Fifty times the golden harvest fallen.
Yes, that reads all right. Is there any other way of putting “fifty?” Yes, “twice twenty-five.” But that won’t come in. Then there’s “four times twelve and a half.” No; that won’t do. Enough “fifty.” Now we want some allusion to Her Majesty. Must get in a “since.” I have it, “Since our Queen assumed,” Capital. Here you are!
Since our Queen assumed the globe, the sceptre.
Come; that’s a beginning anyhow. Three lines! But they’ve quite dried me up. Besides, I can’t go on in blank verse like this. Don’t feel up to it. Must try another metre. What metre. And then what on earth am I to say in it? I haven’t had such a job as this for a long time. Could weep over it. A precious Ode I shall make of it.
For though I, know not anything,
Yet must I not my lot upbraid;
Since as the Laureate I am paid,
And, being paid, am bound to sing.
But, “a glass of sherry, will make me merry.” I’ll try one.!
6 P.M.—Confound the Jubilee Ode! Have now been at it all day, and am floundering worse than ever. Have got in something about illuminations, sanitary improvements, subscribing to a Hospital and Penny dinners, and given a kind of back-hander to George the Third, but who, on earth, I refer to as the “Patriot Architect,” and what I mean by asking him to Shape a stately memorial, Make it regularly—no, “regally”—gorgeous, Some Imperial Institute, I don’t know. But if I arrange it in parallel lines it will look like poetry, and that’ll be near enough.