The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore

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Unfelt the pulse, unknown the power,
That latent in his heart was sleeping,--
Oh Sympathy! that lonely hour
Saw Love himself thy absence weeping.

But look, what glory through the darkness beams!
Celestial airs along the water glide:--
What Spirit art thou, moving o'er the tide
So beautiful? oh, not of earth,
But, in that glowing hour, the birth
Of the young Godhead's own creative dreams.
'Tis she!
Psyche, the firstborn spirit of the air.
To thee, oh Love, she turns,

On thee her eyebeam burns:
Blest hour, before all worlds ordained to be!
They meet--
The blooming god--the spirit fair
Meet in communion sweet.
Now, Sympathy, the hour is thine;
All Nature feels the thrill divine,
The veil of Chaos is withdrawn,
And their first kiss is great Creation's dawn!

[1] Love and Psyche are here considered as the active and passive
principles of creation, and the universe is supposed to have received its
first harmonizing impulse from the nuptial sympathy between these two
powers. A marriage is generally the first step in cosmogony. Timaeus held
Form to be the father, and Matter the mother of the World.

TO HIS SERENE HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF MONTPENSIER
ON HIS PORTRAIT OF THE LADY ADELAIDE FORBES.

_Donington Park, 1802_

To catch the thought, by painting's spell,
Howe'er remote, howe'er refined,
And o'er the kindling canvas tell
The silent story of the mind;

O'er nature's form to glance the eye,
And fix, by mimic light and shade,
Her morning tinges ere they fly,
Her evening blushes, ere they fade;

Yes, these are Painting's proudest powers,
The gift, by which her art divine
Above all others proudly towers,--
And these, oh Prince! are richly thine.

And yet, when Friendship sees thee trace,
In almost living truth exprest,
This bright memorial of a face
On which her eye delights to rest;

While o'er the lovely look serene,
The smile of peace, the bloom of youth,
The cheek, that blushes to be seen.
The eye that tells the bosom's truth;

While o'er each line, so brightly true,
Our eyes with lingering pleasure rove,
Blessing the touch whose various hue
Thus brings to mind the form we love;

We feel the magic of thy art,
And own it with a zest, a zeal,
A pleasure, nearer to the heart
Than critic taste can _ever_ feel.

THE FALL OF HEBE.

A DITHYRAMBIC ODE.

'Twas on a day
When the immortals at their banquet lay;
The bowl
Sparkled with starry dew,
The weeping of those myriad urns of light,
Within whose orbs, the Almighty Power,
At nature's dawning hour,
Stored the rich fluid of ethereal soul.
Around,
Soft odorous clouds, that upward wing their flight
From eastern isles
(Where they have bathed them in the orient ray,
And with rich fragrance all their bosoms filled).
In circles flew, and, melting as they flew,
A liquid daybreak o'er the board distilled.

All, all was luxury!
All _must_ be luxury, where Lyaeus smiles.
His locks divine
Were crowned
With a bright meteor-braid,
Which, like an ever-springing wreath of vine,
Shot into brilliant leafy shapes,
And o'er his brow in lambent tendrils played:
While mid the foliage hung,
Like lucid grapes,
A thousand clustering buds of light,
Culled from the garden of the galaxy.

Upon his bosom Cytherea's head
Lay lovely, as when first the Syrens sung
Her beauty's dawn,
And all the curtains of the deep, undrawn,
Revealed her sleeping in its azure bed.
The captive deity
Hung lingering on her eyes and lip,
With looks of ecstasy.
Now, on his arm,
In blushes she reposed,
And, while he gazed on each bright charm,
To shade his burning eyes her hand in dalliance stole.

And now she raised her rosy mouth to sip
The nectared wave
Lyaeus gave,
And from her eyelids, half-way closed,
Sent forth a melting gleam,
Which fell like sun-dew in the bowl:
While her bright hair, in mazy flow
Of gold descending
Adown her cheek's luxurious glow,
Hung o'er the goblet's side,
And was reflected in its crystal tide,
Like a bright crocus flower,
Whose sunny leaves, at evening hour
With roses of Cyrene blending,[1]
Hang o'er the mirror of some silvery stream.

