MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
471
COME, POET, COME![1]
Come, Poet, come!
A thousand labourers ply their task,
And what it tends to scarcely ask,
And trembling thinkers on the brink
Shiver, and know not how to think.
To tell the purport of their pain,
And what our silly joys contain;
In lasting lineaments pourtray
The substance of the shadowy day;
Our real and inner deeds rehearse,
And make our meaning clear in verse:
Come, Poet, come! for but in vain
We do the work or feel the pain,
And gather up the seeming gain,
Unless before the end thou come
To take, ere they are lost, their sum.
A thousand labourers ply their task,
And what it tends to scarcely ask,
And trembling thinkers on the brink
Shiver, and know not how to think.
To tell the purport of their pain,
And what our silly joys contain;
In lasting lineaments pourtray
The substance of the shadowy day;
Our real and inner deeds rehearse,
And make our meaning clear in verse:
Come, Poet, come! for but in vain
We do the work or feel the pain,
And gather up the seeming gain,
Unless before the end thou come
To take, ere they are lost, their sum.
Come, Poet, come!
To give an utterance to the dumb,
And make vain babblers silent, come;
A. thousand dupes point here and there,
Bewildered by the show and glare;
To give an utterance to the dumb,
And make vain babblers silent, come;
A. thousand dupes point here and there,
Bewildered by the show and glare;
- ↑ A great proportion of the Poems described as Miscellaneous have, like some included in previous divisions, been brought together from rough copies and unfinished MSS. Fragmentary and imperfect as they are, they yet are so characteristic of their writer, that they have been placed here along with some of the most complete of his works.
