3 books to know Juvenalian Satire. Lord Byron

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      A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye

      Like four and twenty blackbirds in a pye,

      Which pye being opened they began to sing'

      (This old song and new simile holds good),

      'A dainty dish to set before the King'

      Or Regent, who admires such kind of food.

      And Coleridge too has lately taken wing,

      But like a hawk encumbered with his hood,

      Explaining metaphysics to the nation.

      I wish he would explain his explanation.

      You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know,

      At being disappointed in your wish

      To supersede all warblers here below,

      And be the only blackbird in the dish.

      And then you overstrain yourself, or so,

      And tumble downward like the flying fish

      Gasping on deck, because you soar too high,

      Bob, And fall for lack of moisture quite a dry Bob.

      And Wordsworth in a rather long Excursion

      (I think the quarto holds five hundred pages)

      Has given a sample from the vasty version

      Of his new system to perplex the sages.

      'Tis poetry, at least by his assertion,

      And may appear so when the Dog Star rages,

      And he who understands it would be able

      To add a story to the tower of Babel.

      You gentlemen, by dint of long seclusion

      From better company, have kept your own

      At Keswick, and through still continued fusion

      Of one another's minds at last have grown

      To deem, as a most logical conclusion,

      That poesy has wreaths for you alone.

      There is a narrowness in such a notion,

      Which makes me wish you'd change your lakes for ocean.

      I would not imitate the petty thought,

      Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice,

      For all the glory your conversion brought,

      Since gold alone should not have been its price.

      You have your salary; was't for that you wrought?

      And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.

      You're shabby fellows—true—but poets still

      And duly seated on the immortal hill.

      Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows,

      Perhaps some virtuous blushes; let them go.

      To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs,

      And for the fame you would engross below,

      The field is universal and allows

      Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow.

      Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe will try

      'Gainst you the question with posterity.

      For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses,

      Contend not with you on the winged' steed,

      I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses,

      The fame you envy and the skill you need.

      And recollect a poet nothing loses

      In giving to his brethren their full meed

      Of merit, and complaint of present days

      Is not the certain path to future praise.

      He that reserves his laurels for posterity

      (Who does not often claim the bright reversion)

      Has generally no great crop to spare it, he

      Being only injured by his own assertion.

      And although here and there some glorious rarity

      Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion,

      The major part of such appellants go

      To—God knows where—for no one else can know.

      If fallen in evil days on evil tongues,

      Milton appealed to the avenger, Time,

      If Time, the avenger, execrates his wrongs

      And makes the word Miltonic mean sublime,

      He deigned not to belie his soul in songs,

      Nor turn his very talent to a crime.

      He did not loathe the sire to laud the son,

      But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.

      Think'st thou, could he, the blind old man, arise

      Like Samuel from the grave to freeze once more

      The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,

      Or be alive again—again all hoar

      With time and trials, and those helpless eyes

      And heartless daughters—worn and pale and poor,

      Would he adore a sultan? He obey

      The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?

      Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant!

      Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore,

      And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,

      Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore,

      The СКАЧАТЬ