The Olympian cup
Shone in the hands
Of dimpled Hebe, as she winged her feet
Up
The empyreal mount,
To drain the soul-drops at their stellar fount;[2]
And still
As the resplendent rill
Gushed forth into the cup with mantling heat,
Her watchful care
Was still to cool its liquid fire
With snow-white sprinklings of that feathery air
The children of the Pole respire,
In those enchanted lands.[3]
Where life is all a spring, and
north winds never blow.

But oh!
Bright Hebe, what a tear,
And what a blush were thine,
When, as the breath of every Grace
Wafted thy feet along the studded sphere,
With a bright cup for Jove himself to drink,
Some star, that shone beneath thy tread,
Raising its amorous head
To kiss those matchless feet,
Checked thy career too fleet,
And all heaven's host of eyes
Entranced, but fearful all,
Saw thee, sweet Hebe, prostrate fall
Upon the bright floor of the azure skies;
Where, mid its stars, thy beauty lay,
As blossom, shaken from the spray
Of a spring thorn,
Lies mid the liquid sparkles of the morn.
Or, as in temples of the Paphian shade,
The worshippers of Beauty's queen behold
An image of their rosy idol, laid
Upon a diamond shrine.

The wanton wind,
Which had pursued the flying fair,
And sported mid the tresses unconfined
Of her bright hair,
Now, as she fell,--oh wanton breeze!
Ruffled the robe, whose graceful flow
Hung o'er those limbs of unsunned snow,
Purely as the Eleusinian veil
Hangs o'er the Mysteries!

The brow of Juno flushed--
Love blest the breeze!
The Muses blushed;
And every cheek was hid behind a lyre,
While every eye looked laughing through the strings.
But the bright cup? the nectared draught
Which Jove himself was to have quaffed?
Alas, alas, upturned it lay
By the fallen Hebe's side;
While, in slow lingering drops, the ethereal tide,
As conscious of its own rich essence, ebbed away.

Who was the Spirit that remembered Man,
In that blest hour,
And, with a wing of love,
Brushed off the goblet's scattered tears,
As, trembling near the edge of heaven they ran,
And sent them floating to our orb below?
Essence of immortality!
The shower
Fell glowing through the spheres;
While all around new tints of bliss,
New odors and new light,
Enriched its radiant flow.
Now, with a liquid kiss,
It stole along the thrilling wire
Of Heaven's luminous Lyre,
Stealing the soul of music in its flight:
And now, amid the breezes bland,
That whisper from the planets as they roll,
The bright libation, softly fanned
By all their sighs, meandering stole.
They who, from Atlas' height,
Beheld this rosy flame
Descending through the waste of night,
Thought 'twas some planet, whose empyreal frame
Had kindled, as it rapidly revolved
Around its fervid axle, and dissolved
Into a flood so bright!

The youthful Day,
Within his twilight bower,
Lay sweetly sleeping
On the flushed bosom of a lotos-flower;[4]
When round him, in profusion weeping,
Dropt the celestial shower,
Steeping
The rosy clouds, that curled
About his infant head,
Like myrrh upon the locks of Cupid shed.
But, when the waking boy
Waved his exhaling tresses through the sky,
O morn of joy!
The tide divine,
All glorious with the vermil dye
It drank beneath his orient eye,
Distilled, in dews, upon the world,
And every drop was wine, was heavenly WINE!
Blest be the sod, and blest the flower
On which descended first that shower,
All fresh from Jove's nectareous springs;--
Oh far less sweet the flower, the sod,
O'er which the Spirit of the Rainbow flings
The magic mantle of her solar God![5]

[1] We learn from Theopbrastus, that the roses of Cyrene were particularly
fragrant.

[2] Heraclitus (Physicus) held the soul to be a spark of the stellar
essence.

[3] The country of the Hyperboreans. These people were supposed to be
placed so far north that the north wind could not affect them; they lived
longer than any other mortals; passed their whole time in music and
dancing, etc.

[4] The Egyptians represented the dawn of day by a young boy seated upon a
lotos. Observing that the lotos showed its head above water at sunrise,
and sank again at his setting, they conceived the idea of consecrating
this flower to Osiris, or the sun.

[5] The ancients esteemed those flowers and trees the sweetest upon which
the rainbow had appeared to rest; and the wood they chiefly burned in
sacrifices, was that which the smile of Iris had consecrated.

RINGS AND SEALS.

