Collection de poésie

{
  "data": [
    {
      "author": "Robert Burns",
      "line_count": "190",
      "lines": [
        "MY lov’d, my honour’d, much respected friend!",
        "  No mercenary bard his homage pays;",
        "With honest pride, I scorn each selfish end,",
        "  My dearest meed, a friend’s esteem and praise:",
        "  To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays,",
        "The lowly train in life’s sequester’d scene,",
        "  The native feelings strong, the guileless ways,",
        "What Aiken in a cottage would have been;",
        "Ah! tho’ his worth unknown, far happier there I ween!",
        "",
        "",
        "November chill blaws loud wi’ angry sugh;",
        "  The short’ning winter-day is near a close;",
        "The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh;",
        "  The black’ning trains o’ craws to their repose:",
        "  The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes,—",
        "This night his weekly moil is at an end,",
        "  Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,",
        "Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,",
        "And weary, o’er the moor, his course does hameward bend.",
        "",
        "",
        "At length his lonely cot appears in view,",
        "  Beneath the shelter of an aged tree;",
        "Th’ expectant wee-things, toddlin, stacher through",
        "  To meet their dead, wi’ flichterin noise and glee.",
        "  His wee bit ingle, blinkin bonilie,",
        "His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie’s smile,",
        "  The lisping infant, prattling on his knee,",
        "Does a’ his weary kiaugh and care beguile,",
        "And makes him quite forget his labour and his toil.",
        "",
        "",
        "Belyve, the elder bairns come drapping in,",
        "  At service out, amang the farmers roun’;",
        "Some ca’ the pleugh, some herd, some tentie rin",
        "  A cannie errand to a neibor town:",
        "  Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman-grown,",
        "In youthfu’ bloom-love sparkling in her e’e—",
        "  Comes hame, perhaps to shew a braw new gown,",
        "Or deposite her sair-won penny-fee,",
        "To help her parents dear, if they in hardship be.",
        "",
        "",
        "With joy unfeign’d, brothers and sisters meet,",
        "  And each for other’s weelfare kindly speirs:",
        "The social hours, swift-wing’d, unnotic’d fleet:",
        "  Each tells the uncos that he sees or hears.",
        "  The parents, partial, eye their hopeful years;",
        "Anticipation forward points the view;",
        "  The mother, wi’ her needle and her shears,",
        "Gars auld claes look amaist as weel’s the new;",
        "The father mixes a’ wi’ admonition due.",
        "",
        "",
        "Their master’s and their mistress’ command,",
        "  The younkers a’ are warned to obey;",
        "And mind their labours wi’ an eydent hand,",
        "  And ne’er, tho’ out o’ sight, to jauk or play;",
        "  “And O! be sure to fear the Lord alway,",
        "And mind your duty, duly, morn and night;",
        "  Lest in temptation’s path ye gang astray,",
        "Implore His counsel and assisting might:",
        "They never sought in vain that sought the Lord aright.”",
        "",
        "",
        "But hark! a rap comes gently to the door;",
        "  Jenny, wha kens the meaning o’ the same,",
        "Tells how a neibor lad came o’er the moor,",
        "  To do some errands, and convoy her hame.",
        "  The wily mother sees the conscious flame",
        "Sparkle in Jenny’s e’e, and flush her cheek;",
        "  With heart-struck anxious care, enquires his name,",
        "While Jenny hafflins is afraid to speak;",
        "Weel-pleased the mother hears, it’s nae wild, worthless rake.",
        "",
        "",
        "Wi’ kindly welcome, Jenny brings him ben;",
        "  A strappin youth, he takes the mother’s eye;",
        "Blythe Jenny sees the visit’s no ill ta’en;",
        "  The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye.",
        "  The youngster’s artless heart o’erflows wi’ joy,",
        "But blate an’ laithfu’, scarce can weel behave;",
        "  The mother, wi’ a woman’s wiles, can spy",
        "What makes the youth sae bashfu’ and sae grave,",
        "Weel-pleas’d to think her bairn’s respected like the lave.",
        "",
        "",
        "O happy love! where love like this is found:",
        "  O heart-felt raptures! bliss beyond compare!",
        "I’ve paced much this weary, mortal round,",
        "  And sage experience bids me this declare,—",
        "  “If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare—",
        "One cordial in this melancholy vale,",
        "  ’Tis when a youthful, loving, modest pair",
        "In other’sarms, breathe out the tender tale,",
        "Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale.”",
        "",
        "",
        "Is there, in human form, that bears a heart,",
        "  A wretch! a villain! lost to love and truth!",
        "That can, with studied, sly, ensnaring art,",
        "  Betray sweet Jenny’s unsuspecting youth?",
        "  Curse on his perjur’d arts! dissembling smooth!",
        "Are honour, virtue, conscience, all exil’d?",
        "  Is there no pity, no relenting ruth,",
        "Points to the parents fondling o’er their child?",
        "Then paints the ruin’d maid, and their distraction wild?",
        "",
        "",
        "But now the supper crowns their simple board,",
        "  The halesome parritch, chief of Scotia’s food;",
        "The sowp their only hawkie does afford,",
        "  That, ’yont the hallan snugly chows her cood:",
        "  The dame brings forth, in complimental mood,",
        "To grace the lad, her weel-hain’d kebbuck, fell;",
        "  And aft he’s prest, and aft he ca’s it guid:",
        "The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell",
        "How t’was a towmond auld, sin’ lint was i’ the bell.",
        "",
        "",
        "The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face,",
        "  They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;",
        "The sire turns o’er, with patriarchal grace,",
        "  The big ha’bible, ance his father’s pride:",
        "  His bonnet rev’rently is laid aside,",
        "His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare;",
        "  Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,",
        "He wales a portion with judicious care;",
        "And “Let us worship God!” he says with solemn air.",
        "",
        "",
        "They chant their artless notes in simple guise,",
        "  They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim;",
        "Perhaps Dundee’s wild-warbling measures rise;",
        "  Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;",
        "  Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame;",
        "The sweetest far of Scotia’s holy lays:",
        "  Compar’d with these, Italian trills are tame;",
        "The tickl’d ears no heart-felt raptures raise;",
        "Nae unison hae they with our Creator’s praise.",
        "",
        "",
        "The priest-like father reads the sacred page,",
        "  How Abram was the friend of God on high;",
        "Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage",
        "  With Amalek’s ungracious progeny;",
        "  Or how the royal bard did groaning lie",
        "Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire;",
        "  Or Job’s pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;",
        "Or rapt Isaiah’s wild, seraphic fire;",
        "Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.",
        "",
        "",
        "Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,",
        "  How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;",
        "How He, who bore in Heaven the second name,",
        "  Had not on earth whereon to lay His head:",
        "  How His first followers and servants sped;",
        "The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:",
        "  How he, who lone in Patmos banished,",
        "Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,",
        "And heard great Bab’lon’s doom pronounc’d by Heaven’s command.",
        "",
        "",
        "Then, kneeling down to Heaven’s Eternal King,",
        "  The saint, the father, and the husband prays:",
        "Hope “springs exulting on triumphant wing,” 1",
        "  That thus they all shall meet in future days,",
        "  There, ever bask in uncreated rays,",
        "No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,",
        "  Together hymning their Creator’s praise,",
