I CANNOT fulminate or tonitruate words To puzzle intellects; my ninth lass affords No Lycophronian buskins, nor can strain Garagantuan lines to gigantise thy vein, Nor make a jusjurand, that thy great plays Are terra-del-fuegos or incognitas, Thy Pegasus, in his admir'd career, Curvets no capreoles of nonsense here. Wonder not, friend, that I do entertain Such language, that both think and speak so plain. Know, I applaud thy smooth and even strains, That will inform, and not confound, our brains. Thy Helicon like a smooth stream doth flow, While others with disturbed channels go, And headlong, like Nile's cataracts, do fall With a huge noise, and yet not heard at all. When thy intelligence on the Cockpit stage Gives it a soul from her immortal rage, I hear the Muses' birds with full delight Sing where the birds of Mars were wont to fight: Nor flatter I (thou knowest I do abhor it); Let others praise thy play, I'll do love thee for it; That he that knows my friend shall say, he has A friend as grateful as his servant was. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE EXILE TO HIS WIFE by JOSEPH BRENAN STANZAS WRITTEN ON THE ROAD BETWEEN FLORENCE AND PISA by GEORGE GORDON BYRON HARRIET BEECHER STOWE by PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR THE GARDEN SEAT by THOMAS HARDY WHERE THE PICNIC WAS by THOMAS HARDY AN EVENING by WILLIAM ALLINGHAM |