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.

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Poems in English 

• Hope A-Left Behind by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Heedless O’ My Love by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Haven Woones Fortune A-Twold by William Barnes by William Barnes
• The Happy Days When I Wer Young by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Hallowed Pleäces by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Gwain To Feäir by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Gwaïn To Brookwell by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Gwaïn Down The Steps Vor Water by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Guy Faux’s Night by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Grief An’ Gladness by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Grammer’s Shoes by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Grammer A-Crippled by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Good Meäster Collins by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Gammony Gaÿ by William Barnes by William Barnes
• A Father Out, An’ Mother Hwome by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Farmer’s Son by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Fanny’s Be’th-Day by William Barnes by William Barnes
• False Friends-Like by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Evenèn Twilight by William Barnes by William Barnes
• Evenèn Light by William Barnes by William Barnes

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