        "In such society, yet still more dear;",
        "While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere",
        "",
        "",
        "Compar’d with this, how poor Religion’s pride,",
        "  In all the pomp of method, and of art;",
        "When men display to congregations wide",
        "  Devotion’s ev’ry grace, except the heart!",
        "  The Power, incens’d, the pageant will desert,",
        "The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;",
        "  But haply, in some cottage far apart,",
        "May hear, well-pleas’d, the language of the soul;",
        "And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enroll.",
        "",
        "",
        "Then homeward all take off their sev’ral way;",
        "  The youngling cottagers retire to rest:",
        "The parent-pair their secret homage pay,",
        "  And proffer up to Heaven the warm request,",
        "  That he who stills the raven’s clam’rous nest,",
        "And decks the lily fair in flow’ry pride,",
        "  Would, in the way His wisdom sees the best,",
        "For them and for their little ones provide;",
        "But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine preside.",
        "",
        "",
        "From scenes like these, old Scotia’s grandeur springs,",
        "  That makes her lov’d at home, rever’d abroad:",
        "Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,",
        "  “An honest man’s the noblest work of God;”",
        "  And certes, in fair virtue’s heavenly road,",
        "The cottage leaves the palace far behind;",
        "  What is a lordling’s pomp? a cumbrous load,",
        "Disguising oft the wretch of human kind,",
        "Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness refin’d!",
        "",
        "",
        "O Scotia! my dear, my native soil!",
        "  For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent,",
        "Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil",
        "  Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!",
        "  And O! may Heaven their simple lives prevent",
        "From luxury’s contagion, weak and vile!",
        "  Then howe’er crowns and coronets be rent,",
        "A virtuous populace may rise the while,",
        "And stand a wall of fire around their much-lov’d isle.",
        "",
        "",
        "O Thou! who pour’d the patriotic tide,",
        "  That stream’d thro’ Wallace’s undaunted heart,",
        "Who dar’d to nobly stem tyrannic pride,",
        "  Or nobly die, the second glorious part:",
        "  (The patriot’s God peculiarly thou art,",
        "His friend, inspirer, guardian, and reward!)",
        "  O never, never Scotia’s realm desert;",
        "But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard",
        "In bright succession raise, her ornament and guard!",
        "",
        "",
        " Note 1. Pope’s “Windsor Forest.”—R. B. [back]"
      ],
      "title": "83. The Cotter’s Saturday Night"
    },
    {
      "author": "Percy Bysshe Shelley",
      "line_count": "632",
      "lines": [
        "A FRAGMENT.",
        "",
        "PART 1.",
        "",
        "Nec tantum prodere vati,",
        "Quantum scire licet. Venit aetas omnis in unam",
        "Congeriem, miserumque premunt tot saecula pectus.",
        "LUCAN, Phars. v. 176.",
        "",
        "How wonderful is Death,",
        "Death and his brother Sleep!",
        "One pale as yonder wan and horned moon,",
        "With lips of lurid blue,",
        "The other glowing like the vital morn,",
        "When throned on ocean's wave",
        "It breathes over the world:",
        "Yet both so passing strange and wonderful!",
        "",
        "Hath then the iron-sceptred Skeleton,",
        "Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres,",
        "To the hell dogs that couch beneath his throne",
        "Cast that fair prey? Must that divinest form,",
        "Which love and admiration cannot view",
        "Without a beating heart, whose azure veins",
        "Steal like dark streams along a field of snow,",
        "Whose outline is as fair as marble clothed",
        "In light of some sublimest mind, decay?",
        "Nor putrefaction's breath",
        "Leave aught of this pure spectacle",
        "But loathsomeness and ruin?--",
        "Spare aught but a dark theme,",
        "On which the lightest heart might moralize?",
        "Or is it but that downy-winged slumbers",
        "Have charmed their nurse coy Silence near her lids",
        "To watch their own repose?",
        "Will they, when morning's beam",
        "Flows through those wells of light,",
        "Seek far from noise and day some western cave,",
        "Where woods and streams with soft and pausing winds",
        "A lulling murmur weave?--",
        "Ianthe doth not sleep",
        "The dreamless sleep of death:",
        "Nor in her moonlight chamber silently",
        "Doth Henry hear her regular pulses throb,",
        "Or mark her delicate cheek",
        "With interchange of hues mock the broad moon,",
        "Outwatching weary night,",
        "Without assured reward.",
        "Her dewy eyes are closed;",
        "On their translucent lids, whose texture fine",
        "Scarce hides the dark blue orbs that burn below",
        "With unapparent fire,",
        "The baby Sleep is pillowed:",
        "Her golden tresses shade",
        "The bosom's stainless pride,",
        "Twining like tendrils of the parasite",
        "Around a marble column.",
        "",
        "Hark! whence that rushing sound?",
        "'Tis like a wondrous strain that sweeps",
        "Around a lonely ruin",
        "When west winds sigh and evening waves respond",
        "In whispers from the shore:",
        "'Tis wilder than the unmeasured notes",
        "Which from the unseen lyres of dells and groves",
        "The genii of the breezes sweep.",
        "Floating on waves of music and of light,",
        "The chariot of the Daemon of the World",
        "Descends in silent power:",
        "Its shape reposed within: slight as some cloud",
        "That catches but the palest tinge of day",
        "When evening yields to night,",
        "Bright as that fibrous woof when stars indue",
        "Its transitory robe.",
        "Four shapeless shadows bright and beautiful",
        "Draw that strange car of glory, reins of light",
        "Check their unearthly speed; they stop and fold",
        "Their wings of braided air:",
        "The Daemon leaning from the ethereal car",
        "Gazed on the slumbering maid.",
        "Human eye hath ne'er beheld",
        "A shape so wild, so bright, so beautiful,",
        "As that which o'er the maiden's charmed sleep",
        "Waving a starry wand,",
        "Hung like a mist of light.",
        "Such sounds as breathed around like odorous winds",
        "Of wakening spring arose,",
        "Filling the chamber and the moonlight sky.",
        "Maiden, the world's supremest spirit",
        "Beneath the shadow of her wings",
        "Folds all thy memory doth inherit",
        "From ruin of divinest things,",
        "Feelings that lure thee to betray,",
        "And light of thoughts that pass away.",
        "For thou hast earned a mighty boon,",
        "The truths which wisest poets see",
        "Dimly, thy mind may make its own,",
        "Rewarding its own majesty,",
        "Entranced in some diviner mood",
        "Of self-oblivious solitude.",
        "",
        "Custom, and Faith, and Power thou spurnest;",
        "From hate and awe thy heart is free;",
        "Ardent and pure as day thou burnest,",
        "For dark and cold mortality",
        "A living light, to cheer it long,",
        "The watch-fires of the world among.",
        "",
        "Therefore from nature's inner shrine,",
        "Where gods and fiends in worship bend,",
        "Majestic spirit, be it thine",
        "The flame to seize, the veil to rend,",
        "Where the vast snake Eternity",
        "In charmed sleep doth ever lie.",
        "",
        "All that inspires thy voice of love,",
        "Or speaks in thy unclosing eyes,",
        "Or through thy frame doth burn or move,",
        "Or think or feel, awake, arise!",
        "Spirit, leave for mine and me",
        "Earth's unsubstantial mimicry!",
        "",
        "It ceased, and from the mute and moveless frame",
        "A radiant spirit arose,",
        "All beautiful in naked purity.",
        "Robed in its human hues it did ascend,",
        "Disparting as it went the silver clouds,",
        "It moved towards the car, and took its seat",
        "Beside the Daemon shape.",
        "",
        "Obedient to the sweep of aery song,",
        "The mighty ministers",
