34
Or love[1] has led his gentle mind astray,
From humble prose, to tempt the arduous lay.
Perchance, surviving friends deplore his doom,
And print his strains to grace th' untimely tomb.
Can Censure rail against the recent dead?
Is Pity deaf when mourning parents plead?
From humble prose, to tempt the arduous lay.
Perchance, surviving friends deplore his doom,
And print his strains to grace th' untimely tomb.
Can Censure rail against the recent dead?
Is Pity deaf when mourning parents plead?
- ↑ A countryman of our own has celebrated the effect of "Two or three love letters writ all in rhymes;" nor has the circumstance been left unnoticed by an ancient professor in the art of gaining the affections of a mistress.At facies teneræ ut laudata est sæpe puellæ,
Ad vatem, pretium carminis, ipsa venit.
Ovid, Amor, lib. ii.
Bishop Hall speaks with most unepiscopal harshness of those, whose want urges them to write mean verses.
Such hunger-starven, trencher poetry,
Or let it never live or timely die.
Pratt's edit., page 284.
Or let it never live or timely die.
Pratt's edit., page 284.
