Manager.
All very well!—but when a man
Has forged a scheme, and sketched a plan
He must have sense to use the tool
The best that for the job is fit.
Consider what soft wood you have to split,
And who the people are for whom you write.
One comes to kill a few hours o’ the night;
Another, with his drowsy wits oppressed,
An over-sated banquet to digest;
And not a few, whom least of all we choose,
Come to the play from reading the Reviews.
They drift to us as to a masquerade;
Mere curiosity wings their paces;
The ladies show themselves, and show their silks and laces,
And play their parts well, though they are not paid.
What dream you of, on your poetic height?
A crowded house, forsooth, gives you delight!
Look at your patrons as you should,
You’ll find them one-half cold, and one-half crude.
One leaves the play to spend the night
Upon a wench’s breast in wild delight;
Another sets him down to cards, or calls
For rattling dice, or clicking billiard balls.
For such like hearers, and for ends like these
Why should a bard the gentle Muses tease?
I tell you, give them more, and ever more, and still
A little more, if you would prove your skill.
And since they can’t discern the finer quality,
Confound them with broad sweep of triviality—
But what’s the matter?—pain or ravishment?
Poet.
If such your service, you must be content
With other servants who will take your pay!
Shall then the bard his noblest right betray?
The right of man, which Nature’s gift imparts,
For brainless plaudits basely jest away?
What gives him power to move all hearts,
Each stubborn element to sway,
What but the harmony, his being’s inmost tone,
That charms all feelings back into his own?
Where listless Nature, her eternal thread,
The unwilling spindle twists around,
And hostile shocks of things that will not wed
With jarring dissonance resound,
Who guides with living pulse the rhythmic flow
Of powers that make sweet music as they go?
Who consecrates each separate limb and soul
To beat in glorious concert with the whole?
Who makes the surgy-swelling billow
