Only, the Bard, to these strange ways
Accustom’d, noted with amaze
A herd of Hogs that near him fed,
Which might for all he sang be dead.
He ceased his song and tried the scale
To find out where his voice might fail;
His lyre divine descanted soon
To see the strings were all in tune;
Till satisfied that these were right,
And at those Hogs astonish’d quite
That they not to his conquering lyre,
Which all things else did so admire,
Gave heed, but routed in the rye
As tho’ he had not been close by,
He ask’d of them the reason why.
‘Good friend,’ a Bacon old replied,
‘We have too much to do beside;
The roots are many, the field is wide.
Should we neglect this plenteousness
We should be wrong, you must confess—
The gods some day might give us less.
Our girth is great; the fodder free;
This field of food must finished be.
That time is short you’ll not deny.
We eat but little ere we die.’
[The Poet and the Penman]
All night had browsed the Pinion’d Steed
Upon that lush and level mead
That swathes Parnassos’ feet;
Till, when the pranksome Morning Star
To van of Day’s slow-driven car
Came piping past the eastern bar,
A Poet him did greet.
‘Your back, my Pegasos,’ he cried,
‘Shall win me to the tiers espied
Of yonder shelfed hill,
Where all the Great are, I opine,
And on the last proud peak divine
Apollo and the Earnest Nine
At songs symphonic still.’
Tomes had the Poet, rolls and wraps,
Pens at his ears, and scribbled scraps,
And so essay’d the mounting—
‘Stand still, O Steed, and I will climb,
Tho’ weighted here with pounds of rhyme,
If you will only give me time,
Who’d been on stirrups counting.’
The Steed stood still; the thing was done;
He slided, slip’d and shuffled on,
And stay’d to pen his deeds:
When now the Monster’s patience wears;
He lowers his head, his haunches rears;
And flying past the Stallion’s ears
The Poet measures weeds.
Three times attempting, three times foil’d,
The Bard beheld his breeches soil’d;
And on his knees the mashed green
Gave an arch proof of what had been;
And winds like gamboling babes unseen
Made all his errant sheets revolve.
For now the Morning ’gan to solve
The long-strewn sands of heav’nly cloud;
And that fair Mountain noble brow’d,
In snowy silv’ry laces dight
Shone like a bride, against the night
Unveil’d, with many-pointed light.
And lo half seen thro’ level mist
A Critic rode with saucy wrist,
Plump, smug and smooth and portly, dress’d
In corduroys and velvet vest;
Who clip’d at ease an ambling cob
With dappled nose and ears alob;
While all around a barking brood
Of puppies nuzzled in the rood.
‘He who to climb has climbing blood
Must fear no fall in marish mud;
And he who phantoms fain would ride
May sometimes sit the ground,’ he cried.
At this his thighs the Poet slam’d
And papers in his pocket ram’d;
‘Be off,’ he said, ‘or else be damn’d.’
‘You lose your time,’ resumed the Man,
Whose oozing eyes with mirth o’erran;
‘You waste your time about that Brute
Whom, if ’twere mine, egad I’d shoot,
So gaunt and gall’d a hack is he.
But take example now from me,
Who riding in this airy plight
For breakfast get an appetite;
And sitting here (I am so sly)
With this my pocket-sextant I
Take altitude of those on high.’
‘Pedant avaunt!’ the Poet cries,
And mounting shoots towards the skies
An angry palm—‘Come not anear!
I, as toward the marineer
The welcome star from beacon’d brows
Of headland, when the Northern blows
His scurrilous spitting spray in air
And lobbing billows blotch the Bear,
Appears, so shall appear and shine
Thro’ streaming rain and hissing brine
To cheer the coming better blood;
And shall be fire when thou art mud!’