For though dull pedants chatter Of musical taste, Talk of hindered researches And hours run to waste; Though they tell us of thoughts To ennoble mankind, Which your poor measures chase From the labouring mind; While your music rejoices One joyless young heart, Perish bookworms and books, Perish learning and art— Of my vagabond fancies I’ll even take my fill. “Qualche cosa, signor?” Yes, my child, that I will. STUMBLING-BLOCKS. THINK when you blame the present age, my friends, This age has one redeeming point—it _mends_. With many monstrous ills we’re forced to cope; But we have life and movement, we have hope. Oh! this is much! Thrice pitiable they Whose lot is cast in ages of decay, Who watch a waning light, an ebbing tide, Decline of energy and fall of pride, Old glories disappearing unreplaced, Receding culture and encroaching waste, Art grown pedantic, manners waxing coarse, The good thing still succeeded by the worse. We see not what those latest Romans saw, When o’er Italian cities, Latin law, Greek beauty, swept the barbarizing tide, And all fair things in slow succession died. ’Tis much that such defeat and blank despair, Whate’er our trials, ’tis not ours to bear, Much that the mass of foul abuse grows less, Much that the injured have sometimes redress, Wealth grows less haughty, misery less resigned, That policy grows just, religion kind, That all worst things towards some better tend, And long endurance nears at last its end; The ponderous cloud grows thin and pierced with bright, And its wild edge is fused in blinding light. Yet disappointment still with hope appears, And with desires that strengthen, strengthen fears, ’Tis the swift-sailing ship that dreads the rocks, The active foot must ’ware of stumbling-blocks. Alas! along the way towards social good, How many stones of dire offence lie strew’d. Whence frequent failure, many shrewd mishaps And dismal pause or helpless backward lapse. Such was the hard reverse that Milton mourn’d, An old man, when he saw the King returned With right divine, and that fantastic train Of banished fopperies come back again. Thus France, too wildly clutching happiness. Stumbled perplexed, and paid in long distress, In carnage, where the bloody conduit runs, And one whole generation of her sons Devoted to the Power of Fratricide For one great year, one eager onward stride. From all these stumbling-blocks that strew the way What wisest cautions may ensure us, say. Cling to the present good with steadfast grip, And for no fancied better let it slip, Whether thy fancy in the future live Or yearn to make the buried past revive. The past is dead,—let the dead have his dues, Remembrance of historian and of Muse; But try no lawless magic on the urn,