        "Unfurled their prismy wings.",
        "The magic car moved on;",
        "The night was fair, innumerable stars",
        "Studded heaven's dark blue vault;",
        "The eastern wave grew pale",
        "With the first smile of morn.",
        "The magic car moved on.",
        "From the swift sweep of wings",
        "The atmosphere in flaming sparkles flew;",
        "And where the burning wheels",
        "Eddied above the mountain's loftiest peak",
        "Was traced a line of lightning.",
        "Now far above a rock the utmost verge",
        "Of the wide earth it flew,",
        "The rival of the Andes, whose dark brow",
        "Frowned o'er the silver sea.",
        "Far, far below the chariot's stormy path,",
        "Calm as a slumbering babe,",
        "Tremendous ocean lay.",
        "Its broad and silent mirror gave to view",
        "The pale and waning stars,",
        "The chariot's fiery track,",
        "And the grey light of morn",
        "Tingeing those fleecy clouds",
        "That cradled in their folds the infant dawn.",
        "The chariot seemed to fly",
        "Through the abyss of an immense concave,",
        "Radiant with million constellations, tinged",
        "With shades of infinite colour,",
        "And semicircled with a belt",
        "Flashing incessant meteors.",
        "",
        "As they approached their goal,",
        "The winged shadows seemed to gather speed.",
        "The sea no longer was distinguished; earth",
        "Appeared a vast and shadowy sphere, suspended",
        "In the black concave of heaven",
        "With the sun's cloudless orb,",
        "Whose rays of rapid light",
        "Parted around the chariot's swifter course,",
        "And fell like ocean's feathery spray",
        "Dashed from the boiling surge",
        "Before a vessel's prow.",
        "",
        "The magic car moved on.",
        "Earth's distant orb appeared",
        "The smallest light that twinkles in the heavens,",
        "Whilst round the chariot's way",
        "Innumerable systems widely rolled,",
        "And countless spheres diffused",
        "An ever varying glory.",
        "It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned,",
        "And like the moon's argentine crescent hung",
        "In the dark dome of heaven; some did shed",
        "A clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the sea",
        "Yet glows with fading sunlight; others dashed",
        "Athwart the night with trains of bickering fire,",
        "Like sphered worlds to death and ruin driven;",
        "Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passed",
        "Bedimmed all other light.",
        "",
        "Spirit of Nature! here",
        "In this interminable wilderness",
        "Of worlds, at whose involved immensity",
        "Even soaring fancy staggers,",
        "Here is thy fitting temple.",
        "Yet not the lightest leaf",
        "That quivers to the passing breeze",
        "Is less instinct with thee,--",
        "Yet not the meanest worm.",
        "That lurks in graves and fattens on the dead,",
        "Less shares thy eternal breath.",
        "Spirit of Nature! thou",
        "Imperishable as this glorious scene,",
        "Here is thy fitting temple.",
        "",
        "If solitude hath ever led thy steps",
        "To the shore of the immeasurable sea,",
        "And thou hast lingered there",
        "Until the sun's broad orb",
        "Seemed resting on the fiery line of ocean,",
        "Thou must have marked the braided webs of gold",
        "That without motion hang",
        "Over the sinking sphere:",
        "Thou must have marked the billowy mountain clouds,",
        "Edged with intolerable radiancy,",
        "Towering like rocks of jet",
        "Above the burning deep:",
        "And yet there is a moment",
        "When the sun's highest point",
        "Peers like a star o'er ocean's western edge,",
        "When those far clouds of feathery purple gleam",
        "Like fairy lands girt by some heavenly sea:",
        "Then has thy rapt imagination soared",
        "Where in the midst of all existing things",
        "The temple of the mightiest Daemon stands.",
        "",
        "Yet not the golden islands",
        "That gleam amid yon flood of purple light,",
        "Nor the feathery curtains",
        "That canopy the sun's resplendent couch,",
        "Nor the burnished ocean waves",
        "Paving that gorgeous dome,",
        "So fair, so wonderful a sight",
        "As the eternal temple could afford.",
        "The elements of all that human thought",
        "Can frame of lovely or sublime, did join",
        "To rear the fabric of the fane, nor aught",
        "Of earth may image forth its majesty.",
        "Yet likest evening's vault that faery hall,",
        "As heaven low resting on the wave it spread",
        "Its floors of flashing light,",
        "Its vast and azure dome;",
        "And on the verge of that obscure abyss",
        "Where crystal battlements o'erhang the gulf",
        "Of the dark world, ten thousand spheres diffuse",
        "Their lustre through its adamantine gates.",
        "",
        "The magic car no longer moved;",
        "The Daemon and the Spirit",
        "Entered the eternal gates.",
        "Those clouds of aery gold",
        "That slept in glittering billows",
        "Beneath the azure canopy,",
        "With the ethereal footsteps trembled not;",
        "While slight and odorous mists",
        "Floated to strains of thrilling melody",
        "Through the vast columns and the pearly shrines.",
        "",
        "The Daemon and the Spirit",
        "Approached the overhanging battlement,",
        "Below lay stretched the boundless universe!",
        "There, far as the remotest line",
        "That limits swift imagination's flight.",
        "Unending orbs mingled in mazy motion,",
        "Immutably fulfilling",
        "Eternal Nature's law.",
        "Above, below, around,",
        "The circling systems formed",
        "A wilderness of harmony.",
        "Each with undeviating aim",
        "In eloquent silence through the depths of space",
        "Pursued its wondrous way.--",
        "",
        "Awhile the Spirit paused in ecstasy.",
        "Yet soon she saw, as the vast spheres swept by,",
        "Strange things within their belted orbs appear.",
        "Like animated frenzies, dimly moved",
        "Shadows, and skeletons, and fiendly shapes,",
        "Thronging round human graves, and o'er the dead",
        "Sculpturing records for each memory",
        "In verse, such as malignant gods pronounce,",
        "Blasting the hopes of men, when heaven and hell",
        "Confounded burst in ruin o'er the world:",
        "And they did build vast trophies, instruments",
        "Of murder, human bones, barbaric gold,",
        "Skins torn from living men, and towers of skulls",
        "With sightless holes gazing on blinder heaven,",
        "Mitres, and crowns, and brazen chariots stained",
        "With blood, and scrolls of mystic wickedness,",
        "The sanguine codes of venerable crime.",
        "The likeness of a throned king came by.",
        "When these had passed, bearing upon his brow",
        "A threefold crown; his countenance was calm.",
        "His eye severe and cold; but his right hand",
        "Was charged with bloody coin, and he did gnaw",
        "By fits, with secret smiles, a human heart",
        "Concealed beneath his robe; and motley shapes,",
        "A multitudinous throng, around him knelt.",
        "With bosoms bare, and bowed heads, and false looks",
        "Of true submission, as the sphere rolled by.",
        "Brooking no eye to witness their foul shame,",
        "Which human hearts must feel, while human tongues",
        "Tremble to speak, they did rage horribly,",
        "Breathing in self-contempt fierce blasphemies",
        "Against the Daemon of the World, and high",
        "Hurling their armed hands where the pure Spirit,",
        "Serene and inaccessibly secure,",
        "Stood on an isolated pinnacle.",
        "The flood of ages combating below,",
        "The depth of the unbounded universe",
        "Above, and all around",
        "Necessity's unchanging harmony.",
        "",
        "PART 2.",
        "",
        "O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!",
        "To which those restless powers that ceaselessly",
        "Throng through the human universe aspire;",
        "Thou consummation of all mortal hope!",
        "Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will!",
        "Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,",
        "Verge to one point and blend for ever there:",
        "Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!",
