Classic Poem

LINES BY B EZA ,

Suggested by a moth-eaten Book.

The soldier soothes in his behalf
Bellona, with a victim calf;
The farmer's fold victims exhaust—
Ceres must have her hoiocaust:
And shall the bard alone refuse
A votive offering to his muse,
Proving the only uncompliant,
Unmindful, and ungrateful client?

What gift, what sacrifice select,
May best betoken his respect?
Stay, let me think…O happy notion!
What can denote more true devotion,
What victim gave more pleasing odour,
Than yon small grub, yon wee corroder,
Of sluggish gait, of shape uncouth,
With Jacobin destructive tooth?

Ho, creeper! thy last hour is come;
Be thou the muses' hecatomb!
With whining tricks think not to gull us:
Have I not caught thee in Catullus,
Converting into thy vile marrow
His matchless ditty on “the Sparrow?”

Of late, thy stomach had been partial
To sundry tit-bits out of Martial;
Nay, I have traced thee, insect keen-eyed!
Through the fourth book of Maro's “Æneid.”
On vulgar French could'st not thou fatten,
And curb thy appetite for Latin?
Or, if thou would'st take Latin from us,
Why not devour Duns Scot and Thomas?
Might not the “Digest” and “Decretals”
Have served thee, varlet, for thy victuals?

Victim! come forth! crawl from thy nook!
Fit altar be this injured book;
Caitiff! 'tis vain slyly to simulate
Torpor and death; thee this shall immolate—
This penknife, fitting guillotine
To shed a book worm's blood obscene!
Nor can the poet better mark his
Zeal for the muse than on thy carcass.
The deed in done! the insect Goth
Unmourned (save by maternal moth),
Slain without mercy or remorse,
Lies there, a melancholy corse,
The page he had profaned 'tis meet
Should be the robber's winding-sheet;
While for the deed the muse decrees a
Wreath of her brightest bays to B EZA .