[Note: Stanza and Line numbers have not been included.]
DEDICATION CANTO THE FIRST CANTO THE SECOND. CANTO THE THIRD. CANTO THE FOURTH. CANTO THE FIFTH. CANTO THE SIXTH. CANTO THE SEVENTH. CANTO THE EIGHTH. CANTO THE NINTH. CANTO THE TENTH. CANTO THE ELEVENTH. CANTO THE TWELFTH. CANTO THE THIRTEENTH. CANTO THE FOURTEENTH. CANTO THE FIFTEENTH. CANTO THE SIXTEENTH. CANTO THE SEVENTEENTH.
Bob Southey! You’re a poet, poet laureate, And representative of all the race. Although ’tis true that you turned out a Tory at Last, yours has lately been a common case. And now my epic renegade, what are ye at With all the lakers, in and out of place? A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye Like four and twenty blackbirds in a pye,
Which pye being opened they began to sing’ (This old song and new simile holds good), ‘A dainty dish to set before the King’ Or Regent, who admires such kind of food. And Coleridge too has lately taken wing, But like a hawk encumbered with his hood, Explaining metaphysics to the nation. I wish he would explain his explanation.
You, Bob, are rather insolent, you know, At being disappointed in your wish To supersede all warblers here below, And be the only blackbird in the dish. And then you overstrain yourself, or so, And tumble downward like the flying fish Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, And fall for lack of moisture quite a dry Bob.
And Wordsworth in a rather long Excursion (I think the quarto holds five hundred pages) Has given a sample from the vasty version Of his new system to perplex the sages. ’Tis poetry, at least by his assertion, And may appear so when the Dog Star rages, And he who understands it would be able To add a story to the tower of Babel.
You gentlemen, by dint of long seclusion From better company, have kept your own At Keswick, and through still continued fusion Of one another’s minds at last have grown To deem, as a most logical conclusion, That poesy has wreaths for you alone. There is a narrowness in such a notion, Which makes me wish you’d change your lakes for ocean.
I would not imitate the petty thought, Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice, For all the glory your conversion brought, Since gold alone should not have been its price. You have your salary; was’t for that you wrought? And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise. You’re shabby fellows—true—but poets still And duly seated on the immortal hill.