To all that write and all that read
Fate shall, with hasty step, succeed!
Even Shakespeare's page, his mirth, his tears
May sink beneath this weight of years.
Old Spenser's doom shall, Pope, be thine
The music of each moving line
Scarce bribes an age or two to stay,
Admire your strain—then flit away.
The people of old Chaucer's times
Were once in raptures with his rhymes,
But Time—that over verse prevails,
To other ears tells other tales.
Why then so sad, dear rhyming friends—
One common fate on both attends,
The bards that sooth the statesman's ear,
And him—who finds no audience there.
Mere structures formed of common earth,
Not they from heaven derive their birth,
Or why through life, like vagrants, pass
To mingle with the mouldering mass?—
Of all the souls, from Jove that came
To animate this mortal frame,
Of all the myriads, on the wing,
How few can taste the Muse's spring!
Sejanus, of mercantile skill,
Without whose aid the world stands still,
And by whose wonder-working play
The sun goes round—(his flatterers say)
Sejanus has in house declared
"These States, as yet, can boast no bard,
And all the sing-song of our clime
Is merely nonsense, fringed with rhyme."
With such a bold, conceited air
When such assume the critic's chair,
Low in the dust is genius laid,
The muses with the man in trade.
Then, Sylvius, come—let you and I
On Neptune's aid, once more rely:
Perhaps the muse may still impart
Her balm to ease the aching heart.