The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton with an essay on the Rowley poems by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat and a memoir by Edward Bell |
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SUNDAY. A FRAGMENT. |
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 | The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton |  |
SUNDAY. A FRAGMENT.
Hervenis, harping on the hackneyed text,
By disquisitions is so sore perplexed,
He stammers,—instantaneously is drawn
A bordered piece of inspiration-lawn,
Which being thrice unto his nose applied,
Into his pineal gland the vapours glide;
And now again we hear the doctor roar
On subjects he dissected thrice before.
I own at church I very seldom pray,
For vicars, strangers to devotion, bray.
Sermons, though flowing from the sacred lawn,
Are flimsy wires from reason's ingot drawn;
And, to confess the truth, another cause
My every prayer and adoration draws:
In all the glaring tinctures of the bow,
The ladies front me in celestial row.
(Though, when black melancholy damps my joys,
I call them nature's trifles, airy toys;
Yet when the goddess Reason guides the strain,
I think them, what they are, a heavenly train.)
The amorous rolling, the black sparkling eye,
The gentle hazel, and the optic sly;
The easy shape, the panting semi-globes,
The frankness which each latent charm disrobes;
The melting passions, and the sweet severe,
The easy amble, the majestic air;
The tapering waist, the silver-mantled arms,
All is one vast variety of charms.
Say, who but sages stretched beyond their span,
Italian singers, or an unmanned man,
Can see Elysium spread upon their brow,
And to a drowsy curate's sermon bow?
By disquisitions is so sore perplexed,
He stammers,—instantaneously is drawn
A bordered piece of inspiration-lawn,
Which being thrice unto his nose applied,
Into his pineal gland the vapours glide;
And now again we hear the doctor roar
On subjects he dissected thrice before.
I own at church I very seldom pray,
For vicars, strangers to devotion, bray.
Sermons, though flowing from the sacred lawn,
Are flimsy wires from reason's ingot drawn;
And, to confess the truth, another cause
My every prayer and adoration draws:
In all the glaring tinctures of the bow,
The ladies front me in celestial row.
(Though, when black melancholy damps my joys,
I call them nature's trifles, airy toys;
Yet when the goddess Reason guides the strain,
I think them, what they are, a heavenly train.)
135
The gentle hazel, and the optic sly;
The easy shape, the panting semi-globes,
The frankness which each latent charm disrobes;
The melting passions, and the sweet severe,
The easy amble, the majestic air;
The tapering waist, the silver-mantled arms,
All is one vast variety of charms.
Say, who but sages stretched beyond their span,
Italian singers, or an unmanned man,
Can see Elysium spread upon their brow,
And to a drowsy curate's sermon bow?
If (but 'tis seldom) no fair female face
Attracts my notice by some glowing grace,
Around the monuments I cast my eyes,
And see absurdities and nonsense rise.
Here rueful-visaged angels seem to tell,
With weeping eyes, a soul is gone to hell;
There a child's head, supported by duck's wings,
With toothless mouth a hallelujah sings:
In funeral pile eternal marble burns,
And a good Christian seems to sleep in urns.
A self-drawn curtain bids the reader see
An honourable Welchman's pedigree;
A rock of porphyry darkens half the place,
And virtues blubber with no awkward grace;
Yet, strange to tell, in all the dreary gloom
That makes the sacred honours of the tomb,
No quartered coats above the base appear,
No battered arms, or golden corsets there. [OMITTED]
Attracts my notice by some glowing grace,
Around the monuments I cast my eyes,
And see absurdities and nonsense rise.
Here rueful-visaged angels seem to tell,
With weeping eyes, a soul is gone to hell;
There a child's head, supported by duck's wings,
With toothless mouth a hallelujah sings:
In funeral pile eternal marble burns,
And a good Christian seems to sleep in urns.
A self-drawn curtain bids the reader see
An honourable Welchman's pedigree;
A rock of porphyry darkens half the place,
And virtues blubber with no awkward grace;
Yet, strange to tell, in all the dreary gloom
That makes the sacred honours of the tomb,
No quartered coats above the base appear,
No battered arms, or golden corsets there. [OMITTED]
| The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton | |