 | Poems by John Godfrey Saxe. Complete in one volume : thirty-fifth edition |  |
I 've kept my promise. Of a prosy song
Men want but little, nor that little long;
Yet even dulness may afford relief
On some occasions, if it 's only brief;
As transient cloudlets soothe the aching sight,
Blind with the dazzle of untempered light!
'T is something that my Pegasus, though slow,
Don't stand curvetting when he 's bid to go;
And, clear at least of one egregious fault,
Knows like a Major when and where to halt!
If in his flight he ventured not to soar
Where Helios' son, too rashly, went before,
(A pregnant hint for feeble bards who dare
The awful heights beyond their native air,)
'T was no dull spirit held the nag in check,
But only mercy for his rider's neck,—
Whom, were he lost among the fogs that lie
Between the empyrean and the nether sky,
And headlong hurled to some Bœotian deep,
No pitying nymphs had gathered round to weep!
Men want but little, nor that little long;
Yet even dulness may afford relief
On some occasions, if it 's only brief;
As transient cloudlets soothe the aching sight,
Blind with the dazzle of untempered light!
'T is something that my Pegasus, though slow,
Don't stand curvetting when he 's bid to go;
And, clear at least of one egregious fault,
Knows like a Major when and where to halt!
If in his flight he ventured not to soar
Where Helios' son, too rashly, went before,
(A pregnant hint for feeble bards who dare
The awful heights beyond their native air,)
118
But only mercy for his rider's neck,—
Whom, were he lost among the fogs that lie
Between the empyrean and the nether sky,
And headlong hurled to some Bœotian deep,
No pitying nymphs had gathered round to weep!
| Poems by John Godfrey Saxe. Complete in one volume : thirty-fifth edition | |