"Go!" said the angry, weeping maid,
"The charm is broken!--once betrayed,
"Never can this wronged heart rely
"On word or look, on oath or sigh.
"Take back the gifts, so fondly given,
"With promised faith and vows to heaven;
"That little ring which, night and morn,
"With wedded truth my hand hath worn;
"That seal which oft, in moments blest,
"Thou hast upon my lip imprest,
"And sworn its sacred spring should be
"A fountain sealed[1] for only thee:
"Take, take them back, the gift and vow,
"All sullied, lost and hateful now!"

I took the ring--the seal I took,
While, oh, her every tear and look
Were such as angels look and shed,
When man is by the world misled.
Gently I whispered, "Fanny, dear!
"Not half thy lover's gifts are here:
"Say, where are all the kisses given,
"From morn to noon, from noon to even,--
"Those signets of true love, worth more
"Than Solomon's own seal of yore,--
"Where are those gifts, so sweet, so many?
"Come, dearest,--give back all, if any."
While thus I whispered, trembling too,
Lest all the nymph had sworn was true,
I saw a smile relenting rise
Mid the moist azure of her eyes,
Like daylight o'er a sea of blue,
While yet in mid-air hangs the dew
She let her cheek repose on mine,
She let my arms around her twine;
One kiss was half allowed, and then--
The ring and seal were hers again.

[1] "There are gardens, supposed to be those of King Solomon, in the
neighborhood of Bethlehem. The friars show a fountain, which, they say, is
the sealed fountain, to which the holy spouse in the Canticles is
compared; and they pretend a tradition, that Solomon shut up these springs
and put his signet upon the door, to keep them for his own
drinking."--_Maundrell's Travels_.

TO MISS SUSAN BECKFORD.[1]

ON HER SINGING.

I more than once have heard at night
A song like those thy lip hath given,
And it was sung by shapes of light,
Who looked and breathed, like thee, of heaven.

But this was all a dream of sleep.
And I have said when morning shone:--
"Why should the night-witch, Fancy, keep
"These wonders for herself alone?"

I knew not then that fate had lent
Such tones to one of mortal birth;
I knew not then that Heaven had sent
A voice, a form like thine on earth.

And yet, in all that flowery maze
Through which my path of life has led,
When I have heard the sweetest lays
From lips of rosiest lustre shed;

When I have felt the warbled word
From Beauty's lip, in sweetness vying
With music's own melodious bird;
When on the rose's bosom lying

Though form and song at once combined
Their loveliest bloom and softest thrill,
My heart hath sighed, my ear hath pined
For something lovelier, softer still:--

Oh, I have found it all, at last,
In thee, thou sweetest living lyre,
Through which the soul of song e'er past,
Or feeling breathed its sacred fire.

All that I e'er, in wildest flight
Of fancy's dreams could hear or see
Of music's sigh or beauty's light
Is realized, at once, in thee!

[1] Afterward Duchess of Hamilton.

IMPROMPTU,

ON LEAVING SOME FRIENDS.

_o dulces comitum valete coetus_!
CATULLUS.

No, never shall my soul forget
The friends I found so cordial-hearted;
Dear shall be the day we met,
And dear shall be the night we parted.

If fond regrets, however sweet,
Must with the lapse of time decay,
Yet stall, when thus in mirth you meet,
Fill high to him that's far away!

Long be the light of memory found
Alive within your social glass;
Let that be still the magic round.
O'er which Oblivion, dare not pass.

A WARNING.

TO .......

Oh, fair as heaven and chaste as light!
Did nature mould thee all so bright.
That thou shouldst e'er be brought to weep
O'er languid virtue's fatal sleep,
O'er shame extinguished, honor fled,
Peace lost, heart withered, feeling dead?

No, no! a star was born with thee,
Which sheds eternal purity.
Thou hast, within those sainted eyes,
So fair a transcript of the skies,
In lines of light such heavenly lore
That men should read them and adore.
Yet have I known a gentle maid
Whose mind and form were both arrayed
In nature's purest light, like thine;--
Who wore that clear, celestial sign
Which seems to mark the brow that's fair
For destiny's peculiar care;
Whose bosom, too, like Dian's own,
Was guarded by a sacred zone,
Where the bright gem of virtue shone;
Whose eyes had in their light a charm
Against all wrong and guile and harm.
Yet, hapless maid, in one sad hour
These spells have lost their guardian power;
The gem has been beguiled away;
Her eyes have lost their chastening ray;
The modest pride, the guiltless shame,
The smiles that from reflection came,
All, all have fled and left her mind
A faded monument behind;
The ruins of a once pure shrine,
No longer fit for guest divine,
Oh! 'twas a sight I wept to see--
Heaven keep the lost one's fate from thee!

