Читать книгу Poems. Volume 2 - George Meredith - Страница 19

Unhappy poets of a sunken prime!

You to reviewers are as ball to bat.

They shadow you with Homer, knock you flat

With Shakespeare: bludgeons brainingly sublime

On you the excommunicates of Rhyme,

Because you sing not in the living Fat.

The wiry whizz of an intrusive gnat

Is verse that shuns their self-producing time.

Sound them their clocks, with loud alarum trump,

Or watches ticking temporal at their fobs,

You win their pleased attention.  But, bright God

O’ the lyre, what bully-drawlers they applaud!

Rather for us a tavern-catch, and bump

Chorus where Lumpkin with his Giles hobnobs.