Your bays may hide the baldness of your brows-- Perhaps some virtuous blushes;--let them go-- To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs-- And for the fame you would engross below, The field is universal, and allows Scope to all such as feel the inherent glow: Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe, will try 'Gainst you the question with posterity. VIII. For me, who, wandering with pedestrian Muses, Contend not with you on the wingéd steed, I wish your fate may yield ye, when she chooses, The fame you envy, and the skill you need; And, recollect, a poet nothing loses In giving to his brethren their full meed Of merit--and complaint of present days Is not the certain path to future praise. IX. He that reserves his laurels for posterity (Who does not often claim the bright reversion) Has generally no great crop to spare it, he Being only injured by his own assertion; And although here and there some glorious rarity Arise like Titan from the sea's immersion, The major part of such appellants go To--God knows where--for no one else can know. X. If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,[6] Milton appealed to the Avenger, Time, If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs, And makes the word "Miltonic" mean "_Sublime_," _He_ deigned not to belie his soul in songs, Nor turn his very talent to a crime; _He_ did not loathe the Sire to laud the Son, But closed the tyrant-hater he begun. XI. Think'st thou, could he--the blind Old Man--arise Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more The blood of monarchs with his prophecies, Or be alive again--again all hoar With time and trials, and those helpless eyes, And heartless daughters--worn--and pale[7]--and poor; Would _he_ adore a sultan? _he_ obey The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?[8] XII. Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant! Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's gore, And thus for wider carnage taught to pant, Transferred to gorge upon a sister shore, The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want, With just enough of talent, and no more, To lengthen fetters by another fixed, And offer poison long already mixed. XIII. An orator of such set trash of phrase Ineffably--legitimately vile, That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise, Nor foes--all nations--condescend to smile,-- Nor even a sprightly blunder's spark can blaze From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless toil, That turns and turns to give the world a notion Of endless torments and perpetual motion. XIV.