The Sessions of Parnassus; or, the Bards of Gotham.
A DAY-DREAM.
By Thomas Ward.
Lulled in the arms of my "too easy-chair,"
Whose soft embrace composes every care;
No coming toil for thought to brood upon;
Even the fond task of dinner fitly done,
I lounged luxurious, and beguiled the time
With Griswold's garnered hoard of native rhyme.
Heaven, sure, the land with favoring eye regards—
Two hundred genuine and immortal bards!
Time was when Genius' weary growth was slow,
A century-plant, that once an age would blow,
A shooting orb, that as it rushed and blazed,
Drew eyes of millions, and their senses crazed:
And nations hushed as if the thunder spoke,
Then in one wide and general pæan broke!
How few enshrined and classic gods of rhyme,
Embalmed by fame, survive the rust of time!
Less than the muses that inspired their strain—
Still less—of Europe's modern boast remain.
Though myriad twinklers, struggling for our gaze,
Just stain the zenith with their general haze;
Apart and rare the lights of surer ray
Emerge like planets from that milky way.
But in our sphere what numbers claim the eye!
Two hundred lights contending for the sky!
Two hundred wits of one ripe age the birth!
Whence this profusion? Does the teeming earth
Whose soft embrace composes every care;
No coming toil for thought to brood upon;
Even the fond task of dinner fitly done,
I lounged luxurious, and beguiled the time
With Griswold's garnered hoard of native rhyme.
Heaven, sure, the land with favoring eye regards—
Two hundred genuine and immortal bards!
Time was when Genius' weary growth was slow,
A century-plant, that once an age would blow,
A shooting orb, that as it rushed and blazed,
Drew eyes of millions, and their senses crazed:
And nations hushed as if the thunder spoke,
Then in one wide and general pæan broke!
How few enshrined and classic gods of rhyme,
Embalmed by fame, survive the rust of time!
Less than the muses that inspired their strain—
Still less—of Europe's modern boast remain.
Though myriad twinklers, struggling for our gaze,
Just stain the zenith with their general haze;
Apart and rare the lights of surer ray
Emerge like planets from that milky way.
But in our sphere what numbers claim the eye!
Two hundred lights contending for the sky!
Two hundred wits of one ripe age the birth!
Whence this profusion? Does the teeming earth