TO .......

'Tis time, I feel, to leave thee now,
While yet my soul is something free;
While yet those dangerous eyes allow
One minute's thought to stray from thee.

Oh! thou becom'st each moment dearer;
Every chance that brings me nigh thee
Brings my ruin nearer, nearer,--
I am lost, unless I fly thee.

Nay, if thou dost not scorn and hate me,
Doom me not thus so soon to fall
Duties, fame, and hopes await me,--
But that eye would blast them all!

For, thou hast heart as false and cold
As ever yet allured and swayed,
And couldst, without a sigh, behold
The ruin which thyself had made.

Yet,--_could_ I think that, truly fond,
That eye but once would smile on me,
Even as thou art, how far beyond
Fame, duty, wealth, that smile would be!

Oh! but to win it, night and day,
Inglorious at thy feet reclined,
I'd sigh my dreams of fame away,
The world for thee forgot, resigned.

But no, 'tis o'er, and--thus we part,
Never to meet again--no, never,
False woman, what a mind and heart
Thy treachery has undone forever.

WOMAN.

Away, away--you're all the same,
A smiling, fluttering, jilting throng;
And, wise too late, I burn with shame,
To think I've been your slave so long.

Slow to be won, and quick to rove,
From folly kind, from cunning loath,
Too cold for bliss, too weak for love,
Yet feigning all that's best in both;

Still panting o'er a crowd to reign,--
More joy it gives to woman's breast
To make ten frigid coxcombs vain,
Than one true, manly lover blest.

Away, away--your smile's a curse--
Oh! blot me from the race of men,
Kind, pitying Heaven, by death or worse,
If e'er I love such things again.

TO .......

Come, take thy harp--'tis vain to muse
Upon the gathering ills we see;
Oh! take thy harp and let me lose
All thoughts of ill in hearing thee.

Sing to me, love!--Though death were near,
Thy song could make my soul forget--
Nay, nay, in pity, dry that tear,
All may be well, be happy yet.

Let me but see that snowy arm
Once more upon the dear harp lie,
And I will cease to dream of harm,
Will smile at fate, while thou art nigh.

Give me that strain of mournful touch
We used to love long, long ago,
Before our hearts had known as much
As now, alas! they bleed to know.

Sweet notes! they tell of former peace,
Of all that looked so smiling then,
Now vanished, lost--oh, pray thee cease,
I cannot bear those sounds again.

Art _thou_, too, wretched? Yes, thou art;
I see thy tears flow fast with mine--
Come, come to this devoted heart,
'Tis breaking, but it still is thine!

A VISION OF PHILOSOPHY.

'Twas on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met
The venerable man;[1] a healthy bloom
Mingled its softness with the vigorous thought
That towered upon his brow; and when he spoke
'Twas language sweetened into song--such holy sounds
As oft, they say, the wise and virtuous hear,
Prelusive to the harmony of heaven,
When death is nigh; and still, as he unclosed[2]
His sacred lips, an odor, all as bland
As ocean-breezes gather from the flowers
That blossom in Elysium, breathed around,
With silent awe we listened, while he told
Of the dark veil which many an age had hung
O'er Nature's form, till, long explored by man,
The mystic shroud grew thin and luminous,
And glimpses of that heavenly form shone through:--
Of magic wonders, that were known and taught
By him (or Cham or Zoroaster named)
Who mused amid the mighty cataclysm,
O'er his rude tablets of primeval lore;
And gathering round him, in the sacred ark,
The mighty secrets of that former globe,
Let not the living star of science sink
Beneath the waters, which ingulfed a world!--
Of visions, by Calliope revealed
To him,[3]who traced upon his typic lyre
The diapason of man's mingled frame,
And the grand Doric heptachord of heaven.
With all of pure, of wondrous and arcane,
Which the grave sons of Mochus, many a night,
Told to the young and bright-haired visitant
Of Carmel's sacred mount.--Then, in a flow
Of calmer converse, he beguiled us on
Through many a Maze of Garden and of Porch,
Through many a system, where the scattered light
Of heavenly truth lay, like a broken beam
From the pure sun, which, though refracted all
Into a thousand hues, is sunshine still,[4]
And bright through every change!--he spoke of Him,
The lone, eternal One, who dwells above,
And of the soul's untraceable descent
From that high fount of spirit, through the grades
Of intellectual being, till it mix
With atoms vague, corruptible, and dark;
Nor yet even then, though sunk in earthly dross,
Corrupted all, nor its ethereal touch
Quite lost, but tasting of the fountain still.
As some bright river, which has rolled along
Through meads of flowery light and mines of gold,
When poured at length into the dusky deep,
Disdains to take at once its briny taint,
Or balmy freshness, of the scenes it left.
But keeps unchanged awhile the lustrous tinge,
And here the old man ceased--a winged train
Of nymphs and genii bore him from our eyes.
The fair illusion fled! and, as I waked,
'Twas clear that my rapt soul had roamed, the while,
To that bright realm of dreams, that spirit-world,
Which mortals know by its long track of light
O'er midnight's sky, and call the Galaxy.[5]

