I sing to keep down sighs and ease the smart
Of care and sadness, and the daily toils
Which crush my soul and trample on my heart.
Far mightier spirits of the inspired art
Are mute and nameless, mid the muse in grief
Calls from the eastern to the western airt,
On tale, tradition, ballad, song, and chief
On thee, to give their names one passage bright and brief.
She calls in vain; like to a shooting star
Their storied rhymes shone brightly in their birth,