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1.
Broiling is best; bear witness, gods and men!
Awake, my Pen,
Promoted from some goose or gander’s pinion
To be the sceptre wherewithal I sway
The Muses’ wide dominion!
And thou, my spirit, for a loftier flight
Than ere the Theban eagle gain’d prepare;
Win with strong impulse thine ethereal way,
Till from the upper air,
Subjected to thy sight,
Regions remote and distant ages lie,
And thine unbounded eye
All things that are on earth or were in time descry.
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2.
Broiling is best; from Jove begin the strain,
High-thundering Jupiter, to whom belong
The Gridiron and the song.
Whence came the glorious Gridiron upon earth?
O daughter of Mnemosyne, relate
When, where, and how the idea uncreate,
That from all ages in the all-teeming mind
Had slept confined,
Received in happy hour its formal birth.
Say, Muse, for thou canst tell
Whate’er to gods or men in earliest days befell:
Nor hath Oblivion in her secret cell,
Wherein with miserly delight
For aye by stealth
She heaps her still accumulating wealth,
Aught that is hidden from thy searching sight.
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| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 363 |
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3.
Twas while the Olympian gods
Were wont among yet uncorrupted nations
To make from time to time their visitations,
Disdaining not to leave their high abodes
And feast with mortal men:
To Britain were the heavenly guests convened;
Its nymphs and silvan gods assembled then,
From forest and from mountain,
From river, mere and fountain;
Thither Saturnian Jove descended
With all his household deities attended;
And Neptune with the oceanic train,
To meet them in his own beloved isle
Came in his sea-car sailing o’er the main.
In joy that day the heav’ns appear’d to smile,
The dimpled sea to smile in joy was seen,
In joy the billows leap’d to kiss the land;
Yea, joy like sunshine fill’d the blue serene,
Joy smooth’d the waves, and sparkled on the sand;
Winds, woods, and waters sung with one consent;
The cloud-compelling Jove made jovial
weather,
And earth, and sea, and sky rejoiced together.
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4.
The sons of Britain then, his hearty hosts,
Brought forth the noble beef that Britain boasts,
To please, if please they might, their mighty guest.
And Jove was pleased,
for he had visited
Men who on fish were fed,
And those who made of milk their only food,
A feeble race with children’s meat content,
Whey-blooded, curd complexioned. But this sight
Awaken’d a terrestrial appetite
That gladden’d his dear heart. The chief
Of gods and men approving view’d
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| 364 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE |
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The Britons and their beef;
His head ambrosial in benignant mood
He bent, and with a jocund aspect blest
The brave Boöphagi, and told them broil’d was best.
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5.
He touch’d his forehead then,
Pregnant this happy hour with thought alone,
Not riving with parturient throbs, as when
Panoplied Pallas,
struggling to come forth,
Made her astonish’d Mater-pater groan,
And call on Vulcan to
release the birth.
He call’d on Vulcan now, but ’twas to say
That in the fire and fume-eructant hill
The sweltering Cyclops might keep holiday,
For his own will divine,
Annihilant of delay,
Should with creative energy fulfil
The auspicious moment’s great intent benign.
So spake the All-maker, and before the sound
Of that annunciant voice had pass’d away,
Behold upon the ground,
Self-form’d, for so it seem’d, a Gridiron lay.
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6.
It was not forged by unseen hands,
Anticipant of Jove’s commands,
Work worthy of applause,
And then through air invisibly convey’d,
Before him upon Earth’s green carpet laid.
Jove in his mind conceived it, and it
was;
But though his plastic thought
Shaped it with handle, feet, and bars, and frame,
Deem not that he created it of nought.
Nothing can come of nothing: from the air
The ferrean atoms came;
The air, which poising our terraqueous ball,
Feeds, fosters, and consumes, and reproduces all.
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| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 365 |
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7.
Now the perfect Steak prepare!
Now the appointed rites begin!
Cut it from the pinguid rump,
Not too thick and not too thin;
Somewhat to the thick inclining,
Yet the thick and thin between,
That the gods, when they are dining,
May commend the golden mean.