[1] In Plutarch's Essay on the Decline of the Oracles, Cleombrotus, one of
the interlocutors, describes an extraordinary man whom he had met with,
after long research, upon the banks of the Red Sea. Once in every year
this supernatural personage appeared to mortals and conversed with them;
the rest of his time he passed among the Genii and the Nymphs.

[2] The celebrated Janus Dousa, a little before his death, imagined that
he heard a strain of music in the air.

[3] Orpheus.--Paulinus, in his "_Hebdomades_, cap. 2, _lib_. iii, has
endeavored to show, after the Platonists, that man is a diapason, or
octave, made up of a diatesseron, which is his soul, and a dispente, which
is his body. Those frequent allusions to music, by which the ancient
philosophers illustrated their sublime theories, must have tended very
much to elevate the character of the art, and to enrich it with
associations of the grandest and most interesting nature.

[4] Lactantius asserts that all the truths of Christianity may be found
dispersed through the ancient philosophical sects, and that any one who
would collect these scattered fragments of orthodoxy might form a code in
no respect differing from that of the Christian.

[5] According to Pythagoras, the people of Dreams are souls collected
together in the Galaxy.

TO MRS. .......

To see thee every day that came,
And find thee still each day the same;
In pleasure's smile or sorrow's tear
To me still ever kind and dear;--
To meet thee early, leave thee late,
Has been so long my bliss, my fate,
That life, without this cheering ray,
Which came, like sunshine, every day,
And all my pain, my sorrow chased,
Is now a lone, a loveless waste.

Where are the chords she used to touch?
The airs, the songs she loved so much?
Those songs are hushed, those chords are still,
And so, perhaps, will every thrill
Of feeling soon be lulled to rest,
Which late I waked in Anna's breast.
Yet, no--the simple notes I played
From memory's tablet soon may fade;
The songs, which Anna loved to hear,
May vanish from her heart and ear;
But friendship's voice shall ever find
An echo in that gentle mind,
Nor memory lose nor time impair
The sympathies that tremble there.

TO LADY HEATHCOTE,

ON AN OLD RING FOUND AT TUNBRIDGE-WELLS.

_"Tunnebridge est a la meme distance de Londres, que Fontainebleau
l'est de Paris. Ce qu'il y a de beau et de galant dans l'un et dans
l'autre sexe s'y rassemble au terns des eaux. La compagnie,"_ etc.
--See _Memoires de Grammont_, Second Part, chap. iii.

_Tunbridge Wells_.

When Grammont graced these happy springs,
And Tunbridge saw, upon her Pantiles,
The merriest wight of all the kings
That ever ruled these gay, gallant isles;

Like us, by day, they rode, they walked,
At eve they did as we may do,
And Grammont just like Spencer talked,
And lovely Stewart smiled like you.

The only different trait is this,
That woman then, if man beset her,
Was rather given to saying "yes,"
Because,--as yet, she knew no better.

Each night they held a coterie,
Where, every fear to slumber charmed,
Lovers were all they ought to be,
And husbands not the least alarmed.

Then called they up their school-day pranks,
Nor thought it much their sense beneath
To play at riddles, quips, and cranks,
And lords showed wit, and ladies teeth.

As--"Why are husbands like the mint?"
Because, forsooth, a husband's duty
Is but to set the name and print
That give a currency to beauty.

