The Works of Abraham Cowley/Volume 1/An Answer to a Copy of Verses sent me to Jersey
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AN ANSWER TO
A COPY OF VERSES
SENT ME TO JERSEY.
As to a northern people (whom the sunUses just as the Romish church has doneHer prophane laity, and does assignBread only both to serve for bread and wine)A rich Canary fleet welcome arrives;Such comfort to us here your letter gives, Fraught with brisk racy verses; in which weThe soil from whence they came taste, smell, and see:Such is your present to us; for you must know,Sir, that verse does not in this island grow,No more than sack: one lately did not fear(Without the Muses' leave) to plant it here;But it produc'd such base, rough, crabbed, hedge-Rhymes, as ev'n set the hearers' ears on edge:Written by ——— ——— Esquire, theYear of our Lord six hundred thirty-three.Brave Jersey Muse! and he's for this high styleCall'd to this day the Homer of the Isle.Alas! to men here no words less hard beTo rhyme with, than [1]Mount Orgueil is to me;Mount Orgueil! which, in scorn o'th' Muses' law,With no yoke-fellow word will deign to draw.Stubborn Mount Orgueil! 't is a work to make itCome into rhyme, more hard than 't were to take it.Alas! to bring your tropes and figures here,Strange as to bring camels and elephants were;And metaphor is so unknown a thing,'T would need the preface of "God save the King."Yet this I'll say, for th' honour of the place,That, by God's extraordinary grace(Which shows the people have judgment, if not wit)The land is undefil'd with Clinches yet;Which, in my poor opinion, I confess,Is a most singular blessing, and no less Than Ireland's wanting spiders. And, so far From th' actual sin of bombast too they are, (That other crying sin o' th' English Muse) That even Satan himself can accuse None here (no not so much as the divines) For th' motus primò primi to strong lines. Well, since the soil then does not naturally bear Verse, who (a devil) should import it here ? For that to me would seem as strange a thing As who did first wild beasts into' islands bring j Unless you think that it might taken be As Green did Gondibert, in a prize at sea : But that 's a fortune falls not every day ; 'T is true Green was made by it; for they say The parliament did a noble bounty do, And gave him the whole prize, their tenths and fifteens too.
- ↑ The name of one of the castles in Jersey.