Poems by Hartley Coleridge :: :: University of Virginia Library

Wilkie, the Scottish Homer, so 'tis said;
I will not censure what I never read.
Had Homer been a chief of merry Tweeddale,
And had his trumpet been an old Scotch fiddle,
His Pegasus a shuffling Scotland pad,
He then had wrote the Epigoniad.

Good Dodsley, honest, bustling, hearty soul,
A footman, verse-man, prose-man, bibliopole;
A menial first beneath a lady's roof,
Then Mercury to guttling Dartineuf,
His humble education soon complete,
He learnt good things to write, good things to eat.
Then boldly enter'd on the buskin'd stage,
And show'd how toys may help to make us sage:
Nay, dared to bite the great with satire's tooth,
And made a Miller tell his King the truth.
In tragic strain he told Cleone's woes,
The touching sorrows and the madd'ning throes

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Of a fond mother and a faithful wife.
He wrote “The Economy of Human Life.”
For flights didactic then his lyre he strung,
Made rhymes on Preaching, and blank verse on Dung;
Anon with soaring weary, much at his ease,
Wrote Epigrams, and Compliments, and Kisses.
All styles he tried, the tragic, comic, lyric,
The grave didactic and the keen satiric;
Now preach'd and taught as sober as a dominie,
Now went pindaric-mad about Melpomene;
Now tried the pastoral pipe and oaten stop,
Yet all the while neglected not his shop.
Fair be his fame, among a knavish clan
His noblest title was an honest man.
A bookseller, he robb'd no bard of pelf,
No bard he libell'd, though a bard himself.

Far other fate was thine, unhappy Kit,
Luckless adventurer in the trade of wit.
A bitter cup was offer'd to thy lip,
Drugg'd with the wants and woes of authorship.
Untimely thrust upon this mortal stage,
No childish pastime could thy thoughts engage.

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Books were thy playmates. In a happy dream
Thy hours unmark'd would glide along the stream
Of fancies numberless, and sweet, and fair;
Link'd like the notes of some voluptuous air,
For ever varying as the hues that deck
With changeful loveliness the ring-dove's neck.
Still rising, flitting, melting, blending,
For ever passing, and yet never ending.
Sweet life were this, if life might pass away
Like the soft numbers of a warbled lay;
Were man not doom'd to carefulness and toil,
A magic lamp with unconsuming oil.
Truth is a lesson of another school,
And duty sways us with a stricter rule.
The stream of life awhile that smoothest flows,
'Ere long is hurried down the stream of woes,
Or, lost in swamps of penury and shame,
Leaves the foul vapour of a tainted name.

Like fate, or worse, poor Cuthbert, made thy life
A woful monument to thy dead wife.
With her of virtue and of hope bereft,
Thou and thy passions in the world wert left.

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True, thou hast sweetly mourn'd thy youthful bride,
But well it were if thou with her hadst died.

For Langhorne, Reverend let him still continue,
Although his mind had very little sinew.
'Twas his to ape our reverend ancient lays
With mincing prettiness of modern phrase,
As some fine ladies mimic in their dress
The simple finery of a shepherdess;
And shape their silks and muslins to the cut
That decks the dwellers of the mud-built hut.

Christopher Smart, born April 11, 1722; died May 21, 1773.

Cuthbert Shaw, born 1738 or 1739; died September 1, 1771.