Songs of the Seasons :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Poet's Corner!
It was a spot familiar to my mind
In boyhood, made so by the simple name
And apprehension of the wealth it held:
Save as the resting place of rival bards,
Allotted by the nation they gave fame to,
I knew it not; yet, in my ignorance,
Let rein to fancy. I lived then remote
In Scotland; but a burning wish was mine
To visit London, and of all its sights
And marvels, foremost in the catalogue
Loomed the grand Abbey and its Poet's Corner.

The Poet's Corner was to me a theme
Of frequent meditation and delight;
For out of it the resurrections came
Daily and nightly of immortal thoughts,
And I held converse in its fancied courts

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With souls illustrious. Many were the forms
Imagination to the spot assigned;
Extending it into a garden oft,
Refulgent with bright flowers—exhaling odours
That wrapt the senses in sweet reverie:
It took shape also as a charméd rood
In God's own acre—an enchanted bower,
In which the cypress over-topped the bay,
And weeping willows intervening spake
Both Grief and Love, shedding their leaves betimes.

The Poet's Corner! How expressive seem'd
The simple words to my untutored mind,
Creative of devout and soaring thoughts!
Knelt in its niches, so my fancy pictured,
The worshippers of Genius! Bards flocked thither
Of a new race, by jealousies unswayed,
To cast their offerings. The Angel Death
Carv'd Immortality upon the tombs.
“I smote the body to let free the soul,
And give it presence and the magnitude
That is its portion in the Universe.”
But when I came, a-glow with ardent thoughts
And preconceptions of the venerable,
To Poet's Corner—ah! how rude the shock
That laid my idols prostrate—pillaged me
Of cherished Faith—the altar overset
On which I thought to lay presumptuous gifts—

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The curtain rent, behind whose waving ægis
I long had pictured gorgeous effigies,
And the accordings of a generous nation
To those great souls who, with the voice of Song,
Did more than all the tricksters of the State
To knit together human sympathies,
And elevate into a Passion-form
The love of country and the love of Throne!

Woe to the Nation that neglects its Bards!
Woe to the City which its Prophets spurns!
Woe to the Hamlet that is deaf to Song!
Woe to the Palace and the Cottage both
From which the Poet's presence is debarred,
And in whose vestibules and round whose hearths
Fools' tongues talk lightly of the gift divine!

Who of the charming lyrists of our day
Would care to lie interred in Poet's Corner—
His bones cooped up in parsimonious space
As lumber—an incumbrance thrown aside
Into the rubbish hole of the Cathedral,
So men may jeer at Poets and their doom—
Ay! laud, as the economy of sense,
The dealing out to them so scant a grace—
So out of all accordance with their song—
A cage so narrow, dingy, sinister!

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Who of the Poets, nurtured under wing
Of the four angels of the elements,
Instructed in the cardinal mysteries,
Zealous for Truth and prodigal of Love—
Generous dispensers of the earnings won
By their endowments—lion-hearted men,
And eagle-eyed—to whom redeeming work
Was given to do, and emphasis of speech,
Akin to inspiration, showered upon,
So they might use it to the nation's welfare
In praying, warning, threatening, and denouncing,
Hoping and trusting and encouraging,
Commending, lauding, as the Master lauds
The faithful in his service; keeping Him
The while in view, to whom, as its true source,
All glory with its manifold accessions
Tides back—a reflux of exceeding glory!
In whose swift tiding, luminous and swift,
Prophets and Poets take the leading part,
Freighting with songs of Immortality
The onward current—who of these the Elect
And privileged, in trustful consciousness
That with the casket is imprison'd the jewel,
And both shall resurge when the trumpet blows,
Would care to be interred in Poet's Corner!

Yet in this nook, so chary as to space,
So inappropriate and unclassical,

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So gloomy and forbidding to the eye—
Under these slabs and tablets fanciful—
The illustrious fathers of our Saxon song
Lie chested. Here repose the stalwart bones
Of Chaucer. Here our Spenser sleeps the sleep
Held to be dreamless. Here the mortal coil
Of Shakspeare's cognate in the tragic art,
Beaumont, long shuffled off, hath found a shelf.
Here in this dismal corner, huddled up
With poets of small worth, lies glorious John.

Here, too, that dictatorial Elephant,
Whose parasite exalted from the pot-house,
And made a shew of and a make-belief—
Sam Johnson, lies—the lexicographer,
So called, who built in folio his renown
As an interpreter of languages,
Not knowing any save a smattering
Of dog-latinity besides his own—
And that, not as a scholar in its roots,
But as a pedagogue upon the surface.

Oft have I marvell'd how the ponderous brute
Acquir'd ascendency in literature;
His Rasselas being the prosiest of prose,
His Rambler a collection of dull essays,
Wordy, didactic, and idealess,
Unseasoned with a pepper-corn of humour;

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His satire pointless, and his rash attempt
To master Pegasus a crowning failure!

True! from materials given by one who knew
How to make gold out of a labouring brain,
He faithfully performed a noble trust,
And by his Poet's Lives had nigh redeemed
The claim on Poet's Corner he enjoys.

But all the merit I would fain have ceded
To this Sir Oracle is disallowed,
When I regard his rank malignity
Towards the Scotch, and the offensive way
In which the big beer-swiller dealt with Anglers.
A verier humbug never swayed an Age!
Hack, snob, pretender, bully, all in one,
An egotist, a glutton, but no fool!

Keep silent in thy grim sarcophagus,
O Samuel! thou art not among the prophets!
And, rising with them in the appointed day,
Thou of their glory never shalt partake!