The Knickerbocker Gallery/Dryden and Milton
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W.H.C. Hosmer
Dryden and Milton.
By H. W. C. Hosmer.
All of divine in poetry we loseWhen wayward Genius prostitutes the muse,Lured by the fatal gleam of golden showers,And aims to make available his powers,By pandering to vitiated Taste,While runs the garden of his heart to waste.
Dryden was ruined when he tuned his stringTo gain the guerdon of a heartless king,Amuse a gay, licentious court with laysMocking at virtue, and indecent plays.Alone the mere available he sought,At honor's price a wretched stipend bought;The hill-tops of the Beautiful forsook,On scenes of hollow revelry to look;Bow at the footstool of anointed Sin,Less sure of royal favor than Nell Gwynn.Oh! what a loss to letters when withdrawnFrom high, heroic theme was 'glorious John,'Led by Romance to her old haunted shore,Pluming his wing for epic flight no more!
Eternal praise is deathless Milton's due,To an exalted calling ever true;Although his books the common hangman burnedWhen, triumphing, the Second Charles returned,Still his great heart a love of freedom fired,While Want and Woe to crush his soul conspired. The wretched tool of Party trimmed his sailTo catch the current of a prosperous gale,And pliant chiefs, with king-craft long at strife,On bended knees begged piteously for life;But one there was, unawed by sceptred Power,Firm as the rock-foundation of a tower,Whom threat could not corrupt, nor bribe seduce,To live one hour with Guilt on terms of truce;Whose breast, the fortress of an iron will,Harbored a hatred of Oppression still.Blind were his orbs, but, eloquent, the lipsGave proof of mind undarkened by eclipse,Midsummer-noon outshining with its raysThough gone the bloom and bliss of younger days.Wit reaped the harvest of a venal penSelling his conscience for the praise of men;Apostates hailed the Stuart line restored,Mocking the creed that edged a Hampden's sword,But reigning Fashion could not cramp with lawsAn author deaf to popular applause,Whose spirit, bathing in celestial light,Conversed with shapes unknown to mortal sight,Though foolish scribe and lying pamphleteerMore gold amassed with each returning year.Ah! little thought the dunces who malignedThe Bard of Eden, old, infirm, and blind,That gladly reading thousands in our day,More for his careless autograph would payThan all the lumber, now of little worth,To which his scribbling enemies gave birth.
Out on the coward who adapts his pageTo the base craving of a selfish age,And finds the silver in his itching palmsA sudden cure for conscientious qualms!Not long from judgment can the wretch be screenedWhose soul is mortgaged to a torturing fiend;Remorse will follow misdirected powerWhen gone the clap-trap of the passing hour:Through mocking paint will soon or late appearThe pallid shade of more than mortal fear, And on the wind, while hurrying to the goal,The funeral-bell of murdered Hope will toll.Out upon authors who conform in styleTo manners that are prevalent though vile,The gifts of God abusing for a pricePaid by the gilded devotees of Vice!Then works survive as beacon-lights to warn,Not precious scrolls the language to adorn,And when then: names offend the startled earWe feel as if an adder's brood were near.Not such the band, from Labor's field withdrawn,Whose lingering foot-prints match in glow the dawn;The gulf of ages can not swallow upThese meek partakers of a bitter cup;Their records were not written in the sand,But treasured lie in Memory's holy land.Despised of men, they toiled with fervent zeal,Through good and ill report, for human weal;Bravely the burthen of their sorrows bore,And household-words will live for evermore.Their names, a precious legacy, impartBalm to the pilgrim growing faint of heart,And, snatching up the staff, he journeys on,The mournful gloom that wrapped his spirit gone.