An Answer To A Copy Of Verses Sent Me To Jersey

As to a northern people (whom the sun

Uses just as the Romish church has done

Her prophane laity, and does assign

Bread 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 we

The 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, the

Year of our Lord six hundred thirty-three.

Brave Jersey Muse! and he’s for this high style

Call’d to this day the Homer of the Isle.

Alas! to men here no words less hard be

To rhyme with, than * 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 it

Come 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;

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;

‘Tis 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.

Poetry Monster – Home

A few random poems:

External links

Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus

Talking Writing Monster’s Page –

Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh

Poems in English 

• Orpheus with his Lute Made Trees by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Orpheus by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Not marble nor the guilded monuments (Sonnet 55) by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck (Sonnet 14) by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Love by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• It was a Lover and his Lass by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Hark! Hark! The Lark by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• From you have I been absent in the spring… (Sonnet 98) by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fidele by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fear No More by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fairy Land v by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fairy Land iv by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fairy Land iii by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Fairy Land ii by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Dirge of the Three Queens by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Dirge by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Carpe Diem by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Bridal Song by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
• Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind by William Shakespeare by William Shakespeare

More external links (open in a new tab):

Russian Commerce Agency

Dealing Monster

Doska or the Board – write anything

Search engines:

Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)

Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.

Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees

Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.

Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.

 

Parallel Translations of Poetry

Poems by Author and Category

The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works