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    May Day with the Muses
    May Day with the Muses
    May Day with the Muses
    Ebook82 pages52 minutes

    May Day with the Muses

    By Robert Bloomfield

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    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 25, 2013
    May Day with the Muses

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      Book preview

      May Day with the Muses - Robert Bloomfield

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of May Day with the Muses, by Robert Bloomfield

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

      Title: May Day with the Muses

      Author: Robert Bloomfield

      Posting Date: October 15, 2012 [EBook #9043] Release Date: October, 2005 First Posted: September 1, 2003

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAY DAY WITH THE MUSES ***

      Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Charles Bidwell and Distributed Proofreaders

      MAYDAY WITH THE MUSES.

      BY ROBERT BLOOMFIELD

      Author of the Farmer's Boy, Rural Tales, &c.

      LONDON:

      Printed for the Author: and for Baldwin Chadock, and Joy

      1822

      LONDON:

      Printed by Thomas Davison, Whitefriars.

      PREFACE.

      I am of opinion that Prefaces are very useless things in cases like the present, where the Author must talk of himself, with little amusement to his readers. I have hesitated whether I should say any thing or nothing; but as it is the fashion to say something, I suppose I must comply. I am well aware that many readers will exclaim—It is not the common practice of English baronets to remit half a year's rent to their tenants for poetry, or for any thing else. This may be very true; but I have found a character in the Rambler, No. 82, who made a very different bargain, and who says, And as Alfred received the tribute of the Welsh in wolves' heads, I allowed my tenants to pay their rents in butterflies, till I had exhausted the papilionaceous tribe. I then directed them to the pursuit of other animals, and obtained, by this easy method, most of the grubs and insects which land, air, or water can supply………I have, from my own ground, the longest blade of grass upon record, and once accepted, as a half year's rent for a field of wheat, an ear, containing more grains than had been seen before upon a single stem.

      I hope my old Sir Ambrose stands in no need of defence from me or from any one; a man has a right to do what he likes with his own estate. The characters I have introduced as candidates may not come off so easily; a cluster of poets is not likely to be found in one village, and the following lines, written by my good friend T. Park. Esq. of Hampstead, are not only true, but beautifully true, and I cannot omit them.

      WRITTEN IN THE ISLE OF THANET,

      August, 1790.

      The bard, who paints from rural plains,

        Must oft himself the void supply

      Of damsels pure and artless swains,

        Of innocence and industry:

      For sad experience shows the heart

        Of human beings much the same;

      Or polish'd by insidious art,

        Or rude as from the clod it came.

      And he who roams the village round,

        Or strays amid the harvest sere,

      Will hear, as now, too many a sound

        Quiet would never wish to hear.

      The wrangling rustics' loud abuse,

        The coarse, unfeeling, witless jest,

      The threat obscene, the oath profuse,

        And all that cultured minds detest.

      Hence let those Sylvan poets glean,

        Who picture life without a flaw;

      Nature may form a perfect scene,

        But Fancy must the figures draw.

      The word fancy connects itself with my very childhood, fifty years back. The fancy of those who wrote the songs which I was obliged to hear in infancy was a very inanimate and sleepy fancy. I could enumerate a dozen songs at least which all described sleeping shepherds and shepherdesses, and, in one instance, where they both went to sleep: this is not fair certainly; it is not even watch and watch.

      "As Damon and Phillis were keeping of sheep,

      Being free from all care they retired to sleep," &c.

      I must say, that if I understand any thing at all about keeping sheep, this is not the way to go to work with them. But such characters and such writings were fashionable, and fashion will beat common sense at any time.

      With all the beauty and spirit of Cunningham's Kate of Aberdeen, and some others, I never found any thing to strike my mind so forcibly as the last stanza of Dibdin's Sailor's Journal—

      "At length, 'twas in

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