An Essay on Criticism (Lines 337 - 357) versuri

An Essay on Criticism (Lines 337 – 357) lyrics by Peggy Ashcroft, Emma Topping, George Rylands

But most by numbers judge a poet’s song;
And smooth or rough, with them is right or wrong:
In the bright Muse though thousand charms conspire
Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire
Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear
Not mend their minds; as some to church repair
Not for the doctrine, but the music there
These equal syllables alone require
Tho’ oft the ear the open vowels tire
While expletives their feeble aid do join
And ten low words oft creep in one dull line
While they ring round the same unvaried chimes
With sure returns of still expected rhymes
Where’er you find „the cooling western breeze”
In the next line, it „whispers through the trees”:
If „crystal streams with pleasing murmurs creep”
The reader’s threaten’d (not in vain) with „sleep”
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught
With some unmeaning thing they call a thought
A needless Alexandrine ends the song
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along