University of Virginia Library

There be who say, in these enlightened days,
That splendid lies are all the poet's praise;

365

That strained Invention, ever on the wing,
Alone impels the modern Bard to sing:
'Tis true, that all who rhyme—nay, all who write,
Shrink from that fatal word to Genius—Trite;
Yet Truth sometimes will lend her noblest fires,
And decorate the verse herself inspires:
This fact in Virtue's name let Crabbe attest;
Though Nature's sternest Painter, yet the best.
 

“I consider Crabbe and Coleridge as the first of these times, in point of power and genius.”—B., 1816.