 | Julian |  |
xi
PROLOGUE, WRITTEN BY A FRIEND. SPOKEN BY MR. CONNOR.
They who in Prologues for your favours ask,Find every season more perplex their task;
Though doubts and hopes, and tremblings do not fail,
The points fall flatly and the rhymes grow stale;
Why should the Author hint their fitting parts,
In all the pomp of Verse, to “British hearts?”
Why to such minds as yours with ardour pray,
For more than justice to a first essay?
What need to shew how absolute your power?
What stake awaits the issue of the hour—
How hangs the scale 'twixt agony and joy,
What bliss you nourish, or what hopes destroy?—
All these you feel;—and yet we scarce can bring
A Prologue to “the posey of a ring.”
To what may we allude?—Our plot untold
Is no great chapter from the times of old;
On no august association rests,
But seeks its earliest home in kindly breasts,—
xii
Is neither mournful Greece, nor kindling Spain,
But Sicily—where no defiance hurl'd
At freedom's foes may awe the attending world.
But since old forms forbid us to submit
A Play without a Prologue to the Pit;
Lest this be missed by some true friend of plays,
Like the dull colleague of his earlier days;
Thus let me own how fearlessly we trust
That you will yet be mercifully just.
| Julian | |