I
In vain thou wouldst invoke the Muse;
The Muse thy calling will attend ill:
She ne'er would such a poet choose
To sing the harmony of Handel.
“How shall she teach?” Ah! how indeed?
Then know, my friend, the strength within ye:
Leave praising organs, and proceed
To' extol the sense of Buonancini.
II
Our souls, like Jacob's, take their flight,
Borne up to heaven in rapture seeming:
But heaven, if I remember right,
Came down to Jacob in his dreaming.
Pindaric flights we find in thee,
Base earth with highest heaven confounding:
Poor symbol is the trumpet-key
Of an archangel's trumpet sounding.
III
Hark how in Pope with “lengthen'd notes and slow
The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow.”
Hear Congreve's wit employ his tuneful tongue
To tell how beauteous Arabella sung;
And bid each ruder gasp of breath
Be calm as in the arms of death.
Freely from either bard purloin,
And spoil the verses:—They are thine.
“Again we hear” the words; the sense is drown'd,
Lost, like thy wits, “in ecstasy of sound;”
In ecstasy of sound, without pretence
To raise our souls to ecstasy by sense.
