Among the Gods, and Other Poems (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WHITE CANVAS STEAIT-JACKET DOMINIONS. North, south, east, and west I have peripatized, Wherever Fame flutters her pinions; I've seen some nude truths, and I've seen some disguised, But none my E hnology ever capsized, Like White Canvas Strait-Jacket Dominions. I've heard of a land where the night-caps are red, Like butchers', or Hanbury's porters; But now I don't paint the outside of the head, The source whence the feasters of reason are fed Is my theme?Literati or Sorters. Oh ! ye who have guzzled at Helicon's fount, And think no "small beer" you have tippled; Pray drop such conceit, it for nothing will count, Your true modern rhymer Parnassus can mount, Though Peg. casts a shoe, or is crippled. Some silly old fellow, 'twas Horace I think, Said Poets are born ready loaded With epic, and sonnet?the rhymes ready clink With pukings came forth, sound in rhythmical link; But Horace's folly's exploded. I'll show you the plan how we moderns excel Great Homer, or Maro, or Pindar, And make our crude verses with pathos to swell, With fiery heroics, with thoughts deep and fell, That scorch all pretenders to tinder. Get Walker, and Johnson, and Entick, and Hayes, Too many good things one can't muster; What Muse need one call on to water one's bays, When help-mates like these on one's table one lays, To aid one to go in a buster. You mean to immortalize some one in rhyme, An incipient Laureate feeling; For reason?-no matter, choose words long and prime, No matter for relevance, so they're sublime, Nor yet if from others you're stealing. Suppose you should say, he is good, wise, and great, Who'd heed such one-syllable twaddle ? Culminatory words you must strive to create, Obfuscating all brains, till they get in a state...