These, one and all, the clink of metre fly,
And look on poets with a dragon's eye.
"Beware! he's vicious: so he gains his end,
A selfish laugh, he will not spare a friend:
Whate'er he scrawls, the mean malignant rogue
Is all alive to get it into vogue:
Give him a handle, and your tale is known
To every giggling boy and maundering crone."
A weighty accusation! now, permit
Some few brief words, and I will answer it:
First, be it understood, I make no claim
To rank with those who bear a poet's name:
'Tis not enough to turn out lines complete,
Each with its proper quantum of five feet;
Colloquial verse a man may write like me,
But (trust an author)'tis not poetry.
No; keep that name for genius, for a soul
Of Heaven's own fire, for words that grandly roll.
Hence some have questioned if the Muse we call
The Comic Muse be really one at all:
Her subject ne'er aspires, her style ne'er glows,
And, save that she talks metre, she talks prose.
"Aye, but the angry father shakes the stage,
When on his graceless son he pours his rage,
Who, smitten with the mistress of the hour,
Rejects a well-born wife with ample dower,
Gets drunk, and (worst of all) in public sight
Keels with a blazing flambeau while 'tis light."
Well, could Pomponius' sire to life return,
Think you he'd rate his son in tones less stern?