        "Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,",
        "Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come:",
        "O happy Earth, reality of Heaven!",
        "",
        "Genius has seen thee in her passionate dreams,",
        "And dim forebodings of thy loveliness,",
        "Haunting the human heart, have there entwined",
        "Those rooted hopes, that the proud Power of Evil",
        "Shall not for ever on this fairest world",
        "Shake pestilence and war, or that his slaves",
        "With blasphemy for prayer, and human blood",
        "For sacrifice, before his shrine for ever",
        "In adoration bend, or Erebus",
        "With all its banded fiends shall not uprise",
        "To overwhelm in envy and revenge",
        "The dauntless and the good, who dare to hurl",
        "Defiance at his throne, girt tho' it be",
        "With Death's omnipotence. Thou hast beheld",
        "His empire, o'er the present and the past;",
        "It was a desolate sight--now gaze on mine,",
        "Futurity. Thou hoary giant Time,",
        "Render thou up thy half-devoured babes,--",
        "And from the cradles of eternity,",
        "Where millions lie lulled to their portioned sleep",
        "By the deep murmuring stream of passing things,",
        "Tear thou that gloomy shroud.--Spirit, behold",
        "Thy glorious destiny!",
        "",
        "The Spirit saw",
        "The vast frame of the renovated world",
        "Smile in the lap of Chaos, and the sense",
        "Of hope thro' her fine texture did suffuse",
        "Such varying glow, as summer evening casts",
        "On undulating clouds and deepening lakes.",
        "Like the vague sighings of a wind at even,",
        "That wakes the wavelets of the slumbering sea",
        "And dies on the creation of its breath,",
        "And sinks and rises, fails and swells by fits,",
        "Was the sweet stream of thought that with wild motion",
        "Flowed o'er the Spirit's human sympathies.",
        "The mighty tide of thought had paused awhile,",
        "Which from the Daemon now like Ocean's stream",
        "Again began to pour.--",
        "",
        "To me is given",
        "The wonders of the human world to keep-",
        "Space, matter, time and mind--let the sight",
        "Renew and strengthen all thy failing hope.",
        "All things are recreated, and the flame",
        "Of consentaneous love inspires all life:",
        "The fertile bosom of the earth gives suck",
        "To myriads, who still grow beneath her care,",
        "Rewarding her with their pure perfectness:",
        "The balmy breathings of the wind inhale",
        "Her virtues, and diffuse them all abroad:",
        "Health floats amid the gentle atmosphere,",
        "Glows in the fruits, and mantles on the stream;",
        "No storms deform the beaming brow of heaven,",
        "Nor scatter in the freshness of its pride",
        "The foliage of the undecaying trees;",
        "But fruits are ever ripe, flowers ever fair,",
        "And Autumn proudly bears her matron grace,",
        "Kindling a flush on the fair cheek of Spring,",
        "Whose virgin bloom beneath the ruddy fruit",
        "Reflects its tint and blushes into love.",
        "",
        "The habitable earth is full of bliss;",
        "Those wastes of frozen billows that were hurled",
        "By everlasting snow-storms round the poles,",
        "Where matter dared not vegetate nor live,",
        "But ceaseless frost round the vast solitude",
        "Bound its broad zone of stillness, are unloosed;",
        "And fragrant zephyrs there from spicy isles",
        "Ruffle the placid ocean-deep, that rolls",
        "Its broad, bright surges to the sloping sand,",
        "Whose roar is wakened into echoings sweet",
        "To murmur through the heaven-breathing groves",
        "And melodise with man's blest nature there.",
        "",
        "The vast tract of the parched and sandy waste",
        "Now teems with countless rills and shady woods,",
        "Corn-fields and pastures and white cottages;",
        "And where the startled wilderness did hear",
        "A savage conqueror stained in kindred blood,",
        "Hymmng his victory, or the milder snake",
        "Crushing the bones of some frail antelope",
        "Within his brazen folds--the dewy lawn,",
        "Offering sweet incense to the sunrise, smiles",
        "To see a babe before his mother's door,",
        "Share with the green and golden basilisk",
        "That comes to lick his feet, his morning's meal.",
        "",
        "Those trackless deeps, where many a weary sail",
        "Has seen, above the illimitable plain,",
        "Morning on night and night on morning rise,",
        "Whilst still no land to greet the wanderer spread",
        "Its shadowy mountains on the sunbright sea,",
        "Where the loud roarings of the tempest-waves",
        "So long have mingled with the gusty wind",
        "In melancholy loneliness, and swept",
        "The desert of those ocean solitudes,",
        "But vocal to the sea-bird's harrowing shriek,",
        "The bellowing monster, and the rushing storm,",
        "Now to the sweet and many-mingling sounds",
        "Of kindliest human impulses respond:",
        "Those lonely realms bright garden-isles begem,",
        "With lightsome clouds and shining seas between,",
        "And fertile valleys resonant with bliss,",
        "Whilst green woods overcanopy the wave,",
        "Which like a toil-worn labourer leaps to shore,",
        "To meet the kisses of the flowerets there.",
        "",
        "Man chief perceives the change, his being notes",
        "The gradual renovation, and defines",
        "Each movement of its progress on his mind.",
        "Man, where the gloom of the long polar night",
        "Lowered o'er the snow-clad rocks and frozen soil,",
        "Where scarce the hardiest herb that braves the frost",
        "Basked in the moonlight's ineffectual glow,",
        "Shrank with the plants, and darkened with the night;",
        "Nor where the tropics bound the realms of day",
        "With a broad belt of mingling cloud and flame,",
        "Where blue mists through the unmoving atmosphere",
        "Scattered the seeds of pestilence, and fed",
        "Unnatural vegetation, where the land",
        "Teemed with all earthquake, tempest and disease,",
        "Was man a nobler being; slavery",
        "Had crushed him to his country's blood-stained dust.",
        "",
        "Even where the milder zone afforded man",
        "A seeming shelter, yet contagion there,",
        "Blighting his being with unnumbered ills,",
        "Spread like a quenchless fire; nor truth availed",
        "Till late to arrest its progress, or create",
        "That peace which first in bloodless victory waved",
        "Her snowy standard o'er this favoured clime:",
        "There man was long the train-bearer of slaves,",
        "The mimic of surrounding misery,",
        "The jackal of ambition's lion-rage,",
        "The bloodhound of religion's hungry zeal.",
        "",
        "Here now the human being stands adorning",
        "This loveliest earth with taintless body and mind;",
        "Blest from his birth with all bland impulses,",
        "Which gently in his noble bosom wake",
        "All kindly passions and all pure desires.",
        "Him, still from hope to hope the bliss pursuing,",
        "Which from the exhaustless lore of human weal",
        "Dawns on the virtuous mind, the thoughts that rise",
        "In time-destroying infiniteness gift",
        "With self-enshrined eternity, that mocks",
        "The unprevailing hoariness of age,",
        "And man, once fleeting o'er the transient scene",
        "Swift as an unremembered vision, stands",
        "Immortal upon earth: no longer now",
        "He slays the beast that sports around his dwelling",
        "And horribly devours its mangled flesh,",
        "Or drinks its vital blood, which like a stream",
        "Of poison thro' his fevered veins did flow",
        "Feeding a plague that secretly consumed",
        "His feeble frame, and kindling in his mind",
        "Hatred, despair, and fear and vain belief,",
        "The germs of misery, death, disease and crime.",
        "No longer now the winged habitants,",
        "That in the woods their sweet lives sing away,",
        "Flee from the form of man; but gather round,",
        "And prune their sunny feathers on the hands",
        "Which little children stretch in friendly sport",
        "Towards these dreadless partners of their play.",
        "All things are void of terror: man has lost",
        "His desolating privilege, and stands",
