this conjures to one's mind the idea of Hamlet in petticoats. Without this fact staring me in the face, I could have as soon thought of Juliet grown older than her old Nurse. But it is very true. Hamlet must have once been a squalling baby; and soon after, in little breeches, "with shining morning face." Nor could his infancy be better ennobled, than by telling us he kissed the King's Jester "I know not how oft," and was "borne on his back a thousand times."
THE BOOK OF BEGINNINGS.
Try Ligh Nurt
an auto trocouply chap 19.
Αρχετε, Μώσαι φίλαι, άρχετ' αοιδας.—THEOCRITUS.
Begin, dear Muses, but begin.
86 Twenty sweet summers I will tie together," Said the rejoicing bridegroom in the play, Who was to have one month of honied weather, And then, to please the tyrant, die next day. (1) The vile, hard-hearted yet I don't know either-
However, what I was about to say
Was this, that in these light poetic spinnings,
I tie together twenty sweet beginnings.
Exordiums are my theme.-Thou great "O thou!" Whoe'er thou art, whom poets thou by thousands, Whether thou sit'st upon the Olympian brow Of epic bard, or wonderest at the cow's hands Of rude invoker, rhyming any how, Allow me to be clerk for both advowsons; For if my own rhyme's nothing of itself, It sings of others worthy of thy shelf.
I want, in fact, to finish a whole poem
At once; and to write properly, I find
I can't have flow'rs as quickly as I sow 'em
Something will still take place, not to my mind,
Some weakness, lameness, some hard buddings (blow 'em!)
Some graftings, which I hate to leave behind:
So I must take my time with such grave matters, And sow, meanwhile, my cresses in these tatters. (2)
I must have light refreshment, relishes quick, Fruits that I can dispatch with a brief eating, And yet that I can eat too in the thick Of trees and gardens; sketches of one sitting, But then of looks, at which a painter's stick Might feel the life return to it, ev'n to beating. · When I want more, I go and wrap me round In Milton's, Chaucer's, Spenser's holy ground.
I'm like a knight of old. I'm fierce to-day, Desperate and grim, in middle of the fight; Nothing will serve me but to hack my way At kings and chieftains, tramplers of the right: Anon, I'm gentle as a morn of May,
Am all for flow'rs, and loving dreams at night, And must go waken blossoms in the bushes, Warblings of birds, and worlds of rosy blushes.
See, the word "May" disturb'd my simile, And took me with it, like a lass-led boy. I meant to say, that as the knight would be Now all for fighting, and the terrible joy Of riding plumed battle like a sea,
And now would be rapt off, far from annoy, Into the arms of fairies and their bowers, So frown and smile my party-colour'd hours.
So when my turn comes to repose, I read My magic books, and then with a bird's eye Dart me far off, as he does to his bed, Now to some piping vale of Arcady,
Now to some mountain-top, which I've heard said, Holds the most ghastly breath in Tartary; And then I'm cradled 'twixt my Appenines, Spying the blue sky through the yellow vines.
And then I'm all with Ovid and his changes, Or all with Spenser and his woods, or all With Ariosto and his endless ranges, Riding his Hippogriff, till I grow too small For eye to see:-then lo! I'm by the Ganges, Quick as that fatal wight, who gave a call To Solomon to send him out o' the way Of Death, and met him there that very day. (3)
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