Nor medlar fruit, delicious in decay: The Lilybean shore, with hideous crush On Scylla or Charybdis (dangerous rocks!) She strikes rebounding; whence the shatter'd oak, So fierce a shock unable to withstand, Admits the sea; in at the gaping side The crowding waves gush with impetuous rage, Resistless, overwhelming; horrors seize The mariners; death in their eyes appears, They stare, they lave, they pump, they swear, they pray: (Vain efforts!) still the battering waves rush in, Implacable, till, delug'd by the foam, The ship sinks foundering in the vast abyss. 2 THE BOOK-WORM. BY PARNELL. COME hither, boy, we'll hunt to-day The Book-worm, rav'ning beast of prey To wound the bards of ancient time, To tear some modern wretch below. On ev'ry corner fix thine eye, Or ten to one he slips thee by. See where his teeth a passage eat: We'll rouse him from the deep retreat, ! But who the shelter's forc'd to give? 'Tis sacred Virgil, as I live! From leaf to leaf, from song to song, Insatiate brute, whose teeth abuse The sweetest servants of the Muse! (Nay, never offer to deny, I took thee in the fact to fly.) His roses nipt in ev'ry page, My poor Anacreon mourns thy rage; .By thee my Ovid wounded lies; By thee my Lesbia's sparrow dies; Thy rabid teeth have half destroy'd And spoil'd the Blouzelind of Gay. For all, for ev'ry single deed, Relentless Justice bids thee bleed, Then fall a victim to the Nine, Bring Homer, Virgil, Tasso near, To pile a sacred altar here; Hold, boy! thy hand outruns thy wit, You've reach'd the plays that Dennis writ; You've reach'd me Philips' rustic strain; Pray take your mortal Bards again. Come, bind the victim-there he lies; And here between his num'rous eyes This venerable dust I lay, From manuscript just swept away. The goblet in my hand I take, (For the libation's yet to make) |