Volume 18 — URANIA’S TEMPLE; OR, A SATIRE UPON THE SILENT POETS.

Carmina, nulla canam.——Virg.

A house there stands where once a convent stood, A nursery still to the old convent brood: This ever hospitable roof of yore The famous sign of the old Osiris bore, A fair red Io, hieroglyphic-fair, For all the suckling wits o’ the town milcht there. This long old emblematic, that had past Full many a bleak winter’s shaking blast, At last with age fell down, some say, confusion, Shamed and quite dasht at the new Revolution; Dropt out of modesty, (as most suppose,) Not daring face the new bright Royal Rose. Here in supiner state, ’twixt reaking tiff, And fumigating clouds of funk and whiff, Snug in a nook, his dusky tripos, sits A senior Delphic ’mongst the minor wits; Feared like an Indian god, a god indeed True Indian, smoked with his own native weed. From this oped mouth, soft eloquence rich mint Steals now and then a keen well-hammered hint, Some sharp state raillery, or politic squint, Hard midwived wit, births by slow labours stopt, Sense not profusely shower’d, but only dropt. Sometimes for oracles yet more profound, A titillating sonnet’s handed round, Some Abdication-Damon madrigal, His own sour pen’s too overflowing gall. I must confess in pure poetic rage, Bowed down to the old Moloch of that age, His strange bigotted muse our wonder saw, Tuned to the late great court tarantula. What though worn out in pleasures old and stale, The reverend Outly sculkt within the pale; It was enough, like the old Mahomet’s pigeon, He lured to bread, and masked into religion. Had that, now silent, muse been but so kind As to this funeral-dirge her numbers joined, On that great theme what wonders had he told! For though the bard, the quill is not grown old, Writes young Apollo still, with his whole rays Encircled and enriched, though not his bays. Thus when the wreath, so long, so justly due, The great Mecænas from those brows withdrew, With pain he saw such merit sunk so far, Shamed that the dragon’s tail swept down the star. Not that the conscience-shackle tied so hard, But had he been the prophet, as the bard, Prognostick’d the diminutive slender birth His seven-hill’d mountain-labour has brought forth, His foreseen precipice; that thought alone Had stopt his fall, secured him all our own; Free from his hypochondriac dreams he had slept, And still his unsold Esau’s birthright kept. ’Tis thus we see him lost, thus mourn his fall; That single teint alone has sullied all. So have I in the Muses garden seen The spreading rose, or blooming jessamine; Once from whose bosom the whole Hybla train The industrious treasurers of the rich plain, Those winged foragers for their fragrant prey, On loaded thighs bore thousand sweets away: Now shaded by a sullen venomed guest Cankered and sooted o’er to a spider’s nest. His sweets thus soured, what melancholy change, What an ill-natur’d lour, a face so strange! His life one whole long scene of all unrest, And airy hopes his thin cameleon-feast; Pleased only with the pride of being preferred, The echoed voice to his own listning herd, A magisterial Belweather tape, The lordly leader of his bleating troop. These doctrines our young Sullenists preach round, The texts which their poetic silence found. But why the doctor of their chair, why thou, Their great rabbinic voice, thus silent too? Could Noll’s once meteor glories blaze so fair, To make thee that all-prostrate zealot there? Strange, that that fiery nose could boast that charm Thy muse with those seraphic raptures warm! And our fair Albion star to shine so bleak, Her radiant influence so chill, so weak! Gorged with his riotous festival of fame, Could thy weak stomach pule at Mary’s name! Or was thy junior palate more canine, And now in years grows squeamish, and more fine! Fie, peevish-niggard, with thy flowing store To play the churl,—excuse thy shame no more.