"Why is a rose in nettles hid
Like a young widow, fresh and fair?"
Because 'tis sighing to be rid
Of weeds, that "have no business there!"

And thus they missed and thus they hit,
And now they struck and now they parried;
And some lay in of full grown wit.
While others of a pun miscarried,

'Twas one of those facetious nights
That Grammont gave this forfeit ring
For breaking grave conundrumrites,
Or punning ill, or--some such thing;--

From whence it can be fairly traced,
Through many a branch and many a bough,
From twig to twig, until it graced
The snowy hand that wears it now.

All this I'll prove, and then, to you
Oh Tunbridge! and your springs ironical,
I swear by Heathcote's eye of blue
To dedicate the important chronicle.

Long may your ancient inmates give
Their mantles to your modern lodgers,
And Charles's loves in Heathcote live,
And Charles's bards revive in Rogers.

Let no pedantic fools be there;
For ever be those fops abolished,
With heads as wooden as thy ware,
And, heaven knows! not half so polished.

But still receive the young, the gay.
The few who know the rare delight
Of reading Grammont every day,
And acting Grammont every night.

THE DEVIL AMONG THE SCHOLARS,

A FRAGMENT.

* * * * *

But, whither have these gentle ones,
These rosy nymphs and black-eyed nuns,
With all of Cupid's wild romancing,
Led by truant brains a-dancing?
Instead of studying tomes scholastic,
Ecclesiastic, or monastic,
Off I fly, careering far
In chase of Pollys, prettier far
Than any of their namesakes are,--
The Polymaths and Polyhistors,
Polyglots and all their sisters.

So have I known a hopeful youth
Sit down in quest of lore and truth,
With tomes sufficient to confound him,
Like Tohu Bohu, heapt around him,--
Mamurra[1] stuck to Theophrastus,
And Galen tumbling o'er Bombastus.[2]
When lo! while all that's learned and wise
Absorbs the boy, he lifts his eyes,
And through the window of his study
Beholds some damsel fair and ruddy,
With eyes, as brightly turned upon him as
The angel's[3] were on Hieronymus.
Quick fly the folios, widely scattered,
Old Homer's laureled brow is battered,
And Sappho, headlong sent, flies just in
The reverend eye of St. Augustin.
Raptured he quits each dozing sage,
Oh woman, for thy lovelier page:
Sweet book!--unlike the books of art,--
Whose errors are thy fairest part;
In whom the dear errata column
Is the best page in all the volume![4]
But to begin my subject rhyme--
'Twas just about this devilish time,
When scarce there happened any frolics
That were not done by Diabolics,
A cold and loveless son of Lucifer,
Who woman scorned, nor saw the use of her,
A branch of Dagon's family,
(Which Dagon, whether He or She,
Is a dispute that vastly better is
Referred to Scaliger[5] _et coeteris_,)
Finding that, in this cage of fools,
The wisest sots adorn the schools,
Took it at once his head Satanic in,
To grow a great scholastic manikin,--
A doctor, quite as learned and fine as
Scotus John or Tom Aquinas,
Lully, Hales Irrefragabilis,
Or any doctor of the rabble is.
In languages, the Polyglots,
Compared to him, were Babelsots:
He chattered more than ever Jew did;--
Sanhedrim and Priest included,
Priest and holy Sanhedrim
Were one-and-seventy fools to him.
But chief the learned demon felt a
Zeal so strong for gamma, delta,
That, all for Greek and learning's glory,[6]
He nightly tippled "Graeco more,"
And never paid a bill or balance
Except upon the Grecian Kalends:--
From whence your scholars, when they want tick,
Say, to be Attic's to be _on_ tick.
In logics, he was quite Ho Panu;
Knew as much as ever man knew.
He fought the combat syllogistic
With so much skill and art eristic,
That though you were the learned Stagyrite,
At once upon the hip he had you right.
In music, though he had no ears
Except for that amongst the spheres,
(Which most of all, as he averred it,
He dearly loved, 'cause no one heard it,)
Yet aptly he, at sight, could read
Each tuneful diagram in Bede,
And find, by Euclid's corollaria,
The ratios of a jig or aria.
But, as for all your warbling Delias,
Orpheuses and Saint Cecilias,
He owned he thought them much surpast
By that redoubted Hyaloclast[7]
Who still contrived by dint of throttle,
Where'er he went to crack a bottle.