Part 2 (1/2)

Has life so little store of real woes, That here ye wend to taste fict.i.tious grief?

Or is it that from truth such anguish flows, Ye court the lying drama for relief?

Long shall ye find the pang, the respite brief: Or if one tolerable page appears In folly's volume, 'tis the actor's leaf, Who dries his own by drawing others' tears, And, raising present mirth, makes glad his future years.

IV.

Albeit, how like Young Betty {21} doth he flee!

Light as the mote that daunceth in the beam, He liveth only in man's present e'e; His life a flash, his memory a dream, Oblivious down he drops in Lethe's stream.

Yet what are they, the learned and the great?

Awhile of longer wonderment the theme!

Who shall presume to prophesy THEIR date, Where nought is certain, save the uncertainty of fate?

V.

This goodly pile, upheaved by Wyatt's toil, Perchance than Holland's edifice {22} more fleet, Again red Lemnos' artisan may spoil: The fire-alarm and midnight drum may beat, And all bestrewed ysmoking at your feet!

Start ye? perchance Death's angel may be sent Ere from the flaming temple ye retreat: And ye who met, on revel idlesse bent, May find, in pleasure's fane, your grave and monument.

VI.

Your debts mount high--ye plunge in deeper waste; The tradesman duns--no warning voice ye hear; The plaintiff sues--to public shows ye haste; The bailiff threats--ye feel no idle fear.

Who can arrest your prodigal career?

Who can keep down the levity of youth?

What sound can startle age's stubborn ear?

Who can redeem from wretchedness and ruth Men true to falsehood's voice, false to the voice of truth?

VII.

To thee, blest saint! who doffed thy skin to make The Smithfield rabble leap from theirs with joy, We dedicate the pile--arise! awake! - Knock down the Muses, wit and sense destroy Clear our new stage from reason's dull alloy, Charm hobbling age, and tickle capering youth With cleaver, marrow-bone, and Tunbridge toy!

While, vibrating in unbelieving tooth, {23} Harps tw.a.n.g in Drury's walls, and make her boards a booth.

VIII.

For what is Hamlet, but a hare in March?

And what is Brutus, but a croaking owl?

And what is Rolla? Cupid steeped in starch, Orlando's helmet in Augustin's cowl.

Shakespeare, how true thine adage ”fair is foul!”

To him whose soul is with fruition fraught, The song of Braham is an Irish howl, Thinking is but an idle waste of thought, And nought is everything, and everything is nought.

IX.

Sons of Parna.s.sus! whom I view above, Not laurel-crown'd, but clad in rusty black; Not spurring Pegasus through Tempe's grove, But pacing Grub-street on a jaded hack; What reams of foolscap, while your brains ye rack, Ye mar to make again! for sure, ere long, Condemn'd to tread the bard's time-sanction'd track, Ye all shall join the bailiff-haunted throng, And reproduce, in rags, the rags ye blot in song.

X.

So fares the follower in the Muses' train; He toils to starve, and only lives in death; We slight him, till our patronage is vain, Then round his skeleton a garland wreathe, And o'er his bones an empty requiem breathe - Oh! with what tragic horror would he start (Could he be conjured from the grave beneath) To find the stage again a Thespian cart, And elephants and colts down trampling Shakespeare's art!