Elizabeth

   Elizabeth — it surely is most fit
       (Logic and common usage so commanding)
   In thy own book that first thy name be writ,
*     Zeno and other sages notwithstanding:
   And I have other reasons for so doing
       Besides my innate love of contradiction:
   Each poet — if a poet — in pursuing
       The muses thro' their bowers of Truth or Fiction,
   Has studied very little of his part,
       Read nothing, written less — in short's a fool
   Endued with neither soul, nor sense, nor art,
       Being ignorant of one important rule,
   Employed in even the theses of the school —
       Called —— I forget the heathenish Greek name —
   (Called any thing, its meaning is the same)
       "Always write first things uppermost in the heart"

Edgar      

        * It was a saying of this philosopher "that one's own name should never appear in one's own book".


 

1829.