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 Parnassus! 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