Ne’er till now have they been blest
With a beef-steak duly drest;
Ne’er till this auspicious morn
When the Gridiron was born.
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8.
Gods and demigods alertly
Vie in voluntary zeal:
All are active, all are merry,
Aiding, as they may, expertly,
Yet in part the while experi-
mentally the expected meal.
Then it was that call’d to birth,
From the bosom of the earth,
By Apollo’s
moving lyre,
Stones, bituminous and black,
Ranged themselves upon the hearth
Ready for Hephaestus’ fire:
While subjacent faggots crack,
Folds of foglike smoke aspire,
Till the flames with growing strength
All impediment subdue,
And the jetty gloss at length
Is exchanged for Vulcan’s hue.
Now with salt the embers strew,
In faint explosion burning blue.
All offending fumes are gone,
Set, oh set, the Gridiron on!
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| 366 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE |
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9.
But who is she that there
From Jove’s own brain hath
started into life?
Red are her arms, and from the elbow bare;
Clean her close cap, white and light,
From underneath it not a hair
Straggles to offend the sight.
A fork bidented, and a trenchant knife,
She wields. I know thee! yes, I know thee now,
Heiress of culinary fame;
Clothed with pre-existence thou!
Dolly of the deathless name!
Thy praise in after days shall London speak,
O kitchen queen,
Of pearly forehead thou, and ruby cheek!
And many a watery mouth thy chops will bless,
Unconscious they and thou alike, I ween,
That thou hadst thus been ante-born to dress
For Jupiter himself the
first beefsteak.
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10.
O Muse divine, of Jove’s own line, expound
That wonderful and ever-only birth
Like which the womb of Possibility
(Aye-and-all-teeming though it be)
Hath brought no second forth.
What hand but thine, O Muse divine, can sound
The depth of Mysteries profound
Sunk in arcanal ages and in night?
What but thy potential sight,
Piercing high above all height,
Beach them in the abyss of light?
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11.
It were ignorance or folly
To compare this first-born Dolly
With Athenè ever
young;
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| OF ROBERT SOUTHEY. | 367 |
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Grey-eyed, grave, and melancholy,
In her strength and in her state,
When from her cranial egg the Goddess sprung
Full-fledged, in adamantine arms connate.
Verily produced was she
In her immortality;
This of Dolly was a
fan-
tastic birth, or, rather, man-
ifestation soon to be
Revoked into nonentity.
* * *
*
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Thus far, apparently, is completed; that which follows is transcribed from loose slips of paper.
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Anticipating all her wishes,
Spirits come with plates and dishes.
Can more be needed? Yes, and more is here.
Swifter than a shooting-star,
One to distant Malabar
Speeds his way, and, in a trice,
Brings the pungent Indian spice.
Whither hath Erin’s guardian Genius fled?
To the Tupinamban shore
This tutelary power hath sped;
Earth’s good apples thence he bore,
One day destined to abound
On his own Hibernian ground,
Praties to be entitled then,
Gift of Gods to Irishmen.
* * *
*
And strike with thunder from my starry seat
Those who divorce the murphies from the meat.
* * *
*
Bring me no nectar, Hebe, now,
Nor thou, boy Ganymede!
He said, and shook his smiling brow,
And bade the rock with Porter flow,—
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| 368 | LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE |
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The rock with porter flow’d.
Not such as porter long hath been
In these degenerate days, I ween;
But such as oft, in days of yore,
Dean of St. Peter’s, in thy yard,
Though doors were double lock’d and barr’d,
I quaff’d as I shall quaff no more;
Such as loyal Whitbread old,
Father of the brewers bold,
From his ample casks preferr’d
When he regaled the King, the good King George the
Third.
* * *
*
Far more than silver or than gold
The honest pewter pot he prized,
And drank his porter galvaniz’d.
* * *
*
Teetotallers avaunt, and ye who feed,
Like grubs and snails, on root, or stem, or weed;
Nor think
That by such diet and such drink
Britain should rule the main.
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