Selected Poems (12 page)

Still Skeffington and Goose divide the prize.

And sure
great
Skeffington must claim our praise,

For skirtless coats and skeletons of plays

600

Renown’d alike; whose genius ne’er confines

Her flight to garnish Greenwood’s gay designs;
¹

Nor sleeps with ‘Sleeping Beauties,’ but anon

In five facetious acts comes thundering on,
²

While poor John Bull, bewilder’d with the scene,

605

Stares, wondering what the devil it can mean;

But as some hands applaud, a venal few!

Rather than sleep, why John applauds it too.

Such are we now. Ah! wherefore should we turn

To what our fathers were unless to mourn?

610

Degenerate Britons! are ye dead to shame,

Or kind to dulness do you fear to blame?

Well may the nobles of our present race

Watch each distortion of a Naldi’s face;

Well may they smile on Italy’s buffoons,

615

And worship Catalani’s pantaloons,
³

Since their own drama yields no fairer trace

Of wit than puns, of humour than grimace.

Then let Ausonia, skill’d in every art

To soften manners, but corrupt the heart,

620

Pour her exotic follies o’er the town,

To sanction Vice, and hunt Decorum down:

Let wedded strumpets languish o’er Deshayes,

And bless the promise which his form displays;

While Gayton bounds before th’ enraptured looks

625

Of hoary marquises and stripling dukes:

Let high-born lechers eye the lively Prêsle

Twirl her light limbs, that spurn the needless veil;

Let Angiolini bare her breast of snow,

Wave the white arm, and point the pliant toe;

630

Collini trill her love-inspiring song,

Strain her fair neck, and charm the listening throng!

Whet not your scythe, suppressors of our vice!

Reforming saints! too delicately nice!

By whose decrees, our sinful souls to save,

635

No Sunday tankards foam no barbers shave;

And beer undrawn, and beards unmown, display

Your holy reverence for the Sabbath-day.

Or hail at once the patron and the pile

Of vice and folly, Greville and Argyle!
¹

640

Where yon proud palace, Fashion’s hallow’d fane,

Spreads wide her portals for the motley train,

Behold the new Petronius
²
of the day,

Our arbiter of pleasure and of play!

There the hired eunuch, the Hesperian choir,

645

The melting lute, the soft lascivious lyre,

The song from Italy, the step from France,

The midnight orgy, and the mazy dance,

The smile of beauty, and the flush of wine,

For fops, fools, gamesters, knaves, and lords combine:

650

Each to his humour – Comus all allows;

Champaign, dice, music, or your neighbour’s spouse.

Talk not to us, ye starving sons of trade!

Of piteous ruin, which ourselves have made;

In Plenty’s sunshine Fortune’s minions bask,

655

Nor think of poverty, except ‘en masque,’

When for the night some lately titled ass

Appears the beggar which his grandsire was,

The curtain dropp’d, the gay burletta o’er,

The audience take their turn uon the floor

660

Now round the room the circling dow’gers sweep,

Now in loose waltz the thin-clad daughters leap;

The first in lengthen’d line majestic swim,

The last display the free unfetter’d limb!

Those for Hibernia’s lusty sons repair

665

With art the charms which nature could not spare;

These after husbands wing their eager flight,

Nor leave much mystery for the nuptial night.

Oh! blest retreats of infamy and ease,

Where all forgotten but the power to please

670

Each maid may give a loose to genial thought,

Each swain may teach new systems, or be taught:

There the blithe youngster, just return’d from Spain,

Cuts the light pack, or calls the rattling main;

The jovial caster’s set, and seven’s the nick,

675

Or – done! – a thousand on the coming trick!

If, mad with loss, existence ’gins to tire,

And all your hope or wish is to expire,

Here’s Powell’s pistol ready for your life,

And, kinder still, two Pagets for your wife;

680

Fit consummation of an earthly race

Begun in folly, ended in disgrace;

While none but menials o’er the bed of death,

Wash thy red wounds, or watch thy wavering breath;

Traduced by liars, and forgot by all,

685

The mangled victim of a drunken brawl,

To live like Clodius, and like Falkland fall.
¹

Truth! rouse some genuine bard, and guide his hand

To drive this pestilence from out the land.

E’en I – least thinking of a thoughtless throng,

690

Just skill’d to know the right and choose the wrong,

Freed at that age when reason’s shield is lost,

To fight my course through passion’s countless host,
²

Whom every path of pleasure’s flow’ry way

Has lured in turn, and all have led astray –

695

E’en I must raise my voice, e’en I must feel

Such scenes, such men, destroy the public weal;

Although some kind, censorious friend will say,

‘What art thou better, meddling fool,
³
than they?’

And every brother rake will smile to see

700

That miracle, a moralist in me.

No matter – when some bard in virtue strong,

Gifford perchance, shall raise the chastening song,

Then sleep my pen for ever! and my voice

Be only heard to hail him, and rejoice;

705

Rejoice, and yield my feeble praise, though I

May feel the lash that Virtue must apply.

As for the smaller fry, who swarm in shoals

From silly Hafiz up to simple Bowles,
⁴

Wh should we call them from their dark abode

710

In broad St Giles’s or in Tottenham-road?

Or (since some men of fashion nobly dare

To scrawl in verse) from Bond-street or the Square?

If things of ton their harmless lays indite,

Most wisely doom’d to shun the public sight,

715

What harm? In spite of every critic elf,

Sir T. may read his stanzas to himself;

Miles Andrews still his strength in couplets try,

And live in prologues, though his dramas die.

Lords too are bards, such things at times befall,

720

And ’tis some praise in peers to write at all.

Yet, did or taste or reason sway the times,

Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes?

Roscommon! Sheffield! with your spirits fled,

No future laurels deck a noble head

725

No muse will cheer, with renovating smile,

The paralytic puling of Carlisle.

The puny schoolboy and his early lay

Men pardon, if his follies pass away;

But who forgives the senior’s ceaseless verse,

730

Whose hairs grow hoary as his rhymes grow worse?

What heterogeneous honours deck the peer!

Lord, rhymester, petit-maître, pamphleteer!
¹

So dull in youth, so drivelling in his age,

His scenes alone had damn’d our sinking stage;

735

But managers for once cried, ‘Hold, enough!’

Nor drugg’d their audience with the tragic stuff.

Yet at their judgment let his lordship laugh,

And case his volumes in congenial calf;

Yes! doff that covering, where morocco shines,

740

And hang a calf-skin
²
on those recreant lines.
³

With you, ye Druids! rich in native lead,

Who daily scribble for your daily bread;

With you I war not: Gifford’s heavy hand

Has crush’d, without remorse, your numerous band.

745

On ‘all the talents’ vent your venal spleen;

Want is your plea, let pity be your screen.