Ah! who but feels the sweet contagious smart 135
While soft Tibullus pours his tender heart?
With him the Loves and Muses melt in tears;
But not a word of some hexameters.
"You grow so squeamish and so dev'lish dry,
You'll call Lucretius vapid next." Not I. 140
Some find him tedious, others think him lame:
But if he lags his subject is to blame.
Rough weary roads thro' barren wilds he tried,
Yet still he marches with true Roman pride:
Sometimes a meteor, gorgeous, rapid, bright, 145
He streams athwart the philosophic night.
Find you in Horace no insipid Odes?--
He dar'd to tell us Homer sometimes nods;
And but for such a aide's hardy skill
Homer might slumber unsuspected still. 150
[Footnote A: A poem of Tibullus's in hexameter verse; as yawning and
insipid as his elegies are tender and natural.]
Tasteless, implicit, indolent and tame,
At second-hand we chiefly praise or blame.
Hence 'tis, for else one knows not why nor how,
Some authors flourish for a year or two:
For many some, more wond'rous still to tell; 155
Farquhar yet lingers on the brink of hell.
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