but thy reed in concert with his lute.
Each should enrich the other—each enhance
By his own gift the common Beautiful:
That every colour more may charm the glance,
All varying flowers the garland-weavers cull;
Adorn'd by Contrast, Art no rival knows,—
The violet steals not perfume from the rose.
THE MASTER TO THE SCHOLAR.
Write for the pedant Few, the vein shall grow
Cold at its source and meagre in its flow;
But for the vulgar Many wouldst thou write,
How coarse the passion, and the thought how trite!
"Nor Few, nor Many—riddles from thee fall?"
Author, as Nature smiles—so write;—for All!
THE TRUE CRITIC.
Taste is to sense, as Charity to soul,
A bias less to censure than to praise;
A quick perception of the arduous whole,
Where the dull eye some careless flaw surveys.
Every true critic—from the Stagirite
To Schlegel and to Addison—hath won
His fame by serving a reflected light,
And clearing vapour from a clouded sun.
Who envies him whose microscopic eyes
See but the canker in the glorious rose?
Not much I ween the Zoïlus we prize,
Though even Homer may at moments doze.
Praise not to me the sharp sarcastic sneer,
Mocking the Fane which Genius builds to Time.
High works are Sabbaths to the Soul! Revere
Even some rare discord in the solemn chime.
When on the gaze the Venus dawns divine,
The Cobbler comes the slipper to condemn;
The Slave alone descends into the mine
To work the dross—the Monarch wears the gem.