O lift with reverent hand that tarnish’d flower,
          That ’shrines beneath her modest canopy
          Memorials dear to Romish piety;
          Dim specks, rude shapes, of Saints! in fervent hour
          The work perchance of some meek devotee,
          Who, poor in worldly treasures to set forth
          The sanctities she worshipped to their worth,
          In this imperfect tracery might see
          Hints, that all Heaven did to her sense reveal. 
          Cheap gifts best fit poor givers.  We are told
          Of the lone mite, the cup of water cold,
          That in their way approved the offerer’s zeal. 
          True love shows costliest, where the means are scant;
          And, in her reckoning, they abound, who want.

        FREE THOUGHTS ON SEVERAL EMINENT COMPOSERS

(1830)

          Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
          Just as the whim bites; for my part,
          I do not care a farthing candle
          For either of them, or for Handel.—­
          Cannot a man live free and easy,
          Without admiring Pergolesi? 
          Or thro’ the world with comfort go,
          That never heard of Doctor Blow? 
          So help me heaven, I hardly have;
          And yet I eat, and drink, and shave,
          Like other people, if you watch it,
          And know no more of stave or crotchet,
          Than did the primitive Peruvians;
          Or those old ante-queer-diluvians
          That lived in the unwash’d world with Jubal,
          Before that dirty blacksmith Tubal
          By stroke on anvil, or by summ’at,
          Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut. 
          I care no more for Cimarosa,
          Than he did for Salvator Rosa,
          Being no painter; and bad luck
          Be mine, if I can bear that Gluck! 
          Old Tycho Brahe, and modern Herschel,
          Had something in them; but who’s Purcel? 
          The devil, with his foot so cloven,
          For aught I care, may take Beethoven;
          And, if the bargain does not suit,
          I’ll throw him Weber in to boot. 
          There’s not the splitting of a splinter
          To chuse ’twixt him last named, and Winter. 
          Of Doctor Pepusch old queen Dido
          Knew just as much, God knows, as I do. 
          I would not go four miles to visit
          Sebastian Bach (or Batch, which is it?);
          No more I would for Bononcini. 
          As for Novello, or Rossini,
          I shall not say a word to grieve ’em,
          Because they’re living; so I leave ’em.

* * * * *

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS, NOT COLLECTED BY LAMB

DRAMATIC FRAGMENT

(1798)