The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton :: :: University of Virginia Library

Begin, my Muse, the imitative lay,
Aonian doxies sound the thrumming string;
Attempt no number of the plaintive Gay,
Let me like midnight cats, or Collins sing.

If in the trammels of the doleful line
The bounding hail, or drilling rain descend;
Come, brooding Melancholy, power divine,
And every unformed mass of words amend.

Now the rough Goat withdraws his curling horns,
And the cold Waterer twirls his circling mop:
Swift sudden anguish darts through altering corns,
And the spruce mercer trembles in his shop.

127

Now infant authors, maddening for renown,
Extend the plume, and hum about the stage,
Procure a benefit, amuse the town,
And proudly glitter in a title-page.

Now, wrapt in ninefold fur, his squeamish grace
Defies the fury of the howling storm;
And, whilst the tempest whistles round his face,
Exults to find his mantled carcase warm.

Now rumbling coaches furious drive along,
Full of the majesty of city dames,
Whose jewels, sparkling in the gaudy throng,
Raise strange emotions and invidious flames.

Now Merit, happy in the calm of place,
To mortals as a Highlander appears,
And, conscious of the excellence of lace,
With spreading frogs and gleaming spangles glares;

Whilst Envy, on a tripod seated nigh,
In form a shoe-boy, daubs the valued fruit,
And, darting lightnings from his vengeful eye,
Raves about Wilkes, and politics, and Bute.

Now Barry, taller than a grenadier,
Dwindles into a stripling of eighteen;
Or sabled in Othello breaks the ear,
Exerts his voice, and totters to the scene.

Now Foote, a looking-glass for all mankind,
Applies his wax to personal defects;
But leaves untouch'd the image of the mind,
His art no mental quality reflects.

128

Now Drury's potent king extorts applause,
And pit, box, gallery, echo “how divine!”
Whilst, versed in all the drama's mystic laws,
His graceful action saves the wooden line.

Now—but what further can the Muses sing?
Now dropping particles of water fall;
Now vapours, riding on the north wind's wing,
With transitory darkness shadow all.

Alas! how joyless the descriptive theme,
When sorrow on the writer's quiet preys;
And, like a mouse in Cheshire cheese supreme,
Devours the substance of the lessening bays.

Come, February, lend thy darkest sky.
There teach the wintered muse with clouds to soar;
Come, February, lift the number high;
Let the sharp strain like wind through alleys roar.

Ye channels, wandering through the spacious street,
In hollow murmurs roll the dirt along,
With inundations wet the sabled feet,
Whilst gouts, responsive, join th'elégiac song.

Ye damsels fair, whose silver voices shrill
Sound through meandering folds of echo's horn,
Let the sweet cry of liberty be still,
No more let smoking cakes awake the morn.

O, Winter! put away thy snowy pride;
O, Spring! neglect the cowslip and the bell;
O, Summer! throw thy pears and plums aside;
O, Autumn! bid the grape with poison swell.

129

The pensioned muse of Johnson is no more!
Drowned in a butt of wine his genius lies:
Earth! Ocean! Heaven! the wondrous loss deplore,
The dregs of nature with her glory dies.

What iron Stoic can suppress the tear?
What sour reviewer reads with vacant eye?
What bard but decks his literary bier?
Alas! I cannot sing—I howl—I cry—

D. B.

Bristol, Feb. 12, [1770].