Читать книгу The Works of William Cowper - William Cowper - Страница 192

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Olney, June 22, 1782.

My dear Friend,

If reading verse be your delight,

'Tis mine as much, or more, to write;

But what we would, so weak is man,

Lies oft remote from what we can.

For instance, at this very time,

I feel a wish, by cheerful rhyme,

To soothe my friend, and had I power,

To cheat him of an anxious hour;

Not meaning (for I must confess,

It were but folly to suppress,)

His pleasure or his good alone,

But squinting partly at my own.

But though the sun is flaming high

I' th' centre of yon arch, the sky,

And he had once (and who but he?)

The name for setting genius free;

Yet whether poets of past days

Yielded him undeserved praise,

And he by no uncommon lot

Was famed for virtues he had not;

Or whether, which is like enough,

His Highness may have taken huff,

So seldom sought with invocation,

Since it has been the reigning fashion

To disregard his inspiration,

I seem no brighter in my wits,

For all the radiance he emits,

Than if I saw through midnight vapour

The glimm'ring of a farthing taper.

O for a succedaneum, then,

T' accelerate a creeping pen,

O for a ready succedaneum,

Quod caput, cerebrum, et cranium

Pondere liberet exoso,

Et morbo jam caliginoso!

'Tis here; this oval box well fill'd

With best tobacco, finely mill'd,

Beats all Anticyra's pretences

To disengage the encumber'd senses.

O Nymph of Transatlantic fame,

Where'er thine haunt, whate'er thy name,

Whether reposing on the side

Of Oroonoquo's spacious tide,

Or list'ning with delight not small

To Niagara's distant fall,

'Tis thine to cherish and to feed

The pungent nose-refreshing weed,

Which, whether, pulverized it gain

A speedy passage to the brain,

Or, whether touch'd with fire, it rise

In circling eddies to the skies,

Does thought more quicken and refine

Than all the breath of all the Nine—

Forgive the Bard, if Bard he be,

Who once too wantonly made free

To touch with a satiric wipe

That symbol of thy power, the pipe;

So may no blight infest thy plains,

And no unseasonable rains,

And so may smiling Peace once more

Visit America's sad shore;

And thou, secure from all alarms

Of thund'ring drums and glitt'ring arms,

Rove unconfined beneath the shade

Thy wide-expanded leaves have made;

So may thy votaries increase,

And fumigation never cease.

May Newton, with renew'd delights,

Perform thine odorif'rous rites.

While clouds of incense half divine

Involve thy disappearing shrine;

And so may smoke-inhaling Bull

Be always filling, never full.

W. C.