قراءة كتاب Love in the Suds: a Town Eclogue. Being the Lamentation of Roscius for the Loss of His Nyky.

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‏اللغة: English

Love in the Suds: a Town Eclogue. Being the Lamentation of Roscius for the Loss of His Nyky.

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المؤلف:

Kenrick W (William)

دار النشر: Project Gutenberg

الصفحة رقم: 3

or given him by poetical licence, may possibly be a matter of disquisition for future scholiasts.

Lest female Bacchanals, when flush'd with wine,
Serve thee, like Orpheus, for thy song divine;
Nay back return, lest my too plaintive verse
Entail on me the same Orphean curse;
Lest Venus' train of Drury and the Strand
Attack my house by water and by land;
Hot with their midnight orgies, madly tear
My little limbs, and throw them here and there;
Casting, enrag'd at my provoking theme,
Th' inditing brain into the neighbouring stream:
When, as my skull shall float the tide along,
Thy much-lov'd name, the burthen of my song,
Shall still be stutter'd, later than my breath;
Nyky—-Nyk——Ny——till stopt my tongue in death:
Through London-bridge shall Wapping Nyky roar,
And Nyk be even heard to Hampton's shore.5

IMITATIONS.

—— —— Spreto Ciconum quo munere matres
Inter sacra deûm, nocturnique orgia Bacchi,
Discerptum latos juvenem sparsêre per agros.
Tum quoque marmoreâ caput à cervice revulsum,
Gurgite cum medio portans Oeagrius Hebrus
Volveret, Eurydicen vox ipsa et frigida lingua
Ah miseram Eurydicen anima fugiente, vocabat:
Eurydicen toto referebant flumine ripæ!

NOTES.

5 The celebrated villa of Roscius.

On Hebrus' banks so tuneful Orpheus died;
His limbs the fields receiv'd, his head the tide.
Nor more its stream renown'd than Thames in fame6:
Here Catherine Hayes serv'd Goodman Hayes the same.
Here on this spot, where now th' Adelphi stands,
Was thrown her husband's noddle from her hands;
His scatter'd limbs left quiv'ring on the shore;
As Thracian wives had play'd their part before.
Oh, horrour, horrour! Nyky back return;
Nor more for grenadiers imprudent burn.

And yet, ah why should Nyky thus be blam'd?
Of manly love ah! why are men asham'd?
A new red coat, fierce cock and killing air
Will captivate the most obdurate fair;
What wonder then if Nyky's tender heart
At such a sight should feel a lover's smart:
No wonder love, that in itself is blind,
Should no distinction in the difference find;
No wonder love should Nyky thus enthrall;
Almighty love, at times, subdues us all;
While, vulgar prejudices soar'd above,
Nyk gave up all the world,—well lost for love.

IMITATIONS.

Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus amori.

NOTES.

6 See the Tyburn Chronicle and Newgate lamentations pro tempore; particularly that famous ballad, entitled A merry song about murder, beginning with, "In Tyburn-road there liv'd a man," &c.

Yet slight the cause of Nyky's late mishap;
Nyk but mistook the colour of the cap:
A common errour, frequent in the Park,
Where love is apt to stumble in the dark.
Why rais'd the haughty female head so high,
With the tall caps of grenadiers to vie?
Why does it like tremendous figure make,
To subject purblind lovers to mistake?7
Or rather why, in these enlighten'd times,
Should rigid Nature call such errours crimes?
"Thou Nature art my goddess," saith the play;
But even Shakespeare's text hath had its day.
More gentle custom no such rigour knows;
And custom into second nature grows.
Let vulgar passions move the vulgar mind,
Superior souls feel motives more refin'd:
Among the low-bred English slow advance
Th' Italian gusto and bon ton of France.
Strange to the classic lore of Greece and Rome,
And rudely nurs'd in ignorance at home,
The tasteless herd e'en construe into sin,
That poets should in metaphor lie in,
While I, their best man-midwife, must be sham'd,
Whene'er the Fashionable Lover's nam'd.

NOTES.

7 Nyky is near sighted.

But Candour's veil love's foibles still should cover
And Nyk be stil'd a Fashionable Lover.8
To polish'd travellers is only known
That taste which makes the ancient arts our own;
Which shares with Rome in every gem antique;
Which blends the modern with the ancient Greek;
Improves on both, and greatly soars above,
In pure philanthropy, Platonic love;
That love which burns with undistinguish'd rage,
And spares in fondness neither sex nor age?
Ah! therefore why in these enlighten'd times
Sould rigid Nature call such errours crimes?
Must not the taste of Attic wits be nice?
Can antient virtue be a modern vice?
The Mantuan bard, or else his scholiast lies,9
Virgil the chaste, nay Socrates the wise.

NOTES.

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