        "An equal amidst equals: happiness",
        "And science dawn though late upon the earth;",
        "Peace cheers the mind, health renovates the frame;",
        "Disease and pleasure cease to mingle here,",
        "Reason and passion cease to combat there;",
        "Whilst mind unfettered o'er the earth extends",
        "Its all-subduing energies, and wields",
        "The sceptre of a vast dominion there.",
        "",
        "Mild is the slow necessity of death:",
        "The tranquil spirit fails beneath its grasp,",
        "Without a groan, almost without a fear,",
        "Resigned in peace to the necessity,",
        "Calm as a voyager to some distant land,",
        "And full of wonder, full of hope as he.",
        "The deadly germs of languor and disease",
        "Waste in the human frame, and Nature gifts",
        "With choicest boons her human worshippers.",
        "How vigorous now the athletic form of age!",
        "How clear its open and unwrinkled brow!",
        "Where neither avarice, cunning, pride, or care,",
        "Had stamped the seal of grey deformity",
        "On all the mingling lineaments of time.",
        "How lovely the intrepid front of youth!",
        "How sweet the smiles of taintless infancy.",
        "",
        "Within the massy prison's mouldering courts,",
        "Fearless and free the ruddy children play,",
        "Weaving gay chaplets for their innocent brows",
        "With the green ivy and the red wall-flower,",
        "That mock the dungeon's unavailing gloom;",
        "The ponderous chains, and gratings of strong iron,",
        "There rust amid the accumulated ruins",
        "Now mingling slowly with their native earth:",
        "There the broad beam of day, which feebly once",
        "Lighted the cheek of lean captivity",
        "With a pale and sickly glare, now freely shines",
        "On the pure smiles of infant playfulness:",
        "No more the shuddering voice of hoarse despair",
        "Peals through the echoing vaults, but soothing notes",
        "Of ivy-fingered winds and gladsome birds",
        "And merriment are resonant around.",
        "",
        "The fanes of Fear and Falsehood hear no more",
        "The voice that once waked multitudes to war",
        "Thundering thro' all their aisles: but now respond",
        "To the death dirge of the melancholy wind:",
        "It were a sight of awfulness to see",
        "The works of faith and slavery, so vast,",
        "So sumptuous, yet withal so perishing!",
        "Even as the corpse that rests beneath their wall.",
        "A thousand mourners deck the pomp of death",
        "To-day, the breathing marble glows above",
        "To decorate its memory, and tongues",
        "Are busy of its life: to-morrow, worms",
        "In silence and in darkness seize their prey.",
        "These ruins soon leave not a wreck behind:",
        "Their elements, wide-scattered o'er the globe,",
        "To happier shapes are moulded, and become",
        "Ministrant to all blissful impulses:",
        "Thus human things are perfected, and earth,",
        "Even as a child beneath its mother's love,",
        "Is strengthened in all excellence, and grows",
        "Fairer and nobler with each passing year.",
        "",
        "Now Time his dusky pennons o'er the scene",
        "Closes in steadfast darkness, and the past",
        "Fades from our charmed sight. My task is done:",
        "Thy lore is learned. Earth's wonders are thine own,",
        "With all the fear and all the hope they bring.",
        "My spells are past: the present now recurs.",
        "Ah me! a pathless wilderness remains",
        "Yet unsubdued by man's reclaiming hand.",
        "",
        "Yet, human Spirit, bravely hold thy course,",
        "Let virtue teach thee firmly to pursue",
        "The gradual paths of an aspiring change:",
        "For birth and life and death, and that strange state",
        "Before the naked powers that thro' the world",
        "Wander like winds have found a human home,",
        "All tend to perfect happiness, and urge",
        "The restless wheels of being on their way,",
        "Whose flashing spokes, instinct with infinite life,",
        "Bicker and burn to gain their destined goal:",
        "For birth but wakes the universal mind",
        "Whose mighty streams might else in silence flow",
        "Thro' the vast world, to individual sense",
        "Of outward shows, whose unexperienced shape",
        "New modes of passion to its frame may lend;",
        "Life is its state of action, and the store",
        "Of all events is aggregated there",
        "That variegate the eternal universe;",
        "Death is a gate of dreariness and gloom,",
        "That leads to azure isles and beaming skies",
        "And happy regions of eternal hope.",
        "Therefore, O Spirit! fearlessly bear on:",
        "Though storms may break the primrose on its stalk,",
        "Though frosts may blight the freshness of its bloom,",
        "Yet spring's awakening breath will woo the earth,",
        "To feed with kindliest dews its favourite flower,",
        "That blooms in mossy banks and darksome glens,",
        "Lighting the green wood with its sunny smile.",
        "",
        "Fear not then, Spirit, death's disrobing hand,",
        "So welcome when the tyrant is awake,",
        "So welcome when the bigot's hell-torch flares;",
        "'Tis but the voyage of a darksome hour,",
        "The transient gulf-dream of a startling sleep.",
        "For what thou art shall perish utterly,",
        "But what is thine may never cease to be;",
        "Death is no foe to virtue: earth has seen",
        "Love's brightest roses on the scaffold bloom,",
        "Mingling with freedom's fadeless laurels there,",
        "And presaging the truth of visioned bliss.",
        "Are there not hopes within thee, which this scene",
        "Of linked and gradual being has confirmed?",
        "Hopes that not vainly thou, and living fires",
        "Of mind as radiant and as pure as thou,",
        "Have shone upon the paths of men--return,",
        "Surpassing Spirit, to that world, where thou",
        "Art destined an eternal war to wage",
        "With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot",
        "The germs of misery from the human heart.",
        "Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe",
        "The thorny pillow of unhappy crime,",
        "Whose impotence an easy pardon gains,",
        "Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease:",
        "Thine is the brow whose mildness would defy",
        "Its fiercest rage, and brave its sternest will,",
        "When fenced by power and master of the world.",
        "Thou art sincere and good; of resolute mind,",
        "Free from heart-withering custom's cold control,",
        "Of passion lofty, pure and unsubdued.",
        "Earth's pride and meanness could not vanquish thee,",
        "And therefore art thou worthy of the boon",
        "Which thou hast now received: virtue shall keep",
        "Thy footsteps in the path that thou hast trod,",
        "And many days of beaming hope shall bless",
        "Thy spotless life of sweet and sacred love.",
        "Go, happy one, and give that bosom joy",
        "Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch",
        "Light, life and rapture from thy smile.",
        "",
        "The Daemon called its winged ministers.",
        "Speechless with bliss the Spirit mounts the car,",
        "That rolled beside the crystal battlement,",
        "Bending her beamy eyes in thankfulness.",
        "The burning wheels inflame",
        "The steep descent of Heaven's untrodden way.",
        "Fast and far the chariot flew:",
        "The mighty globes that rolled",
        "Around the gate of the Eternal Fane",
        "Lessened by slow degrees, and soon appeared",
        "Such tiny twinklers as the planet orbs",
        "That ministering on the solar power",
        "With borrowed light pursued their narrower way.",
        "Earth floated then below:",
        "The chariot paused a moment;",
        "The Spirit then descended:",
        "And from the earth departing",
        "The shadows with swift wings",
        "Speeded like thought upon the light of Heaven.",
        "",
        "The Body and the Soul united then,",
        "A gentle start convulsed Ianthe's frame:",
        "Her veiny eyelids quietly unclosed;",
        "Moveless awhile the dark blue orbs remained:",
        "She looked around in wonder and beheld",
        "Henry, who kneeled in silence by her couch,",
        "Watching her sleep with looks of speechless love,",
        "And the bright beaming stars",
        "That through the casement shone."
