THE BOOK-WORM. BY PARNELL. COME hither, boy, we'll hunt to-day To wound the bards of ancient time, To tear some modern wretch below. On ev'ry corner fix thine eye, Or ten to one he slips thee by. See where his teeth a passage eat: We'll rouse him from the deep retreat. But who the shelter's forc'd to give? 'Tis sacred Virgil, as I live! From leaf to leaf, from song to song, He mounts the gilded edge before; Insatiate brute, whose teeth abuse The sweetest servants of the Muse! (Nay, never offer to deny, I took thee in the fact to fly.) My poor Anacreon mourns thy rage; By thee my Ovid wounded lies; By thee dies; my Lesbia's sparrow Thy rabid teeth have half destroy'd And spoil'd the Blouzelind of Gay. For all, for ev'ry 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've reach'd the plays that Dennis writ; You've reach'd me Philips' rustic strain; Pray take your mortal Bards again. Come, bind the victim-there he lies; And here between his num'rous eyes This venerable dust I lay, From manuscript 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 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. How like the son of Jove I stand, This Hydra stretch'd beneath my hand! Lay bare the monster's entrails here, To see what dangers threat the year: Ye gods! what sonnets on a wench! What lean translations out of French! "Tis plain, this lobe is so unsound, S - prints before the months go round. But hold-before I close the scene, The sacred altar should be clean. Rent from the corps, on yonder pin "This trophy from the Python won, "This robe in which the deed was done, "These Parnell, glorying in the feat, Hung on these shelves, the Muses' seat. "Here Ignorance and Hunger found |