HKB
crockery was a jar when you began; It ends a pitcher: you an artist, man! Make what you will, in short, so, when 'tis done, 'Tis but consistent, homogeneous, one.
Ye worthy trio! we poor sons of song Oft find 'tis fancied right that leads us wrong. I prove obscure in trying to be terse; Attempts at ease emasculate my verse; Who aims at grandeur into bombast falls; Who fears to stretch his pinions creeps and crawls; Who hopes by strange variety to please Puts dolphins among forests, boars in seas. Thus zeal to 'scape from error, if unchecked By sense of art, creates a new defect. Fix on some casual sculptor; he shall know How to give nails their sharpness, hair its flow; Yet he shall fail, because he lacks the soul To comprehend and reproduce the whole. I'd not be he; the blackest hair and eye Lose all their beauty with the nose awry.
Good authors, take a brother bard's advice: Ponder your subject o'er not once nor twice, And oft and oft consider, if the weight You hope to lift be or be not too great. Let but our theme be equal to our powers, Choice language, clear arrangement, both are ours. Would you be told how best your pearls to thread? Why, say just now what should just now be said, But put off other matter for to-day, To introduce it later by the way.
In words again be cautious and select, And duly pick out this, and that reject. High praise and honour to the bard is due Whose dexterous setting makes an old word new. Nay more, should some recondite subject need Fresh signs to make it clear to those who read, A power of issuing terms till now unused, If claimed with modesty, is ne'er refused. New words will find acceptance, if they flow Forth from the Greek, with just a twist or so. But why should Rome capriciously forbid Our bards from doing what their fathers did? Or why should Plautus and Caecilius gain What Virgil or what Varius asks in vain? Nay, I myself, if with my scanty wit I coin a word or two, why grudge me it, When Ennius and old Cato boldly flung Their terms broadcast, and amplified our tongue? To utter words stamped current by the mill Has always been thought right and always will.
When forests shed their foliage at the fall, The earliest born still drops the first of all: So fades the elder race of words, and so The younger generations bloom and grow. Death claims humanity and human things, Aye, e'en "imperial works and worthy kings:" What though the ocean, girdled by the shore, Gives shelter to the ships it tossed before? What though the marsh, once waste and watery, now Feeds neighbour towns, and groans beneath the plough? What though the river, late the corn-field's dread, Rolls fruit and blessing down its altered bed? Man's works must perish: how should words evade The general doom, and flourish undecayed? Yes, words long faded may again revive, And words may fade now blooming and alive, If usage wills it so, to whom belongs The rule, the law, the government of tongues.
For metres, Homer shows you how to write Heroic deeds and incidents of fight.
Complaint was once the Elegiac's theme; From thence 'twas used to sing of love's young dream: But who that dainty measure first put out, Grammarians differ, and 'tis still in doubt.
Archilochus, inspired by fiery rage, Called forth Iambics: now they tread the stage In buskin or in sock, conduct discourse, Lead action on, and awe the mob perforce.
The glorious gods, the gods' heroic seed, The conquering boxer, the victorious steed, The joys of wine, the lover's fond desire, Such themes the Muse appropriates to the lyre.