Analysis of On The Report Of A Monument To Be Erected In Westminster Abbey, To The Memory Of A Late Author (Churchill)
Bufo, begone! with thee may Faction's fire,
That hatch'd thy salamander-fame, expire.
Fame, dirty idol of the brainless crowd,
What half-made moon-calf can mistake for good!
Since shared by knaves of high and low degree;
Cromwell and Cataline: Guido Faux, and thee.
By nature uninspired, untaught by art;
With not one thought that breathes the feeling heart,
With not one offering vow'd to Virtue's shrine,
With not one pure unprostituted line;
Alike debauch'd in body, soul, and lays;—
For pension'd censure, and for pension'd praise,
For ribaldry, for libels, lewdness, lies,
For blasphemy of all the good and wise:
Coarse violence in coarser doggrel writ,
Which bawling blackguards spell'd, and took for wit:
For conscience, honour, slighted, spurn'd, o'erthrown:—
Lo! Bufo shines the minion of renown.
Is this the land that boasts a Milton's fire,
And magic Spenser's wildly warbling lyre?
The land that owns the omnipotence of song,
When Shakspeare whirls the throbbing heart along?
The land, where Pope, with energy divine,
In one strong blaze bade wit and fancy shine:
Whose verse, by truth in virtue's triumph born,
Gave knaves to infamy, and fools to scorn;
Yet pure in manners, and in thought refined,
Whose life and lays adorn'd and bless'd mankind?
Is this the land, where Gray's unlabour'd art
Soothes, melts, alarms, and ravishes the heart:
While the lone wanderer's sweet complainings flow
In simple majesty of manly woe:
Or while, sublime, on eagle pinion driven,
He soars Pindaric heights, and sails the waste of Heaven?
Is this the land, o'er Shenstone's recent urn,
Where all the Loves and gentler Graces mourn?
And where, to crown the hoary bard of night1,
The Muses and the Virtues all unite?
Is this the land where Akenside displays
The bold yet temperate flame of ancient days?
Like the rapt sage2, in genius as in theme,
Whose hallow'd strain renown'd Illyssus' stream:
Or him, the indignant bard3, whose patriot ire,
Sublime in vengeance, smote the dreadful lyre:
For truth, for liberty, for virtue warm,
Whose mighty song unnerved a tyrant's arm,
Hush'd the rude roar of discord, rage, and lust,
And spurn'd licentious demagogues to dust.
Is this the queen of realms? the glorious isle,
Britannia, blest in Heaven's indulgent smile?
Guardian of truth, and patroness of art,
Nurse of the undaunted soul, and generous heart!
Where, from a base unthankful world exiled,
Freedom exults to roam the careless wild:
Where taste to science every charm supplies,
And genius soars unbounded to the skies?
And shall a Bufo's most polluted name
Stain her bright tablet of untainted fame?
Shall his disgraceful name with theirs be join'd,
Who wish'd and wrought the welfare of their kind?
His name, accurst, who, leagued with——4 and Hell,
Labour'd to rouse, with rude and murderous yell,
Discord the fiend, to toss rebellion's brand,
To whelm in rage and woe a guiltless land:
To frustrate wisdom's, virtue's noblest plan,
And triumph in the miseries of man.
Drivelling and dull, when crawls the reptile Muse,
Swoln from the sty, and rankling from the stews,
With envy, spleen, and pestilence replete,
And gorged with dust she lick'd from Treason's feet:
Who once, like Satan, raised to Heaven her sight,
But turn'd abhorrent from the hated light:—
O'er such a Muse shall wreaths of glory bloom?
No—shame and execration be her doom.
Hard-fated Bufo, could not dulness save
Thy soul from sin, from infamy thy grave?
Blackmore and Quarles, those blockheads of renown,
Lavish'd their ink, but never harm'd the town.
Though this, thy brother in discordant song,
Harass'd the ear, and cramp'd the labouring tongue:
And that, like thee, taught staggering prose to stand,
And limp on stilts of rhyme around the land.
Harmless they dozed a scribbling life away,
And yawning nations own'd the innoxious lay,
But from thy graceless, rude, and beastly brain,
What fury breathed the incendiary strain?
Did hate to vice exasperate thy style?
No—Bufo match'd the vilest of the vile.
Yet blazon'd was his verse with Virtue's name—
Thus prudes look down to hide their want of shame:
Thus hypocrites to truth, and fools to sense,
And fops to taste, have sometimes made pretence:
Thus thieves and gamesters swear by honour's laws:
Thus pension-hunters bawl 'their country's cause:'
Thus furious Teague for moderation raved,
And own'd his soul to liberty enslaved.
Nor yet, though thousand cits admire thy rage,
Though less of fool than felon marks thy page:
Nor yet, though here and there one lonely spark
Of w
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11111110 111010101 1101010101 1111110111 1111110101 100110101 110010111 1111110101 1111001111 111111 011010101 11100111 11001111 1100110101 110001011 11110111 11011011 111010101 1101110110 01010101001 01110010011 111010101 0111110001 0111110101 111101101 1111000111 1101000101 1101010111 11011111 11010101 1011111 0101001101 11011101010 1101010101110 1101101101 1101010101 0111010111 010001011 11011101 0111011101 1011010101 11010111 110010111001 0101010101 1111001101 110101011 1011110101 010101011 11011101001 010010100101 10011010011 110010101001 1101111 1001110101 11110100101 0101010101 010110101 1011010101 1101011111 110101111 11111101 1111101001 1001110101 1101010101 1111101 0100010011 101110101 1101010101 1101010001 011111111 11110111001 1101010101 10101111101 1101101 11011111 1111110011 100111101 1011110101 1111000101 010101011 01111100111 0111110101 10110100101 010101011 111101011 11010010001 111101011 11101101 11111111 1111111111 110110111 011110111 11011111 1101011101 1100110101 0111110001 1111010111 1111110111 1111011101 1100 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,422 |
Words | 749 |
Sentences | 31 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 100 |
Lines Amount | 100 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 3,533 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 745 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 3:59 min read
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"On The Report Of A Monument To Be Erected In Westminster Abbey, To The Memory Of A Late Author (Churchill)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 10 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/19969/on-the-report-of-a-monument-to-be-erected-in-westminster-abbey%2C-to-the-memory-of-a-late-author-%28churchill%29>.
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