      ],
      "title": "The Daemon of the World"
    },
    {
      "author": "Alexander Pope",
      "line_count": "425",
      "lines": [
        "_P_. Shut, shut the door, good John! fatigued, I said,",
        "Tie up the knocker, say I'm sick, I'm dead.",
        "The Dog-star rages! nay, 'tis past a doubt,",
        "All Bedlam, or Parnassus, is let out:",
        "Fire in each eye, and papers in each hand,",
        "They rave, recite, and madden round the land.",
        "",
        "What walls can guard me, or what shades can hide?",
        "They pierce my thickets, through my grot they glide,",
        "By land, by water, they renew the charge,",
        "They stop the chariot, and they board the barge.",
        "No place is sacred, not the church is free,",
        "Even Sunday shines no Sabbath-day to me:",
        "Then from the Mint walks forth the man of rhyme,",
        "Happy! to catch me, just at dinner-time.",
        "",
        "Is there a parson, much bemused in beer,",
        "A maudlin poetess, a rhyming peer,",
        "A clerk, foredoom'd his father's soul to cross,",
        "Who pens a stanza, when he should engross?",
        "Is there, who, lock'd from ink and paper, scrawls",
        "With desperate charcoal round his darken'd walls?",
        "All fly to Twit'nam, and in humble strain",
        "Apply to me, to keep them mad or vain.",
        "Arthur, whose giddy son neglects the laws,",
        "Imputes to me and my damn'd works the cause:",
        "Poor Cornus sees his frantic wife elope,",
        "And curses wit, and poetry, and Pope.",
        "",
        "Friend to my life! (which did not you prolong,",
        "The world had wanted many an idle song)",
        "What drop or nostrum can this plague remove?",
        "Or which must end me, a fool's wrath or love?",
        "A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped,",
        "If foes, they write, if friends, they read me dead.",
        "Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I!",
        "Who can't be silent, and who will not lie:",
        "To laugh, were want of goodness and of grace,",
        "And to be grave, exceeds all power of face.",
        "I sit with sad civility, I read",
        "With honest anguish, and an aching head;",
        "And drop at last, but in unwilling ears,",
        "This saving counsel, 'Keep your piece nine years.'",
        "",
        "'Nine years!' cries he, who high in Drury-lane,",
        "Lull'd by soft zephyrs through the broken pane,",
        "Rhymes ere he wakes, and prints before Term ends,",
        "Obliged by hunger, and request of friends:",
        "'The piece, you think, is incorrect? why take it,",
        "I'm all submission, what you'd have it, make it.'",
        "",
        "Three things another's modest wishes bound,",
        "My friendship, and a prologue, and ten pound.",
        "",
        "Pitholeon sends to me: 'You know his Grace,",
        "I want a patron; ask him for a place.'",
        "Pitholeon libell'd me--'But here's a letter",
        "Informs you, sir, 'twas when he knew no better.",
        "Dare you refuse him? Curll invites to dine,",
        "He'll write a journal, or he'll turn divine.'",
        "",
        "Bless me! a packet.--''Tis a stranger sues,",
        "A virgin tragedy, an orphan Muse.'",
        "If I dislike it, 'Furies, death, and rage!'",
        "If I approve, 'Commend it to the stage.'",
        "There (thank my stars) my whole commission ends,",
        "The players and I are, luckily, no friends.",
        "Fired that the house reject him, ''Sdeath! I'll print it,",
        "And shame the fools--Your interest, sir, with Lintot.'",
        "Lintot, dull rogue! will think your price too much:",
        "'Not, sir, if you revise it, and retouch.'",
        "All my demurs but double his attacks;",
        "At last he whispers, 'Do; and we go snacks.'",
        "Glad of a quarrel, straight I clap the door:",
        "Sir, let me see your works and you no more.",
        "",
        "'Tis sung, when Midas' ears began to spring",
        "(Midas, a sacred person and a king),",
        "His very minister who spied them first,",
        "(Some say his queen) was forced to speak, or burst.",
        "And is not mine, my friend, a sorer case,",
        "When every coxcomb perks them in my face?",
        "",
        "_A_. Good friend, forbear! you deal in dangerous things.",
        "I'd never name queens, ministers, or kings;",
        "Keep close to ears, and those let asses prick,",
        "'Tis nothing----",
        "",
        "_P_.     Nothing? if they bite and kick?",
        "Out with it, Dunciad! let the secret pass,",
        "That secret to each fool, that he's an ass:",
        "The truth once told (and wherefore should we lie?)",
        "The queen of Midas slept, and so may I.",
        "",
        "You think this cruel? Take it for a rule,",
        "No creature smarts so little as a fool.",
        "Let peals of laughter, Codrus! round thee break,",
        "Thou unconcern'd canst hear the mighty crack:",
        "Pit, box, and gallery in convulsions hurl'd,",
        "Thou stand'st unshook amidst a bursting world.",
        "Who shames a scribbler? break one cobweb through,",
        "He spins the slight, self-pleasing thread anew:",
        "Destroy his fib or sophistry, in vain,",
        "The creature's at his dirty work again,",
        "Throned in the centre of his thin designs,",
        "Proud of a vast extent of flimsy lines!",
        "Whom have I hurt? has poet yet, or peer,",
        "Lost the arch'd eyebrow, or Parnassian sneer?",
        "And has not Colly still his lord, and whore?",
        "His butchers, Henley, his freemasons, Moore?",
        "Does not one table Bavius still admit?",
        "Still to one bishop, Philips seem a wit",
        "Still Sappho----",
        "",
        "_A_.     Hold! for God-sake--you'll offend,",
        "No names--be calm--learn prudence of a friend:",
        "I too could write, and I am twice as tall;",
        "But foes like these----",
        "",
        "_P_.          One flatterer's worse than all.",
        "Of all mad creatures, if the learn'd are right,",
        "It is the slaver kills, and not the bite.",
        "A fool quite angry is quite innocent:",
        "Alas! 'tis ten times worse when they repent.",
        "",
        "One dedicates in high heroic prose,",
        "And ridicules beyond a hundred foes:",
        "One from all Grub-street will my fame defend,",
        "And, more abusive, calls himself my friend.",
        "This prints my letters, that expects a bribe,",
        "And others roar aloud, 'Subscribe, subscribe!'",
        "",
        "There are, who to my person pay their court:",
        "I cough like Horace, and, though lean, am short,",
        "Ammon's great son one shoulder had too high,",
        "Such Ovid's nose, and, 'Sir! you have an eye'--",
        "Go on, obliging creatures! make me see",
        "All that disgraced my betters, met in me.",
        "Say for my comfort, languishing in bed,",
        "'Just so immortal Maro held his head:'",
        "And, when I die, be sure you let me know",
        "Great Homer died three thousand years ago.",
        "",
        "Why did I write? what sin to me unknown",
        "Dipp'd me in ink, my parents', or my own?",
        "As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame,",
        "I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.",
        "I left no calling for this idle trade,",
        "No duty broke, no father disobey'd.",
        "The Muse but served to ease some friend, not wife,",
        "To help me through this long disease, my life,",
        "To second, Arbuthnot! thy art and care,",
        "And teach the being you preserved to bear.",
        "",
        "But why then publish? Granville the polite,",
        "And knowing Walsh, would tell me I could write;",
        "Well-natured Garth inflamed with early praise,",
        "And Congreve loved, and Swift endured my lays;",
        "The courtly Talbot, Somers, Sheffield read,",
        "Even mitred Rochester would nod the head,",
        "And St John's self (great Dryden's friends before)",
