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CONTEMPORARY POETS.

Sir Walter reign'd before me; Moore and Campbel
Before and after; but now grown more holy,
The Muses upon Sion's hill must ramble

With poets almost Clergymen, or wholly;
And Pegasus has a psalmodic amble

Beneath the very Reverend Rowley Powley,
Who shoes the glorious animal with stilts,
A modern Ancient Pistol-by the hilts!

Still he excels that artificial hard

Labourer in the same vineyard, though the vine
Yields him but vinegar for his reward,-

That neutralized dull Dorus of the Nine;
That swarthy Sporus, neither man or bard:
That ox of verse, who ploughs for every line :-
Cambyses' roaring Romans beat at least
The howling Hebrews of Cybele's priest.

Then there's my gentle Euphues; who, they say,
Sets up for being a sort of moral me;
He'll find it rather difficult some day

To turn out both, or either, it may be.

Some persons think that Coleridge hath the sway;
And Wordsworth has supporters, two or three;
And that deep-mouth'd Boeotian " Savage Landor"
Has taken for a swan rogue Southey's gander.

John Keats, who was kill'd off by one critique,
Just as he really promised something great,
If not intelligible, without Greek

Contrived to talk about the gods of late,
Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
Poor fellow! his was an untoward fate;

'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,*
Should let itself be snuff'd out by an article.

The list grows long of live and dead pretenders
To that which none will gain-or none will know
The conqueror at least; who, ere Time renders
His last award, will have the long grass grow
Above his burnt-out brain, and sapless cinders.
If I might augur, I should rate but low

Their chances; they're too numerous, like the thirty
Mock tyrants, when Rome's annals wax'd but dirty.

• "Divina particulum auræ."

WORLDLY WEALTH.

Why call the miser miserable? as
I said before: the frugal life is his,
Which in a saint or cynic ever was

The theme of praise: a hermit would not miss
Canonisation for the selfsame cause,-

And wherefore blame gaunt wealth's austerities? Because, you'll say, nought calls for such a trial; Then there's more merit in his self-denial.

He is your only poet;-passion, pure,

And sparkling on from heap to heap, displays Possess'd, the ore, of which mere hopes allure Nations athwart the deep: the golden rays Flash up in ingots from the mine obscure :

On him the diamond pours its brilliant blaze; While the mild emerald's beam shades down the dyes Of other stones, to soothe the miser's eyes.

The lands on either side are his: the ship

From Ceylon, Inde, or far Cathay, unloads For him the fragrant produce of each trip; Beneath his cars of Ceres groan the roads, And the vine blushes like Aurora's lip;

His very cellars might be kings' abodes; While he, despising every sensual call, Commands-the intellectual lord of all.

Perhaps he hath great projects in his mind,
To build a college, or to found a race,
An hospital, a church,-and leave behind
Some dome surmounted by his meagre face.
Perhaps he fain would liberate mankind

Even with the very ore which makes them base;
Perhaps he would be wealthiest of his nation,
Or revel in the joys of calculation.

But whether all, or each, or none of these
May be the hoarder's principle of action,
The fool will call such mania a disease :-

What is his own? Go-look at each transaction, Wars, revels, love-do these bring men more ease Than the mere plodding through each "vulgar fraction?"

Or do they benefit mankind? Lean miser !
Let spendthrifts' heirs inquire of yours-who's wiser ?

How beauteous are rouleaus! how charming chests
Containing ingots, bags of dollars, coins

(Not of old victors, all whose heads and crests Weigh not the thin ore where their visage snines,

But) of fine unclipt gold, where dully rests

Some likeness, which the glittering cirque confines, Of modern, reigning, sterling, stupid stamp :Yes! ready money is Aladdin's lamp.

"Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,-for love Is heaven, and heaven is love :"- -so sings the bard; Which it were rather difficult to prove,

(A thing with poetry in general hard).

Perhaps there may be something in "the grove,"
At least it rhymes to "love:" but I'm prepared
To doubt (no less than landlords of their rental)
If "courts" and "camps" be quite so sentimental.

MATCH-MAKING.

