And had he fiddled at the present hour,
We'd seen the Lions waltzing in the Tower;[1]
And old Amphion, such were minstrels then,
Had built St. Paul's without the aid of Wren.
Verse too was Justice, and the Bards of Greece
Did more than constables to keep the peace;670
Abolished cuckoldom with much applause,
Called county meetings, and enforced the laws,
Cut down crown influence with reforming scythes,
And served the Church—without demanding tithes;
And hence, throughout all Hellas and the East,
Each Poet was a Prophet and a Priest,
Whose old-established Board of Joint Controls[2]
Included kingdoms in the cure of souls.
Next rose the martial Homer, Epic's prince,
And Fighting's been in fashion ever since;680
- ↑ [Charles Lamb, in "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago" (Prose Works, 1836, ii. 30), records his repeated visits, as a Blue Coat boy, "to the Lions in the Tower—to whose levée, by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive title to admission."]
- ↑ [Lines 677, 678 are not in MS. L. (a).]
English" in Richard the First (Bland-Burges Papers, 1885, p. 308), Burges as a poet awaits rediscovery. His diaries, portions of which were published in 1885, are lively and instructive. He has been immortalized in Porson's Macaronics—
"Poetis nos lætamur tribus,
Pye, Petro Pindar, parvo Pybus.
Si ulterius ire pergis,
Adde his Sir James Bland Burges!"]
