Through and through the inspired leaves, Ye maggots, make your windings; But, oh! respect his lordship's taste, And spare his golden bindings. R. BURNS. THE BOOKWORM Come hither, boy, we'll hunt to-day The bookworm, ravening beast of prey, Produced by parent Earth, at odds, As fame reports it, with the Gods. Him frantic hunger wildly drives Against a thousand authors' lives: Through all the fields of wit he flies; Dreadful his head with clustering eyes, With horns without, and tusks within, And scales to serve him for a skin. Observe him nearly, lest he climb To wound the bards of ancient time, Or down the vale of fancy go To tear some modern wretch below. On every corner fix thine eye, Or ten to one he slips thee by. See where his teeth a passage eat: We'll rouse him from his deep retreat. But who the shelter's forced to give? 'Tis sacred Virgil, as I live! From leaf to leaf, from song to song, He draws the tadpole form along, He mounts the gilded edge before, He's up, he scuds the cover o'er, He turns, he doubles, there he passed, And here we have him, caught at last. Insatiate brute, whose teeth abuse The sweetest servants of the Muse-- Nay, never offer to deny, I took thee in the act to fly. His roses nipped in every 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 destroyed The work of love in Biddy Floyd; They rent Belinda's locks away, And spoiled the Blouzelind of Gay. For all, for every single deed, Relentless justice bids thee bleed: Then fall a victim to the Nine, Myself the priest, my desk the shrine. Bring Homer, Virgil, Tasso near, To pile a sacred altar here: Hold, boy, thy hand outruns thy wit, You reached the plays that Dennis writ; You reached me Philips' rustic strain; Pray take your mortal bards again. Come, bind the victim,--there he lies, And here between his numerous eyes This venerable dust I lay From manuscripts just swept away. The goblet in my hand I take, For the libation's yet to make: A health to poets! all their days May they have bread, as well as praise; Sense may they seek, and less engage In papers filled with party rage. But if their riches spoil their vein, Ye Muses, make them poor again. Now bring the weapon, yonder blade With which my tuneful pens are made. I strike the scales that arm thee round, And twice and thrice I print the wound; The sacred altar floats with red, And now he dies, and now he's dead.