 | Miscellanies (1785) |  |
VI.
Now 'twas Thalia first conceiv'd a pain,'Twas now she echo'd back her sister's sighs again;
The jest, the laugh, the look, were o'er,
Her cunning was no more;
The comic mirth, the comic pride,
Her wit, her whim, with Garrick dy'd;
Disdainful then the mask she flung
To vacant air—and thus forlorn she sung:
And ah! away with random rhyme,
Tinsel ill-suited to the time;
Away with leisure's coxcomb line,
The couplet quaint, the stanza fine;
Far from our verse be now the pun, the point,
The period measur'd joint by joint;
Th' elaborate trade of poesy forbear—
O rather paint the workings of despair;
Scorn the vain edging sable Verse assumes,
And let dark Elegy pass on, in all her pompous plumes.
16
A juster path will we pursue;
Shakespeare himself, who best our state can feel,
Shall the sad tale in his own language tell.
| Miscellanies (1785) | |