TO A FRIEND: [CHARLES LAMB] WHO HAD DECLARED HIS INTENTION OF WRITING NO MORE POETRY

      Dear Charles! whilst yet thou wert a babe, I ween

      That Genius plung’d thee in that wizard fount

      Hight Castalie: and (sureties of thy faith)

      That Pity and Simplicity stood by,

      And promis’d for thee, that thou shouldst renounce 5

      The world’s low cares and lying vanities,

      Steadfast and rooted in the heavenly Muse,

      And wash’d and sanctified to Poesy.

      Yes — thou wert plung’d, but with forgetful hand

      Held, as by Thetis erst her warrior son: 10

      And with those recreant unbaptizéd heels

      Thou’rt flying from thy bounden ministeries —

      So sore it seems and burthensome a task

      To weave unwithering flowers! But take thou heed:

      For thou art vulnerable, wild-eyed boy, 15

      And I have arrows mystically dipped

      Such as may stop thy speed. Is thy Burns dead?

      And shall he die unwept, and sink to earth

      ‘Without the meed of one melodious tear’?

      Thy Burns, and Nature’s own beloved bard, 20

      Who to the ‘Illustrious of his native Land

      So properly did look for patronage.’

      Ghost of Mæcenas! hide thy blushing face!

      They snatch’d him from the sickle and the plough —

      To gauge ale-firkins.

      Oh! for shame return! 25

      On a bleak rock, midway the Aonian mount,

      There stands a lone and melancholy tree,

      Whose agéd branches to the midnight blast

      Make solemn music: pluck its darkest bough,

      Ere yet the unwholesome night-dew be exhaled, 30

      And weeping wreath it round thy Poet’s tomb.

      Then in the outskirts, where pollutions grow,

      Pick the rank henbane and the dusky flowers

      Of nightshade, or its red and tempting fruit,

      These with stopped nostril and glove-guarded hand 35

      Knit in nice intertexture, so to twine,

      The illustrious brow of Scotch Nobility!