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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 | The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton |  |
FRAGMENT.
[Interest, thou universal god of men]
Interest, thou universal god of men,
Wait on the couplet and reprove the pen;
If aught unwelcome to thy ears shall rise,
Hold jails and famine to the poet's eyes,
Bid satire sheathe her sharp avenging steel,
And lose a number rather than a meal.
Nay, prithee, honour, do not make us mad,
When I am hungry something must be had:
Can honest consciousness of doing right
Provide a dinner or a bed at night?
What though Astrea decks my soul in gold,
My mortal lumber trembles with the cold;
Then, cursed tormentor of my peace, begone!
Flattery's a cloak, and I will put it on.
Wait on the couplet and reprove the pen;
If aught unwelcome to thy ears shall rise,
Hold jails and famine to the poet's eyes,
Bid satire sheathe her sharp avenging steel,
And lose a number rather than a meal.
Nay, prithee, honour, do not make us mad,
When I am hungry something must be had:
Can honest consciousness of doing right
Provide a dinner or a bed at night?
What though Astrea decks my soul in gold,
My mortal lumber trembles with the cold;
Then, cursed tormentor of my peace, begone!
Flattery's a cloak, and I will put it on.
In a low cottage, shaking with the wind,
A door in front, a span of light behind,
Tervono's lungs their mystic play began,
And nature in the infant marked the man.
Six times the youth of morn, the golden sun,
Through the twelve stages of his course had run,
Tervono rose, the merchant of the plain,
His soul was traffic, his elysium gain;
The ragged chapman found his word a law,
And lost in barter every favourite taw.
Through various scenes Tervono still ascends,
And still is making, still forgetting friends;
Full of this maxim, often heard in trade,
Friendship with none but equals should be made.
His soul is all the merchant. None can find
The shadow of a virtue in his mind.
Nor are his vices reason misapplied;
Mean as his spirit, sneaking as his pride.
At city dinner or a turtle feast
As expeditious as a hungry priest:
No foe to Bacchanalian brutal rites,
In vile confusion dozing off the nights.
Tervono would be flattered; shall I then
A door in front, a span of light behind,
Tervono's lungs their mystic play began,
And nature in the infant marked the man.
Six times the youth of morn, the golden sun,
Through the twelve stages of his course had run,
133
His soul was traffic, his elysium gain;
The ragged chapman found his word a law,
And lost in barter every favourite taw.
Through various scenes Tervono still ascends,
And still is making, still forgetting friends;
Full of this maxim, often heard in trade,
Friendship with none but equals should be made.
His soul is all the merchant. None can find
The shadow of a virtue in his mind.
Nor are his vices reason misapplied;
Mean as his spirit, sneaking as his pride.
At city dinner or a turtle feast
As expeditious as a hungry priest:
No foe to Bacchanalian brutal rites,
In vile confusion dozing off the nights.
In stigmatizing satire shake the pen?
Muse, for his brow the laurel wreath prepare,
Though soon 'twill wither when 'tis planted there.
Come, panegyric; adulation, haste,
And sing this wonder of mercántile taste;
And whilst his virtue rises in my lines,
The patron's happy, and the poet dines.
Some, philosophically cased in steel,
Can neither poverty or hunger feel;
But that is not my case; the Muses know
What water-gruel stuff from Phœbus flow;
Then if the rage of satire seize my brain,
May none but brother poets meet the strain.
May bulky aldermen nor vicars rise,
Hung in terrorem to their brothers' eyes;
134
In to their inward room the senses draw,
There as they snore in consultation deep,
Are by the vulgar reckoned fast asleep.
| The Poetical Works of Thomas Chatterton | |