Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OF TASTE; AN ESSAY, SELECTION, by JAMES CAWTHORN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OF TASTE; AN ESSAY, SELECTION, by                    
First Line: Time was, a wealthy englishman would join / a rich plum-pudding to a fat sirloin
Last Line: Midst porcelain elephants and china gods.
Subject(s): Taste (sense)


TIME was, a wealthy Englishman would join
A rich plum-pudding to a fat sirloin;
Or bake a pasty, whose enormous wall
Took up almost the area of his hall:
But now, as art improves, and life refines,
The demon Taste attends him when he dines,
Serves on his board an elegant regale,
Where three stewed mushrooms flank a larded quail;
Where infant turkeys, half a month resigned
To the soft breathings of a southern wind,
And smothered in a rich ragout of snails,
Outstink a lenten supper at Versailles.
Is there a saint that would not laugh to see
The good man piddling with his fricassee;
Forced by the luxury of taste to drain
A flask of poison, which he calls champagne!
While he, poor idiot! though he dare not speak,
Pines all the while for porter and ox-cheek?
Sure 'tis enough to starve for pomp and show,
To drink, and curse the clarets of Bordeaux:
Yet such our humour, such our skill to hit
Excess of folly through excess of wit,
We plant the garden, and we build the seat,
Just as absurdly as we drink and eat.
For is there aught that nature's hand has sown
To bloom and ripen in her hottest zone?
Is there a shrub which, ere its verdures blow,
Asks all the suns that beam upon the Po?
Is there a flowret whose vermilion hue
Can only catch its beauty in Peru?
Is there a portal, colonnade or dome,
The pride of Naples, or the boast of Rome?
We raise it here, in storms of wind and hail,
On the bleak bosom of a sunless vale;
Careless alike of climate, soil and place,
The cast of nature, and the smiles of grace.
Hence all our stuccoed walls, mosaic floors,
Palladian windows and Venetian doors,
Our Gothic fronts, whose Attic wings unfold
Fluted pilasters tipped with leaves of gold,
Our massy ceilings, graced with gay festoons,
The weeping marbles of our damp salons,
Lawns fringed with citrons, amaranthine bow'rs,
Expiring myrtles, and unop'ning flow'rs.
Hence the good Scotsman bids th' anana blow
In rocks of crystal or in Alps of snow;
On Orcus' steep extends his wide arcade,
And kills his scanty sunshine in a shade.
One might expect a sanctity of style,
August and manly, in an holy pile,
And think an architect extremely odd
To build a playhouse for the church of God:
Yet half our churches, such the mode that reigns,
Are Roman theatres or Grecian fanes;
Where broad-arched windows to the eye convey
The keen diffusion of too strong a day;
Where, in the luxury of wanton pride,
Corinthian columns languish side by side,
Closed by an altar, exquisitely fine,
Loose and lascivious as a Cyprian shrine.
Of late, 'tis true, quite sick of Rome and Greece,
We fetch our models from the wise Chinese:
European artists are too cool and chaste,
For Mand'rin only is the man of taste;
Whose bolder genius, fondly wild to see
His grove a forest, and his pond a sea,
Breaks out—and, whimsically great, designs
Without the shackles or of rules or lines:
Formed on his plans, our farms and seats begin
To match the boasted villas of Pekin.
On every hill a spire-crowned temple swells,
Hung round with serpents and a fringe of bells:
Junks and balons along our waters sail,
With each a gilded cockboat at his tail;
Our choice exotics to the breeze exhale,
Within th' inclosure of a zigzag rail;
In Tartar huts our cows and horses lie,
Our hogs are fatted in an Indian sty;
On ev'ry shelf a joss divinely stares,
Nymphs laid on chintzes sprawl upon our chairs;
While o'er our cabinets Confucius nods,
Midst porcelain elephants and china gods.





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