Painters with poets for the laurel vie: 
But should the laureat band thy claims deny,
Wear thou thy own green palm, Haydon, triumphantly.

SONNET

To Miss Burney, on her Character of Blanch in “Country
Neighbours,” a Tale

(1820)

Bright spirits have arisen to grace the BURNEY name,
And some in letters, some in tasteful arts,
In learning some have borne distinguished parts;
Or sought through science of sweet sounds their fame: 
And foremost she, renowned for many a tale
Of faithful love perplexed, and of that good
Old man, who, as CAMILLA’S guardian, stood
In obstinate virtue clad like coat of mail. 
Nor dost thou, SARAH, with unequal pace
Her steps pursue.  The pure romantic vein
No gentler creature ever knew to feign
Than thy fine Blanch, young with an elder grace,
In all respects without rebuke or blame,
Answering the antique freshness of her name.

TO MY FRIEND THE INDICATOR

(1820)

Your easy Essays indicate a flow,
Dear Friend, of brain which we may elsewhere seek;
And to their pages I, and hundreds, owe,
That Wednesday is the sweetest of the week. 
Such observation, wit, and sense, are shewn,
We think the days of Bickerstaff returned;
And that a portion of that oil you own,
In his undying midnight lamp which burned. 
I would not lightly bruise old Priscian’s head,
Or wrong the rules of grammar understood;
But, with the leave of Priscian be it said,
The Indicative is your Potential Mood.
Wit, poet, prose-man, party-man, translator—­
H[unt], your best title yet is INDICATOR.

ON SEEING MRS. K——­ B——­, AGED UPWARDS
OF EIGHTY, NURSE AN INFANT

A sight like this might find apology
In worlds unsway’d by our Chronology;
As Tully says, (the thought’s in Plato)—­
“To die is but to go to Cato.” 
Of this world Time is of the essence,—­
A kind of universal presence;
And therefore poets should have made him
Not only old, as they’ve pourtray’d him,
But young, mature, and old—­all three
In one—­a sort of mystery—­
(’Tis hard to paint abstraction pure.)
Here young—­there old—­and now mature—­
Just as we see some old book-print,
Not to one scene its hero stint;
But, in the distance, take occasion
To draw him in some other station. 
Here this prepost’rous union seems
A kind of meeting of extremes. 
Ye may not live together.  Mean ye
To pass that gulf that lies between ye
Of fourscore years, as we skip ages
In turning o’er historic pages? 
Thou dost not to this age belong: 
Thou art three generations wrong: 
Old Time has miss’d thee:  there he tarries! 
Go on to thy contemporaries! 
Give the child up.  To see thee kiss him
Is a compleat anachronism. 
Nay, keep him.  It is good to see