        "With open arms received one poet more.",
        "Happy my studies, when by these approved!",
        "Happier their author, when by these beloved!",
        "From these the world will judge of men and books,",
        "Not from the Burnets, Oldmixons, and Cookes.",
        "",
        "Soft were my numbers; who could take offence",
        "While pure description held the place of sense?",
        "Like gentle Fanny's was my flowery theme,",
        "'A painted mistress, or a purling stream.'",
        "Yet then did Gildon draw his venal quill;",
        "I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still.",
        "Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret;",
        "I never answer'd--I was not in debt.",
        "If want provoked, or madness made them print,",
        "I waged no war with Bedlam or the Mint.",
        "",
        "Did some more sober critic come abroad--",
        "If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kiss'd the rod.",
        "Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence,",
        "And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.",
        "Commas and points they set exactly right,",
        "And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.",
        "Yet ne'er one sprig of laurel graced these ribalds,",
        "From slashing Bentley down to piddling Tibbalds:",
        "Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells,",
        "Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables,",
        "Even such small critics some regard may claim,",
        "Preserved in Milton's or in Shakspeare's name.",
        "Pretty! in amber to observe the forms",
        "Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!",
        "The things, we know, are neither rich nor rare,",
        "But wonder how the devil they got there.",
        "",
        "Were others angry--I excused them too;",
        "Well might they rage, I gave them but their due.",
        "A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find;",
        "But each man's secret standard in his mind,",
        "That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness,",
        "This, who can gratify for who can guess?",
        "The bard whom pilfer'd Pastorals renown,",
        "Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,",
        "Just writes to make his barrenness appear,",
        "And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a year;",
        "He who, still wanting, though he lives on theft,",
        "Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:",
        "And he who, now to sense, now nonsense leaning,",
        "Means not, but blunders round about a meaning:",
        "And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,",
        "It is not poetry, but prose run mad:",
        "All these, my modest satire bade translate,",
        "And own'd that nine such poets made a Tate.",
        "How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe!",
        "And swear, not Addison himself was safe.",
        "",
        "Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires",
        "True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;",
        "Blest with each talent and each art to please,",
        "And born to write, converse, and live with ease:",
        "Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,",
        "Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,",
        "View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,",
        "And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;",
        "Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,",
        "And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;",
        "Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,",
        "Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;",
        "Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,",
        "A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;",
        "Dreading e'en fools, by flatterers besieged,",
        "And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged;",
        "Like Cato, give his little senate laws,",
        "And sit attentive to his own applause;",
        "While wits and Templars every sentence raise,",
        "And wonder with a foolish face of praise--",
        "Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?",
        "Who would not weep, if Atticus were he?",
        "",
        "What though my name stood rubric on the walls,",
        "Or plaster'd posts, with claps, in capitals?",
        "Or smoking forth, a hundred hawkers' load,",
        "On wings of winds came flying all abroad?",
        "I sought no homage from the race that write;",
        "I kept, like Asian monarchs, from their sight:",
        "Poems I heeded (now be-rhymed so long)",
        "No more than thou, great George! a birthday song.",
        "I ne'er with wits or witlings pass'd my days,",
        "To spread about the itch of verse and praise;",
        "Nor like a puppy, daggled through the town,",
        "To fetch and carry sing-song up and down;",
        "Nor at rehearsals sweat, and mouth'd, and cried,",
        "With handkerchief and orange at my side;",
        "But sick of fops, and poetry, and prate,",
        "To Bufo left the whole Castalian state.",
        "",
        "Proud as Apollo on his forkèd hill,",
        "Sat full-blown Bufo, puff'd by every quill;",
        "Fed with soft dedication all day long,",
        "Horace and he went hand in hand in song.",
        "His library (where busts of poets dead",
        "And a true Pindar stood without a head)",
        "Received of wits an undistinguish'd race,",
        "Who first his judgment ask'd, and then a place:",
        "Much they extoll'd his pictures, much his seat,",
        "And flatter'd every day, and some days eat:",
        "Till, grown more frugal in his riper days,",
        "He paid some bards with port, and some with praise,",
        "To some a dry rehearsal was assign'd,",
        "And others (harder still) he paid in kind.",
        "Dryden alone (what wonder?) came not nigh,",
        "Dryden alone escaped this judging eye:",
        "But still the great have kindness in reserve,",
        "He help'd to bury whom he help'd to starve.",
        "",
        "May some choice patron bless each gray-goose quill!",
        "May every Bavius have his Bufo still!",
        "So when a statesman wants a day's defence,",
        "Or envy holds a whole week's war with sense,",
        "Or simple pride for flattery makes demands,",
        "May dunce by dunce be whistled off my hands!",
        "Bless'd be the great! for those they take away,",
        "And those they left me; for they left me Gay;",
        "Left me to see neglected genius bloom,",
        "Neglected die, and tell it on his tomb:",
        "Of all thy blameless life, the sole return",
        "My verse, and Queensberry weeping o'er thy urn!",
        "",
        "Oh let me live my own, and die so too!",
        "(To live and die is all I have to do:)",
        "Maintain a poet's dignity and ease,",
        "And see what friends, and read what books I please:",
        "Above a patron, though I condescend",
        "Sometimes to call a minister my friend.",
        "I was not born for courts or great affairs;",
        "I pay my debts, believe, and say my prayers;",
        "Can sleep without a poem in my head,",
        "Nor know if Dennis be alive or dead.",
        "",
        "Why am I ask'd what next shall see the light?",
        "Heavens! was I born for nothing but to write?",
        "Has life no joys for me? or (to be grave)",
        "Have I no friend to serve, no soul to save?",
        "'I found him close with Swift--Indeed? no doubt",
        "(Cries prating Balbus) something will come out.'",
        "'Tis all in vain, deny it as I will.",
        "'No, such a genius never can lie still;'",
        "And then for mine obligingly mistakes",
        "The first lampoon Sir Will or Bubo makes.",
        "Poor guiltless I! and can I choose but smile,",
        "When every coxcomb knows me by my style?",
        "",
