Page:Satires, Epistles, Art of Poetry of Horace - Coningsby (1874).djvu/202

But 'twill not screen the unnatural and absurd,
Unions of lamb with tiger, snake with bird.
When poets would be lofty, they commence
With some gay patch of cheap magnificence:
Of Dian's altar and her grove we read,
Or rapid streams meandering through the mead;
Or grand descriptions of the river Rhine,
Or watery bow, will take up many a line.
All in their way good things, but not just now:
You're happy at a cypress, we'll allow;
But what of that? you're painting by command
A shipwrecked sailor, striking out for land:
That 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.