Bygone bards in baleful ballads would betoken Worlds of wretchedness and globes compact of gloom; Pensive poets of the past have sung or spoken Of the misery of mortals’ daily doom,
Of the hearts that are as hard as something oaken, Of the blossoms that are blighted ere they bloom, Of the ease with which a lover's vows are broken, And the terrors of the tomb!
Now no longer‘ tis the minstrel's mawkish fashion To narrate a tale of melancholy woe, Of some wight whose face was haggard, wan, and ashen, And who languished in the days of long ago,
Who adored, with pure but unrequited passion, And a heart that was as soft as any dough, A divine but unsusceptible Circassian Who continued to say‘ No’!
For to-day our lays are light, our sonnets sprightly, We adopt a tone inspiriting and blithe; We can treat the saddest subjects fairly brightly, And we never make our fellow-creatures writhe.
We regard all signs of sorrow as unsightly And as dreary as the Esplanade at Hythe, And in seas of lyric joy we swim as lightly As a saithelse a lythe )!
And a poet who the populace enrages By an out-of-date endeavour to combine The dispiriting solemnity of sages With the quill-work of the fretful porcupine,
Is considered so unworthy of his wages That the public will not read a single line, And his gems will never sparkle in the pages Of a volume such as mine!
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