To Wordsworth

Those who have laid the harp aside     And turn'd to idler things,     From very restlessness have tried     The loose and dusty strings.     And, catching back some favourite strain,     Run with it o'er the chords again.     But Memory is not a Muse,     O Wordsworth! though 'tis said     They all descend from her, and use     To haunt her fountain-head:     That other men should work for me     In the rich mines of Poesie,     Pleases me better than the toil     Of smoothing under hardened hand,     With Attic emery and oil,     The shining point for Wisdom's wand,     Like those thou temperest 'mid the rills     Descending from thy native hills.     Without his governance, in vain     Manhood is strong, and Youth is bold     If oftentimes the o'er-piled strain     Clogs in the furnace, and grows cold     Beneath his pinions deep and frore,     And swells and melts and flows no more,     That is because the heat beneath     Pants in its cavern poorly fed.     Life springs not from the couch of Death,     Nor Muse nor Grace can raise the dead;     Unturn'd then let the mass remain,     Intractable to sun or rain.     A marsh, where only flat leaves lie,     And showing but the broken sky,     Too surely is the sweetest lay     That wins the ear and wastes the day,     Where youthful Fancy pouts alone     And lets not Wisdom touch her zone.     He who would build his fame up high,     The rule and plummet must apply,     Nor say, 'I'll do what I have plann'd,'     Before he try if loam or sand     Be still remaining in the place     Delved for each polisht pillar's base.     With skilful eye and fit device     Thou raisest every edifice,     Whether in sheltered vale it stand     Or overlook the Dardan strand,     Amid the cypresses that mourn     Laodameia's love forlorn.     We both have run o'er half the space     Listed for mortal's earthly race;     We both have crost life's fervid line,     And other stars before us shine:     May they be bright and prosperous     As those that have been stars for us!     Our course by Milton's light was sped,     And Shakespeare shining overhead:     Chatting on deck was Dryden too,     The Bacon of the rhyming crew;     None ever crost our mystic sea     More richly stored with thought than he;     Tho' never tender nor sublime,     He wrestles with and conquers Time.     To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee,     I left much prouder company;     Thee gentle Spenser fondly led,     But me he mostly sent to bed.     I wish them every joy above     That highly blessed spirits prove,     Save one: and that too shall be theirs,     But after many rolling years,     When 'mid their light thy light appears.