How all the needy honourable misters,
Each out-at-elbow peer, or desperate dandy,
The watchful mothers, and the careful sisters,
(Who, by the by, when clever, are more handy
At making matches, where "'tis gold that glisters,"
Than their he relatives,) like flies o'er candy
Buzz round "the Fortune" with their busy battery,
To turn her head with waltzing and with flattery!
Each aunt, each cousin, hath her speculation;

Nay, married dames will now and then discover
Such pure disinterestedness of passion,

I've known them court an heiress for their lover. "Tantæne!" Such the virtues of high station, Even in the hopeful Isle, whose outlet's "Dover!" While the poor rich wretch, object of these cares, Has cause to wish her sire had had male heirs.

Some are soon bagg'd, and some reject three dozen. 'Tis fine to see them scattering refusals And wild dismay o'er every angry cousin,

(Friends of the party,) who begin accusals,
Such as-"Unless Miss (Blank) meant to have chosen
Poor Frederick, why did she accord perusals
To his billets? Why waltz with him? Why, I pray,
Look yes last night, and yet say no to-day?

"Why?-Why? Besides, Fred really was attach'd;
'Twas not her fortune-he has enough without:
The time will come she'll wish that she had snatch'd
So good an opportunity, no doubt :-
But the old Marchioness some plan had hatch'd,
As I'll tell Aurea at to-morrow's rout:
And after all poor Frederick may do better-
Pray, did you see her answer to his letter?"

Smart uniforms and sparkling coronets

Are spurn'd in turn, until her turn arrives,
After male loss of time, and hearts, and bets
Upon the sweepstakes for substantial wives;
And when at last the pretty creature gets

Some gentleman, who fights, or writes, or drives,
It soothes the awkward squad of the rejected,
To find how very badly she selected.

QUIXOTISM.

Rough Johnson, the great moralist, profess'd,
Right honestly, "he liked an honest hater!'
The only truth that yet has been confess'd
Within these latest thousand years, or later.
Perhaps the fine old fellow spoke in jest:-

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For my part I am but a mere spectator,
And gaze where'er the palace or the hovel is,
Much in the mode of Goethe's Mephistopheles :

But neither love nor hate in much excess;

Though 'twas not once so. If I sneer sometimes, It is because I cannot well do less,

And now and then it also suits my rhymes.

I should be very willing to redress

Men's wrongs, and rather check than punish crimes, Had not Cervantes, in that too true tale

Of Quixote, shown how all such efforts fail.

Of all tales 'tis the saddest-and more sad,
Because it makes us smile: his hero's right,
And still pursues the right; to curb the bad
His only object, and 'gainst odds to fight
His guerdon: 'tis his virtue makes him mad!
But his adventures form a sorry sight;-
A sorrier still is the great moral taught
By that real epic unto all who have thought.

Redressing injury, revenging wrong,

To aid the damsel and destroy the caitiff; Opposing singly the united strong,

From foreign yoke to free the helpless native :Alas! must noblest views, like an old song,

Be for mere fancy's sport a theme creative,

A jest, a riddle, Fame through thick and thin sought! And Socrates himself but Wisdom's Quixote?

Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away;

A single laugh demolish'd the right arm
Or his own country ;-seldom since that day

Has Spain had heroes. While Romance could charm,

The world gave ground before her bright array;
And therefore have his volumes done such harm,
That all their glory, as a composition,

Was dearly purchased by his land's perdition.

HUMAN MOTIVES.

I hate a motive, like a lingering bottle
Which with the landlord makes too long a stand,
Leaving all claretless the unmoisten'd throttle,
Especially with politics on hand;

I hate it, as I hate a drove of cattle,

Who whirl the dust as simooms whirl the sand; I hate it as I hate an argument,

A laureate's ode, or servile peer's "content."

"Tis sad to hack into the roots of things,

They are so much intertwisted with the earth;
So that the branch a goodly verdure flings,
I reck not if an acorn gave it birth.

To trace all actions to their secret springs
Would make indeed some melancholy mirth;
But this is not at present my concern,

And I refer you to wise Oxenstiern.

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TRUTH.

'Tis strange, but true; for truth is always strange;
Stanger that fiction: if it could be told,

How much would novels gain by the exchange!
How differently the world would men behold!
How oft would vice and virtue places change!
The new world would be nothing to the old,

If some Columbus of the moral seas
Would show mankind their souls' antipodes.

What "antres vast and deserts idle" then
Would be discover'd in the human soul !
What icebergs in the hearts of mighty men,
With self-love in the centre as their pole !
What Anthropophagi are nine of ten

Of those who hold the kingdoms in control!
Were things but only call'd by their right nams,
Cæsar himself would be ashamed of fame.

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