        "Cursed be the verse, how well soe'er it flow,",
        "That tends to make one worthy man my foe,",
        "Give virtue scandal, innocence a fear,",
        "Or from the soft-eyed virgin steal a tear!",
        "But he who hurts a harmless neighbour's peace,",
        "Insults fallen worth, or beauty in distress,",
        "Who loves a lie, lame slander helps about,",
        "Who writes a libel, or who copies out:",
        "That fop, whose pride affects a patron's name,",
        "Yet, absent, wounds an author's honest fame:",
        "Who can your merit selfishly approve,",
        "And show the sense of it without the love;",
        "Who has the vanity to call you friend,",
        "Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend;",
        "Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,",
        "And, if he lie not, must at least betray:",
        "Who to the dean, and silver bell can swear,",
        "And sees at Canons what was never there;",
        "Who reads, but--with a lust to misapply,",
        "Make satire a lampoon, and fiction, lie;",
        "A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,",
        "But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.",
        "Let Sporus tremble--",
        "",
        "_A_.               What? that thing of silk,",
        "Sporus, that mere white curd of ass's milk?",
        "Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?",
        "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?",
        "",
        "_P_. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,",
        "This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;",
        "Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,",
        "Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys;",
        "So well-bred spaniels civilly delight",
        "In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.",
        "Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,",
        "As shallow streams run dimpling all the way.",
        "Whether in florid impotence he speaks,",
        "And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;",
        "Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad!",
        "Half-froth, half-venom, spits himself abroad,",
        "In puns or politics, or tales, or lies,",
        "Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies.",
        "His wit all see-saw, between that and this,",
        "Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,",
        "And he himself one vile antithesis.",
        "Amphibious thing! that, acting either part,",
        "The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,",
        "Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,",
        "Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.",
        "Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have express'd,",
        "A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest,",
        "Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,",
        "Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.",
        "",
        "Not Fortune's worshipper, nor Fashion's fool,",
        "Not Lucre's madman, nor Ambition's tool,",
        "Not proud, nor servile; be one poet's praise,",
        "That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways:",
        "That flattery, even to kings, he held a shame,",
        "And thought a lie in verse or prose the same.",
        "That not in Fancy's maze he wander'd long,",
        "But stoop'd to Truth, and moralised his song:",
        "That not for Fame, but Virtue's better end,",
        "He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,",
        "The damning critic, half-approving wit,",
        "The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;",
        "Laugh'd at the loss of friends he never had,",
        "The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;",
        "The distant threats of vengeance on his head,",
        "The blow unfelt, the tear he never shed;",
        "The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown,",
        "Th' imputed trash, and dulness not his own;",
        "The morals blacken'd when the writings 'scape,",
        "The libell'd person, and the pictured shape;",
        "Abuse, on all he loved, or loved him, spread,",
        "A friend in exile, or a father dead;",
        "The whisper that, to greatness still too near,",
        "Perhaps yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear--",
        "Welcome for thee, fair Virtue! all the past:",
        "For thee, fair Virtue! welcome even the last!",
        "",
        "_A_. But why insult the poor, affront the great?",
        "",
        "_P_. A knave's a knave, to me, in every state:",
        "Alike my scorn, if he succeed or fail,",
        "Sporus at court, or Japhet in a jail,",
        "A hireling scribbler, or a hireling peer,",
        "Knight of the post corrupt, or of the shire;",
        "If on a pillory, or near a throne,",
        "He gain his prince's ear, or lose his own.",
        "",
        "Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,",
        "Sappho can tell you how this man was bit:",
        "This dreaded satirist Dennis will confess",
        "Foe to his pride, but friend to his distress:",
        "So humble, he has knock'd at Tibbald's door,",
        "Has drunk with Cibber, nay, has rhymed for Moore.",
        "Full ten years slander'd, did he once reply?",
        "Three thousand suns went down on Welsted's lie.",
        "To please a mistress one aspersed his life;",
        "He lash'd him not, but let her be his wife:",
        "Let Budgell charge low Grub-street on his quill,",
        "And write whate'er he pleased, except his will;",
        "Let the two Curlls of town and court abuse",
        "His father, mother, body, soul, and Muse.",
        "Yet why that father held it for a rule,",
        "It was a sin to call our neighbour fool:",
        "That harmless mother thought no wife a whore:",
        "Hear this, and spare his family, James Moore!",
        "Unspotted names, and memorable long!",
        "If there be force in virtue, or in song.",
        "",
        "Of gentle blood (part shed in honour's cause,",
        "While yet in Britain honour had applause)",
        "Each parent sprung----",
        "",
        "_A._         What fortune, pray?----",
        "",
        "_P._                            Their own,",
        "And better got, than Bestia's from the throne.",
        "Born to no pride, inheriting no strife,",
        "Nor marrying discord in a noble wife,",
        "Stranger to civil and religious rage,",
        "The good man walk'd innoxious through his age.",
        "No courts he saw, no suits would ever try,",
        "Nor dared an oath, nor hazarded a lie.",
        "Unlearn'd, he knew no schoolman's subtle art,",
        "No language but the language of the heart.",
        "By nature honest, by experience wise,",
        "Healthy by temperance, and by exercise;",
        "His life, though long, to sickness pass'd unknown,",
        "His death was instant, and without a groan.",
        "O grant me thus to live, and thus to die!",
        "Who sprung from kings shall know less joy than I.",
        "",
        "O friend! may each domestic bliss be thine!",
        "Be no unpleasing melancholy mine:",
        "Me, let the tender office long engage,",
        "To rock the cradle of reposing age,",
        "With lenient arts extend a mother's breath,",
        "Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death,",
        "Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,",
        "And keep a while one parent from the sky!",
        "On cares like these if length of days attend,",
        "May Heaven, to bless those days, preserve my friend,",
        "Preserve him social, cheerful, and serene,",
        "And just as rich as when he served a Queen.",
        "",
        "_A_. Whether that blessing be denied or given,",
        "Thus far was right, the rest belongs to Heaven."
      ],
      "title": "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot; or, Prologue to the Satires."
    }
  ],
  "success": true
}