An English Ballad, On The Taking Of Namur, By The King Of Great Britain
Dulce est desipere in loco.
Some Folks are drunk, yet do not know it:
So might not Bacchus give You Law?
Was it a Muse, O lofty Poet,
Or Virgin of St. Cyr, You saw?
Why all this Fury? What's the Matter,
That Oaks must come from Thrace to dance?
Must stupid Stocks be taught to flatter?
And is there no such Wood in France?
Why must the Winds all hold their Tongue?
If they a little Breath should raise;
Would that have spoil'd the Poet's Song;
Or puff'd away the Monarch's Praise?
II.
Pindar, that Eagle, mounts the Skies;
While Virtue leads the noble Way:
Too like a Vultur Boileau flies,
Where sordid Interest shows the Prey.
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poem by Matthew Prior
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The Second Hymn Of Callimachus. To Apollo
Hah! how the laurel, great Apollo's tree,
And all the cavern shakes! Far off, far off,
The man that is unhallow'd: for the god,
The god approaches. Hark! he knocks; the gates
Feel the glad impulse, and the sever'd bars
Submissive clink against their brazen portals.
Why do the Delian palms incline their boughs,
Self-moved, and hovering swans, their throats released
From native silence, carol sounds harmonious?
Begin young men the hymn: let all your harps
Break their inglorious silence, and the dance,
In mystic numbers trod, explain the music,
But first by ardent prayer and clear lustration
Purge the contagious spots of human weakness:
Impure no mortal can behold Apollo.
So may ye flourish favour'd by the god,
In youth with happy nuptials, and in age
With silver hairs, and fair descent of children;
So lay foundations for aspiring cities,
And bless your spreading colonies' increase.
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poem by Matthew Prior
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An Epistle To Fleetwood Shephard, Esq. Burleigh, May 14, 1689
Sir,
As once a twelvemonth to the priest,
Holy at Rome, here Antichrist,
The Spanish king presents a jennet
To show his love, -- that's all that's in it;
For if his Holiness would thump
His reverend bum 'gainst horse's rump,
He might be 'quipp'd from his own stable
With one more white and eke more able.
Or as with gondolas and men his
Good excellence the duke of Venice
(I wish, for rhyme, it had been the king)
Sails out, and gives the Gulf a ring,
Which trick of state he wisely maintains,
Keeps kindness up 'twixt old acquaintance,
For else, in honest truth, the sea
Has much less need of gold than he.
Or, not to rove and pump one's fancy
For popish similes beyond sea,
As folks from mudwall'd tenement
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poem by Matthew Prior
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A Letter To Monsieur Boileau Despreaux, Occasioned By The Victory At Blenheim
Since hired for life, thy servile Muse must sing
Successive conquests and a glorious King;
Must of a man immortal vainly boast,
And bring him laurels whatsoe'er they cost,
What turn wilt thou employ, what colours lay,
On the event of that superior day,
In which one English subject's prosperous hand
(So Jove did will, so Anna did command)
Broke the proud column of thy master's praise,
Which sixty winters had conspired to raise?
From the lost field a hundred standards brought
Must be the work of Chance, and Fortune's fault.
Bavaria's stars must be accused, which shone,
That fatal day the mighty work was done,
With rays oblique upon the Gallic sun.
Some demon envying France misled the sight,
And Mars mistook, though Louis order'd right.
When thy young Muse invoked the tuneful Nine,
To say how Louis did not pass the Rhine,
What work had we with Wageninghen, Arnheim,
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Down-Hall. A Ballad.
Tune. - 'King John and the Abbot of Canterbury.'
I sing not old Jason who travell'd through Greece
To kiss the fair maids and possess the rich fleece,
Nor sing I AEneas, who, led by his mother,
Got rid of one wife and went far for another.
Derry down, down, hey derry down.
Nor him who through Asia and Europe did roam,
Ulysses by name, who ne'er cared to go home,
But rather desired to see cities and men
Than return to his farms and converse with old Pen.
Derry down, down, hey derry down.
Hang Homer and Virgil; their meaning to seek,
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poem by Matthew Prior
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The Nut-Brown Maid. A Poem.
Written three hundred years since.
Be it right or wrong, these men among
On women do complayne;
Affyrmynge this, how that it is
A labour spent in vaine
To love them wele; for never a dele
They love a man againe:
For lete a man do what he can
Ther favour to attayne,
Yet yf a new do them pursue,
Ther furst trew lover than
Laboureth for nought; for from her thought
He is a banishyd man.
I say not nay, but that all day
It is bothe writ and sayde
That woman's fayth is as who saythe,
All utterly decayed.
But nevertheless right good witness
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poem by Matthew Prior
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An Ode - In Imitation of Horace, Book III. Ode II.
How long, deluded Albion, wilt thou lie
In the lethargic sleep, the sad repose
By which thy close thy constant enemy
Has softly lull'd thee to thy woes?
Or wake, degenerate isle, or cease to own
What thy old kings in Gallic camps have done,
The spoils they brought thee back, the crowns they won,
William (so Fate requires) again is arm'd,
Thy father to the field is gone,
Again Maria weeps her absent lord,
For thy repose content to rule alone.
Are thy enervate sons not yet alarm'd?
When William fights dare they look tamely on,
So slow to get their ancient fame restored,
As not to melt at Beauty's tears nor follow Valour's sword?
See the repenting isle awakes,
Her vicious chains the generous goddess breaks;
The fogs around her temples are dispell'd;
Abroad she looks, and sees arm'd Belgia stand
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An Ode - Humbly Inscribed To The Queen, On the Glorious Success of Her Majesty's Arms
When great Augustus govern'd ancient Rome,
And sent his conquering bands to foreign wars,
Abroad when dreaded, and beloved at home,
He saw his fame increasing with his years,
Horace, great bard, (so fate ordain'd) arose,
And, bold as were his countryman in fight,
Snatch'd their fair actions from degrading prose,
And set their battles in eternal light:
High as their trumpets tune his lyre he strung,
And with his prince's arms he moralized his song.
When bright Eliza ruled Britannia's state,
Widely distributing her high commands,
And, boldly wise and fortunately great,
Freed the glad nations from tyrannic bands,
An equal genius was in Spenser found;
To the high theme he match'd his noble lays;
He travelled England o'er on fairy ground,
In mystic notes to sing his monarch's praise:
Reciting wondrous truths in pleasing dreams
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poem by Matthew Prior
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The Turtle And Sparrow. An Elegiac Tale
Behind an unfrequented glade,
Where yew and myrtle mix their shade,
A widow Turtle pensive sat,
And wept her murder'd lover's fate.
The Sparrow chanced that way to walk,
(A bird that loves to chirp and talk)
Be sure he did the Turtle greet,
She answer'd him as she thought meet.
Sparrows and Turtles, by the bye,
Can think as well as you or I;
But how they did their thoughts express
The margin shows by T. and S.
T. My hopes are lost, my joys are fled,
Alas! I weep Columbo dead:
Come, all ye winged Lovers, come,
Drop pinks and daisies on his tomb;
Sing, Philomel, his funeral verse,
Ye pious Redbreasts deck his hearse;
Fair Swans, extend your dying throats,
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poem by Matthew Prior
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Alma; or, The Progress of the Mind. In Three Cantos. - Canto I.
Matthew met Richard, when or where
From story is not mighty clear:
Of many knotty points they spoke,
And pro and con by turns they took:
Rats half the manuscript have ate;
Dire hunger! which we still regret;
O! may they ne'er again digest
The horrors of so sad a feast;
Yet less our grief, if what remains,
Dear Jacob, by thy care and pains
Shall be to future times convey'd:
It thus begins:
** Here Matthew said,
Alma in verse, in prose, the mind,
By Aristotle's pen defined,
Throughout the body squat or tall,
Is
bona fide
, all in all;
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poem by Matthew Prior
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